Childhood and Early Career
Hingis was born in Košice, (then part of Czechoslovakia, now in modern Slovakia), to accomplished tennis players Melanie Molitorová and Karol Hingis. Molitorová was a professional tennis player, who was once ranked tenth among women in Czechoslovakia, and was determined to develop Hingis into a top player as early as pregnancy. Her father was ranked as high as nineteenth in the Czechoslovakian tennis rankings. Hingis's parents divorced when she was six, and she and her mother relocated around a year later to Trübbach in Switzerland. Her father, who continued to live in Košice as a tennis coach, said in 1997 that he had seen little of his daughter after the split.
Hingis began playing tennis when she was two years old and entered her first tournament at age four. In 1993, 12-year-old Hingis became the youngest player to win a Grand Slam junior title: the girls' singles at the French Open. In 1994, she retained her French Open junior title, won the girls' singles title at Wimbledon, and reached the final of the US Open.
She made her professional debut in October 1994, two weeks after her 14th birthday. She ended the year ranked World No. 87, and in January 1995, she became the youngest player to win a match at a Grand Slam tournament when she advanced to the second round of the Australian Open.
Read more about this topic: Martina Hingis
Famous quotes containing the words childhood, early and/or career:
“Women’s childhood relationships with their fathers are important to them all their lives. Regardless of age or status, women who seem clearest about their goals and most satisfied with their lives and personal and family relationships usually remember that their fathers enjoyed them and were actively interested in their development.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“Make-believe is the avenue to much of the young child’s early understanding. He sorts out impressions and tries out ideas that are foundational to his later realistic comprehension. This private world sometimes is a quiet, solitary
world. More often it is a noisy, busy, crowded place where language grows, and social skills develop, and where perseverance and attention-span expand.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)