IT WAS, truly, as if she had awoken from a disturbed sleep and everything was as it had been before she chose to close her eyes. Martina Hingis stepped back on to grand-slam soil yesterday and the personality, the poise and, especially, the manner of her play was as if she had never been away.
Imagine what it would be like to stop whatever you have been doing — not only doing, but being the best in the world at it; to walk around and smell the roses, smile, laugh, cry — and then decide you have missed your vocation, return to the passion that once drove you and come extremely close to picking up where you had stopped.
Hingis was the best. She had won every event on the WTA Tour apart from the French Open at least once in her career, including five grand-slam tournaments, six more finals, two tour championship finals, in singles and doubles, and had a waxwork model of herself at Madame Tussauds. There was nothing she could not do.
Her feet had begun to hurt by then — she was having enough trouble with her shoe manufacturers to consider legal action — and having played tennis since the age of 2 and become the youngest French Open junior champion at 12, it was time to discover what the rest of the world had to offer.
Sergio García, the Spanish Ryder Cup golfer, and Sol Campbell, the Arsenal and England centre half, were courted. Life was sweet. But something was missing: the competitive edge had been dulled.
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And so, two months ago, she decided she could return to the courts. It was a decision of real bravery, not least because a lot of people felt she could not possibly succeed. A 6-1, 6-2 victory over Vera Zvonareva, of Russia, completed in 65 minutes, was about as regal a return as could have been predicted.
Hingis was brilliant, dominant, covering the court with total assurance. She knew what to do and, when she toyed with her opponent, it was a joy to witness. The crowd in the Rod Laver Arena was so transfixed as to spend much of the evening in reverential silence. “It seemed like it was a long time ago,” Hingis said, “and like a lot of things have happened to me since.
“I’ve been living a different lifestyle but I never really walked away totally from tennis. Two years ago, I did commentary, but even as a commentator back here it felt like this is the place I used to be successful, it carried all these memories. ”
The one piece missing was Martina’s mother and coach, Melanie Molitor, who chose to remain at home in Switzerland and allow her daughter the freedom to work this new world out for herself, armed with all the expertise she could muster. “I have talked to her,” Hingis said. “I’ve done the work I’m supposed to. I showed today what we’ve been working on over the six weeks when I was home; it really paid off. I was pretty much able to convert it today.
“My Mum is really proud that I played so well strategically. But she always has some comments. ‘You could have done this, you could have done that.’ I’m like, ‘please, I’m just happy to be through this’. But it was so beautiful to walk in there again tonight. Although I got to practise there, to play again is really amazing.”