On the final weekend of the 2015 BNP Paribas Open, the players’ dining hall was deserted. Virtually all of the 200 or so players who had entered the event 10 days earlier were gone. It was another picture-perfect day in Indian Wells, but the cafeteria workers, with little to do, sat and stared at their phones. The TVs were silently tuned to Roger Federer’s match, but no one looked up to watch. That included the two women who sat across from each other at a table in the corner.
For the better part of an hour, their low chatter was the only sound in the room. One was 28-year-old Indian pro Sania Mirza. The other was—could it be?—16-time Grand Slam champion Martina Hingis.
Why was the former No. 1, with $22 million in prize money to her name, killing time in a half-empty dining room? Hingis may have wondered that herself.
Two decades after becoming the WTA’s brightest new star as a 15-year-old, here she was, at 35, living the distinctly less glamorous life of a doubles specialist.
After splitting with former partner Flavia Pennetta the previous month, she was playing her first tournament with Mirza in Southern California. Before it began, they had practiced together just once; by all accounts, their get-to-know-each-other workout hadn’t been an auspicious one.
“We had the worst first practice ever,” Mirza said with a laugh. “We played, and we were like, ‘Oh my God, we cannot play together.’ We won one game, I think, out of 12 [against their practice opponents]. That’s how much practice means.”
Chances are, even Hingis, the most congenitally confident of athletes, didn’t realize that she was about to launch her third tennis career, one that would take her back to the same heights that she had scaled as a teenager.
A few minutes after ending their cafeteria conversation, Hingis and Mirza walked out and upset No. 2 seeds Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina in straight sets to win the title. The stands were half full and the ESPN cameras were long gone, but when it was over Hingis leapt into Mirza’s arms and celebrated as exuberantly as she had as a teenager.
Hingis, for one, knew that her and Mirza had something special right away.
“I mean, after this week we know we can beat the best teams out there in the world,” she said.
Hingis has never been known for modest or cautious words, but this time there was no need for them. Two weeks later, she and Mirza would win the Miami Open without dropping a set. By the end of the year, they had won Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the WTA Finals, and finished the season No. 1.