Garbine Muguruza: Why has former world No. 1 and Grand Slam winner struggled in 2022 season?

The WTA Tour is in Guadalajara this week for the last WTA 1000 event of the 2022 season.

It was only 11 months ago that the same venue was covered with confetti after Garbine Muguruza recorded one of the biggest results of her career, beating Anett Kontaveit to win the WTA Finals. It was a victory that capped off a solid year for two-time Grand Slam champion Muguruza, who also won two WTA 500 tournaments, made two other finals and reached the quarter-finals of the singles at the Olympics. She finished the year ranked No. 3 in the world.

Few would have surely predicted that the next time the tour visited Guadalajara, Muguruza would be set to drop out of the top 40 in the world rankings.

Muguruza’s loss of form is one of the mysteries of the 2022 season.

She currently has a 12-17 win-loss record and will finish the year with the worst winning percentage of her career (41.14%). Only once before has Muguruza been under 50% and that was her first year as a professional on tour in 2012.

Muguruza's season did not start on the best note. She had to spend two weeks without her team in Australia after they all tested positive for Covid-19. As the third seed at the Australian Open she lost in the second round to Alize Cornet, two years after making the final.

“It was hard for my preparation to come to the Aussie swing and play and perform well,” said Muguruza. “Physically I wasn’t also feeling my best. It was kind of a stressful start of the year I would say.”

Things would not get much better.

As defending champion in Dubai she was beaten in her second match by Veronika Kudermetova. Muguruza managed back-to-back wins in Doha, but then won only four games against Jelena Ostapenko in the quarter-finals. After a first-round loss in Indian Wells – having bagelled Alison Riske in the first set – Muguruza took time away due to a shoulder injury. She returned for Madrid and said she was “fresh and eager to start” again, but her form did not improve.

Perhaps the two most striking losses of the year for Muguruza were in the first rounds of the French Open and Wimbledon, where she won her two Grand Slam titles in 2016 and 2017 respectively. Her defeat to Kaia Kanepi in Paris was the fifth time in nine events that Muguruza had lost after winning the first set.

"I've had matches so much in control, but then I don't manage to close and it gets complicated,” she said afterwards.

“A match is a match and at the end, there's only a winner. I feel that I'm training hard, I'm putting in the work, I'm playing tournaments, trying to switch those moments, try to get more confident. We're going to keep doing it. At some point, I'm 100% sure that I'm going to go out there and get those wins that are slipping away right now from me."

A month later at Wimbledon, Muguruza made 33 unforced errors and won just seven points in the second set in defeat to world No. 88 Greet Minnen.

“These last six months have been very hard,” Muguruza wrote afterwards on social media.

“Dealing with defeats, frustration and pressure. Competing in RG and Wimbledon, tournaments that I love, with all the preparation and effort that my whole team has made, not finding my tennis has been emotionally, a very hard blow. To my followers and those who place their expectations on me, just to say that I’m sorry and I hope that the remaining six months of 2022 are more bearable and I can at least find those good feelings again.”

Since her Wimbledon exit Muguruza has won just four matches.

Muguruza at her best was an aggressive baseline player who could hit with power on both wings. In the 2017 Wimbledon final she blew Venus Williams away in a 6-0 second set with her attacking play. She’s showed composure in big moments, has spent four weeks as world No. 1 and has winning head-to-head records against former world No. 1's Victoria Azarenka, Angelique Kerber and Simona Halep. She has a 3-3 record against Serena Williams.

Muguruza has experienced a prolonged dip before; in 2018 and 2019 she slipped down the rankings before climbing back up. Her return to form in 2020 came after an off-season trip with a friend to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Earlier this year, perhaps looking for a similar impact, she went away to Zimbabwe and Botswana for a break before returning to action in Madrid.

But so far there hasn’t been a spark. Confidence appears to have taken a hit and Muguruza has not been able to build any momentum. She is set to finish this season outside the top 40 as she drops her 2021 WTA Finals points, having retired from her most recent match in San Diego due to stomach problems.

Maybe dropping points from winning last year’s WTA Finals and having to work her way back up will motivate Muguruza to rebound. Earlier this summer Emma Raducanu said she was looking forward to a “clean slate” after her US Open title defence, and, although she has enjoyed much more sustained success than Raducanu, Muguruza has alluded to feeling pressure from her successful 2021 season.

"I’m suffering from trying to find the tennis I played last year,” she said in the summer. “That’s holding me back, constantly comparing myself to how I ended last year. I have to forget a bit and play. The pressure is making me shrink sometimes.”

Muguruza is still working with coach Conchita Martinez and the pair now have several months before starting again in Australia. But can Muguruza rediscover her magic for 2023?