Hingis: I needed to return

ByEurosport

Published 22/05/2006 at 14:54 GMT

After her first title in four years, Martina Hingis has now established herself as a serious contender for the French Open which begins on Sunday. Earlier in the season, she confessed to us that it wasn't long into retirement that she began spoiling for a

"I was given the life I always wanted" Hingis told Eurosport in Doha earlier this season. "In the last three years when I wasn't playing, I maybe felt that I missed something. I realised after about three months that I'd rather be playing if I could."

Operations on both feet obliged the 25-year old former world number one to retire in 2002.

But she realized that she never lost the competitive urge, the will "to face the challenge again, to compete with the best athletes, the best tennis players."

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TENNIS 2006 WTA ROME Hingis M. - Safina D.

Image credit: Reuters

Despite being a shot-maker rather than a power hitter, she hints that she fears no one:

"So many of them in the top five of ten who I was competing against were having a great season last year like Pierce, Davenport finishing at number one, so I thought 'OK those are the girls I was playing against when I was 20, when I finished. They are on top of the game.'"

SUCCESSFUL RETURN

Martina felt that with her peers still competing at the cutting edge of the game, there was no reason she could not return to the tour with success.

"Maybe my body will last," she added, "and finally I'll get to see how far it will take me."

However, she was the first to admit that: "Maybe I take a little longer to recover now. When you are younger you take care of yourself differently."

Since originally joining the tour as a 14-year old, Hingis was denied the normal growing up experience, but the tour has its own way of forcing this upon you.

TENNIS 1999 Roland Garros Hingis

Image credit: Imago

"You go to different places, different tournaments that you haven't been to before, so it is always a new life style," she said.

"You're faces with so many new things and challenges that you haven't seen before and no one can really prepare you for that so you have to grow up really fast."

DRIVING FORCE

The driving force behind Martina's stunning rise to the top of the women's game when still only 16-years-old was her mother, acting as her coach and mentor through her learning processes.

"My Mum has always been the most important person in my life. She still is. Practising and training together again is great. We understand each other very well.

TENNIS 1999 Roland Garros Hingis

Image credit: Imago

"Now it is a different relationship, different perspective. We respect each other so much because she knows me best, I know her very well, so I can always trust her. I'm very happy she is around me."

Is was also Hingis' mother that decided on Martina's name, in honour of Martina Navratilova, a source of inspiration as her younger namesake looked to make her name, and also still plying the circuit (albeit on a part-time basis aged 49).

"I always respected her for what she has done for the game and for the legend that she is."

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