Hingis: What she could have been

UMPIRE'S POST

The sunshine girl walks into the sunset under a cloud.

For long, people have discussed burnout. Martina Hingis, 27, who announced her retirement from professional tennis on Thursday after revealing that she had tested positive for cocaine at Wimbledon, lived it. Her career is also a chronicle of the rise of power tennis in women, which eventually claimed her scalp. It is an ode to her prodigious talent that her five Grand Slam titles and 38 others comprise under-achievement.

Her mother, Melanie Molitor, who once aspired to a tennis career of her own, named her daughter after Martina Navratilova, and the choice did not seem audacious. At 12, Hingis came into prominence when the sharp angles of her shots made her the youngest winner of a junior grand slam title. At 14, she was winning matches against grown-ups and beat Steffi Graf in Rome in 1996.

Her first Grand Slam title came at the 1997 Australian Open, the year in which she won a phenomenal 37 matches between January and May and 12 titles in all. Soon, she was the youngest ever world number one.

That was the period in which it looked like Navratilova, a relatively late bloomer, would be proud to share her name with Hingis. And then began the rise of the Williams sisters, whose size, sinews and power set about transforming the women's game.

For some time, it was a gripping three-way rivalry and at one Australian Open, Hingis achieved the rare feat of beating both Serena and Venus in the same tournament. But she fell at the final hurdle against Jennifer Capriati, herself a vintage case of early burnout.

After that things began to fall rapidly apart as far too often Hingis found herself a few kph too slow or a few steps too short. Her recklessness and seeming petulance did not help her get a much-needed grip over herself. In 1997, she fell from a horse just before the French final and lost to Iva Majoli "" it remains Majoli's only major title.

Her public spat with the Williams family ran through several episodes. At the 1999 Australian Open, she referred to Amelie Mauresmo, 19 at the time, as half a man. She put up quite a shrew show while losing a French final to Graf.

By 2003, Hingis could take it no longer and quit in the midst of a niggling foot injury. The comeback began in 2006, but, although she won three more titles and climbed to number seven in the world, she could not go beyond quarter final at any Grand Slam and was, clearly, a spent force.

As Hingis, ever the Sunshine girl despite her tantrums, walks into the sunset, one cannot help wondering what might have been.