Who is a better tennis player: Martina Hingis or Anna Kournikova?

Martina

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by Simon Wright

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Both Martina Hingis and Anna Kournikova are retired tennis players. Kournikova retired in 2003, whilst Hingis retired (for the second time) in 2007 she had previously quit the sport in 2003 only to return to the sport in 2005. Both Hingis and Kournikova are extremely well known names but which of them actually was the better player? As I'll show in this article, there really can only be one answer, Hingis!

Martina Hingis is one of the most gifted players to ever grace women's tennis. Although born in Czechoslovakia, she was raised in Switzerland and is a Swiss national. As a twelve year old she became the youngest ever player to win a Grand Slam junior title, when she won the French Open girls' singles in 1993. She went on to make her professional debut in 1994, just after her fourteenth birthday and in the 1995 Australian Open she became the youngest player to win a match in a Grand Slam tournament. It was already abundantly clear that here was a true star in the making.

Some players find it hard to transition from being a great junior to being equally successful on the pro tour. There was no such problem for the prodigious Swiss girl however. Her run of records continued in 1996 when she won the women's doubles at Wimbledon, becoming the youngest Wimbledon champion. She also picked up her first singles title on the WTA circuit.

1997 saw her win the first of her five Grand Slam singles titles, when she defeated France's Mary Pierce to win the Australian Open. She was the youngest Grand Slam champion of the 20th century. She then proceeded to have an amazing year. Shortly after that maiden Grand Slam singles title, she became the world number one the youngest top ranked player ever. She also won Wimbledon (becoming the youngest Wimbledon singles winner in the 20th century) and then won the US Open (beating a young Venus Williams). Her attempt at the clean sweep of Grand Slam events was only denied by a surprise loss to Iva Majoli, a reasonably unheralded Croatian player.

At the end of 1997 then, it looked as if we were seeing the emergence of perhaps the most talented female player of all time. Certainly, 1998 was another year of triumph, seeing her win all four doubles Grand Slam titles and hold top rank in both singles and doubles. She also retained the Australian Open singles title but saw her 80 week reign as top singles player come to an end when she lost the US Open final to Lindsay Davenport.

In 1999 she won the Australian Open singles title for the third year in a row and, interestingly, also teamed up with Anna Kournikova to win the doubles. The dominance that she had enjoyed in 1997 however was coming to an end and she increasingly started to lose finals to players like Davenport, Steffi Graf, and Serena Williams. The power of players like the Williams sisters put the diminutive Hingis at a severe disadvantage and injuries had started to take their toll also. In 2003, at the age of only 22, she announced her retirement from the game. Although she did ok when she returned (from 2005 until 2007), she was unable to add any further titles. Her overall singles record in Grand Slam finals was five wins and seven losses.

In comparison, the ultra glamorous Kournikova never won any singles titles on the WTA tour and never reached a grand slam final. She did win two women's doubles titles at Grand Slams (and was runner up once) but all these were in partnership with Hingis!

I'm not saying that Kournikova wasn't talented. She was a top sixteen player in her prime but there is absolutely no comparison between the two in terms of tennis talent and titles won! Kournikova was extremely influential but her influence was in showing the money that can be made off-court from sponsorship and endorsements. In that regard, she was following in the footsteps of Argentinean beauty, Gabriella Sabatini.

Sources: www.wikipedia.org

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