These links are primarily to feature stories and offcourt news
Martina Hingis was ranked No. 1 from March 31, 1997 to October 11, 1998.
CBS Sportsline: MELBOURNE, January 24, 1997: Hingis wins doubles on way to singles final
MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Swiss teenager Martina Hingis won her second grand slam doubles title at the Australian Open on Friday in a playful demolition she hopes to repeat in the single's final against Mary Pierce on Saturday. Sixteen-year-old Hingis, who will become the youngest grand slam single's winner in modern tennis if she beats Pierce, beamed a playful smile throughout the match as she and Natasha Zvereva, from Belarus, buried the tournament's third seeds. American pair Lindsay Davenport and Lisa Raymond could not see the humour, unsuccessfully attempting to steer the ball away from Hingis on the way to a 6-2 6-2 defeat.
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CBS Sportsline: January 25, 1997: Photo: Martina Hingis holds the Australian Open trophy Martina Hingis of Switzerland holds the Australian Open trophy after she defeated France's Mary Pierce during their final match at the Australian Open January 25. Sixteen-year-old Hingis beat Pierce 6-2 6-2 to become the youngest player to win a professional grand slam title. |
CNNSI.com: February 3, 1997:
Martina Hingis was very hot and Pete Sampras was way cool in the first Slam of '97
Aussies call their island nation Oz, and we all know that teenage girls arrive in Oz by tornado. In the case of Australian Open champion Martina Hingis, the twister conveying her touched down and kept on twisting. For two weeks Hingis capered around Melbourne, and nothing could subdue her -- not heat, brushfire or the pestilence of first-week upsets that felled six of the top seven women's seeds. The 16-year-old fourth seed from Switzerland went in-line skating along the banks of the Yarra River and in the parking lot behind the National Tennis Centre. She dropped some of her new wealth in the city's boutiques. She went riding and fell unharmed from her horse, a mare named (of course) Magic Girl.
CBS Sportsline: March 25, 1997: Seles rallies to advance to Lipton semifinals
KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. -- TOP-SEEDED MARTINA HINGIS of Switzerland extended her 1997 unbeaten streak to 26 matches Monday by downing No. 16 Elena Likhovtseva of Russia in three sets to reach the quarterfinals... Hingis will become the youngest world No. 1 when the next WTA Tour rankings are released on March 31, taking over the top spot from injured Steffi Graf of Germany. She will be 16 years, six months when she claims the top spot, replacing Seles as the youngest No. 1 ever. Seles was 17 years, three months and 19 days when she passed Graf on March 11, 1991.
CBS Sportsline: March 29, 1997: Hingis skyrocketing to top of tennis world
KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. -- Once a knee injury took Steffi Graf out of the brew at the Lipton Championships, Martina Hingis was guaranteed a No. 1 ranking -- effective Monday. Hingis brims with the enthusiasm appropriate for a happy 16-year-old, but she has an adult's perspective on her work. She had no desire to back in to the top. She preferred a hard climb, preferably one she could make look easy. On Saturday, she met Monica Seles in the Lipton women's final, where we can only hope those who shelled out $40 for the best seats arrived on time. It takes some people longer to drink a Lipton than it took for Hingis to wipe out Seles in the first set. Nineteen minutes, to be precise.
CNNSI.com: spring 1997 feature/interview, small photos: Blue Skies
Whether she's at home in the Alps or planted on the baseline of a tennis court, Martina Hingis is on top of the world these days, thanks to hard work and an even harder-driving mother...
Martina tore knee ligaments when she fell off a friend's horse named "Tina" on April, 21, 1997,
and did not play again until the French Open.
Wednesday, April 23, 1997 (Usenet): Martina Hingis has slight tear of knee ligament from fall
Reuters -- World No. 1 Martina Hingis suffered a slight tear of a knee ligament in a horse riding accident Monday and will miss at least two tournaments, the WTA Tour announced Wednesday. The 16-year-old Hingis, youngest player ever to hold the top ranking, has withdrawn from the Hamburg event due to begin next Monday and will also miss the Italian Open in Rome the following week.
Las Vegas Sun: May 30, 1997: Hingis and Kournikova, the new rivalry?
PARIS (AP) - In the 1980s, it was Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert. In the 1990s, it was Steffi Graf and Monica Seles. Martina Hingis and Anna Kournikova could carry a similar rivalry into the new century. The two are already old foes, having battled in the juniors. But Kournikova lost both previous encounters, one of them a 6-0, 6-0 thrashing. Hingis is only 16, but she is already No. 1 in the world, unbeaten in 1997, winner of her first Grand Slam tournament in Australia in January, and seeking her second major title at the French Open. Kournikova is still just 15 and not allowed by the ruling body of women's tennis to play a full schedule.
Martina Hingis 1997 French Open Animation
CBS Sportsline: Friday, August 29, 1997: Quotes heard at the U.S. Open
Monica Seles: "I do think the new generation is a lot friendlier, more open," Seles said. "I feel that with Martina [Hingis], with Anna [Kournikova], Mirjana [Lucic]. Those are the ones that I talk to. I think they have a little more of a balance than the prior generation.
"When I came on the tour, the air around the number one players was really different. I really love what Martina is doing. She's normal. She'll talk to the 100th-ranked player the same as she talks to the fourth-ranked player in the world. Very few of the past champions when I was in the locker room had that."
ABC News: Friday, August 29, 1997: Birth Certificates Not Required
At just 15, Mirjana Lucic of Croatia trounced American Brie Rippner 6-0, 6-1 in the second round of the U.S. Open and is eager to show the world she can do it again. With a physique to match her older peers’ and a growing list of wins, Lucic can’t wait to play a full schedule of Grand Slam events. But she has no choice. Women’s tennis has laid down seven single-spaced pages of rules designed to keep the youngest girls from burning out on the grueling professional circuit... The rules primarily state that no woman can compete in tour events before her 14th birthday. Then, until the age of 18, there are various limitations on the number of tournaments they can participate in... Not all the youngsters seem to be struggling. At 16, Martina Hingis has shown that for the time being that a teenager can reign supreme over the women’s game.
CBS Sportsline: Saturday, September 6, 1997: Notebook For Saturday, September 6th
...Sunday's U.S. Open women's final between 16-year-old top seed Martina Hingis of Switzerland and 17-year-old unseeded Venus Williams of the United States marks the youngest championship matchup in Grand Slam history. Hingis and Williams are so young, in fact, that one of the participants in the junior girls final at the Open is older than both players in the women's final and the other is older than Hingis and just two weeks younger than Williams... Hingis on her game plan against Williams: "The same as always. I have nothing special. Just play my game, mix it up a lot. Especially against her. You just have to let her move around. You can't hit it as hard as you can to her because she blocks it very well, makes even more power on you, pressure also, when she hits the ball back."
LVRJ.com: Monday, September 08, 1997:Hingis wins third grand slam crown
Officially, Iva Majoli prevented Martina Hingis from winning all four Grand Slam titles this year. Unofficially, it was Tina. Tina is not a female tennis player but a horse. If Hingis hadn't fallen from Tina on April 21, she probably would have become the fourth woman in history to achieve a Grand Slam and the first since since Steffi Graf in 1988. Switzerland's Hingis, seeded No. 1, will have to settle for three Grand Slam titles this year after routing unseeded Venus Williams of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., 6-0, 6-4 in one hour and two minutes Sunday in the U.S. Open final.
Sportserver.com: Oct 16, 1997: Hingis adopts immunization project as personal charity
ZURICH, Switzerland -- The world's top-ranked women's tennis player Martina Hingis announced Thursday plans to support the U.N. health agency's immunization program. The Swiss tennis star's first gesture was to donate $75,000 to the World Health Organization for its efforts to eradicate polio in Ethiopia. "The WHO told me more than 9 million children die every year from infectious diseases," said Hingis, who is representing a major charitable cause for the first time. "That's why I chose to support WHO. I'm told it saves about 3 million children a year."
Sportserver.com: Nov 19, 1997: Hingis, Coetzer, and Williams win awards
...Martina Hingis kept her award-winning streak going when she was named the Corel WTA Tour Player of the Year. It was the third consecutive year Hingis has captured an award in the balloting among players, worldwide media and tournaments. She was named Most Impressive Newcomer in 1995 and Most Improved Player in 1996. This year, she won 12 tournaments prior to the Chase Championships, where she won her first-round match after receiving her latest award.
Sportserver.com: Dec 26, 1997: Sampras, Hingis ruled tennis in '97
(Associated Press) ...Pete Sampras defended his turf and Martina Hingis claimed her own in 1997, but encroaching on each were players who rose from obscurity to Grand Slam prominence... Paris is special for Hingis, too. It was the major championship she wanted most, having grown up nearby in Switzerland, and the one that stopped her from achieving a rare Grand Slam sweep in a single year -- a feat even the original Martina couldn't accomplish. Fate, in the form of a balky horse, intruded and threw Hingis for a five-week fall. That's how long it took her to recover from arthroscopic knee surgery and return to play in Paris. That she reached the final after a dramatic duel against Monica Seles showed the mettle that underlies the cleverness, swiftness and efficiency of her game. Hingis won 75 of 80 matches during the year, captured 12 titles and earned $3.4 million. Oh, and she signed a $10 million, five-year sportswear deal with Sergio Tacchini. Not bad for a 17-year-old.
Sportserver.com: Dec 29, 1997: Hingis voted top female athlete of 1997 by AP
NEW YORK (Associated Press) -- For virtually all of 1997, Martina Hingis might just as well have been called by the same name as the horse that threw her last January during the first of her three Grand Slam title runs: Magic Girl. Hingis, voted as The Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year on Monday, brushed herself off from that spill to win the Australian Open, reached the French Open final after an amazingly quick recovery from knee surgery following a fall from another horse, then captured Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. "1997 was a dream come true for me," the 17-year-old Hingis said from her home in Switzerland. "I still sometimes can't even believe it. It is especially nice for me to receive this award from American writers because it is always important to be recognized as the best outside of your own country."
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