After winning the Wimbledon ladies’ doubles title last month, Martina Hingis also won the mixed doubles title, giving her 18 major titles in a career that is meaningfully back on the rails again.Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images
The second act of Martina Hingis's tennis career began innocently enough: In 2013, some six years after abandoning her second comeback attempt in singles competition, the Swiss star accepted an invitation to play doubles with Daniela Hantuchova at a tournament in Carlsbad, Calif.
Hingis, who once was the youngest women's singles player in history ever to be ranked No. 1 in the world, had never completely gone away. She nibbled on the edges of the sport during her hiatus, playing a little bit of World TeamTennis, accepting invitations to play in the senior events that accompany the major championships, coaching players such as Sabine Lisicki and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova at the Mouratoglou Tennis Academy in France.
Playing that match with Hantuchova two years ago was mostly a lark. But it was months later, while hitting with Pavlyuchenkova and Lisicki, that Hingis – who retired for the first time because of ligament damage to her ankles at the ripe old age of 22 – discovered she was still playing pretty well. It piqued her interest enough to make her want to try the tour one more time.
"I felt physically okay – singles is a different ball game, but [in] doubles I could hold my own," Hingis explained in an interview Thursday, soon after winning her opening-round match of the Rogers Cup with partner Sania Mirza of India. "Sabine, she just said, 'Let's play doubles before my singles.' I said, 'Are you crazy?' But we ended up winning [the 2014 Sony Open in] Miami, and that made me definitely start thinking about my priorities – because you can't do both, playing and coaching.
"If you watch a singles match for two hours and then have to go play doubles, it's almost impossible because you leave so much energy out there. Obviously, I made the right decision. It's fun being your own boss again."
Hingis and Mirza are seeded first in doubles here, after winning the Wimbledon ladies' title last month. Hingis also won the Wimbledon mixed doubles title (with India's Leander Paes), giving her 18 major titles in a career that is meaningfully back on the rails again.
Her partnership with Mirza dates back only as far as March, but they won the first two tournaments they ever played – Indian Wells and Miami – and are currently ranked one-two in the 2015 WTA doubles rankings. With five months to go in the season, they have already qualified for the WTA's season-ending doubles championships.
In short, though Hingis is playing the game mostly for fun these days, she is also doing what she did a lot of early on, which is to say, winning tournaments.
In their first action at the Rogers Cup, against Julia Goerges of Germany and Klaudia Jans-Ignacik of Poland, Hingis and Mirza advanced to the quarters with an entertaining 6-3, 6-2 victory.
Watching them play, it is easy to see why they make a good team. Mirza hits with a lot of power and screamed off half-a-dozen winners. Hingis's touch at the net remains unparalleled. Her reflexes appear as sharp as they were when she was routinely winning doubles titles back in the late 1990s, playing with the likes of Jana Novotna and Anna Kournikova.
"Back in the day, we played more doubles," Hingis explained. "It's hard to do sometimes in a one-week tournament, but on the other hand, someone like Belinda [Bencic] – she enjoys doubles. Instead of having to practise, she goes and plays doubles. It was the same for me. That's how I always felt. Instead of having to drill for another hour after a singles match, it was 'Let's just shake it out in the doubles.'
"Some of these tournaments, where you need to hit a lot of balls and get some match practice under pressure, doubles is helpful. And you can see, even the doubles-only players, we can still play against the top singles players, because it's a different strategy, so it's interesting and it's also fun."
In all, Hingis spent 209 weeks as the world's No. 1 singles player, and won five major singles titles – three Australian Opens, one Wimbledon and one U.S. Open. Her Wimbledon title came at the age of 16, making her the youngest winner of the Open era. Singles may not be in her repertoire much any more, but in doubles – a fan-friendly event that tends to get short shrift in major events – she has found a comfortable niche.
Hingis applauded the fact that many of the top singles players – men's and women's – have recently taken to playing doubles, believing it is the only way to raise its profile.
"It's a shame they don't always show doubles on TV," Hingis said. "Even my parents, they have all the pay channels in the world and they don't get to see it – and these are good-quality tennis matches. The people have to push for it more. I think the personalities in the doubles, like when Anna and I used to play, people have to know the players. Then they go and watch them. If they don't know them, it's more difficult."