WIMBLEDON, England — The year was 2001, and although we did not know it at the time, we had already seen the best of Martina Hingis. A strange thing to say about a 21-year-old player, but Hingis was already burned out by years of traveling the circuit and the brutal demands of trying to stem the tide of evolution as the women’s game moved into the power era.
While Hingis recuperated from her latest injury, Ivan Bencic was getting up the courage to make a phone call that would give his 4-year-old daughter, Belinda, the most important break of her life.
Belinda Bencic was barely taller than her racket when her father called Melanie Molitor, Hingis’s mother and coach, to ask if she would assess his daughter’s potential. Belinda says she cannot remember their first meeting, but Molitor saw enough to enroll her in her Zurich tennis academy. From there, things moved rapidly. At 7, Bencic was being coached by Molitor on a daily basis.
“In the morning I’d have a private lesson with her, and in the afternoon I would play with other kids,” Bencic said.
While most coaches focus on technique at that age, Molitor was already encouraging Bencic to become a tactician rather than just a ball striker, nurturing the same court craft that allowed Hingis to out-think the best in the world during her years at the top of the game.
“From when I was small, I knew that I would not hit the ball so hard,” Bencic said. “But I learnt how to play smart, and when you combine a good serve and powerful shots with smart shots, I think it’s good.”
It is that cerebral quality of Bencic’s tennis that makes her stand out, rather than just her sweetly timed backhand. At 16, she is the world’s leading junior, and having won the French Open girls’ title last month, she is the favorite to add a Wimbledon girls’ title to her collection on Saturday.
Hingis has been monitoring Bencic’s progress and is on hand to provide her with advice whenever she needs it.
“Belinda’s still got a long way to go, but she’s got a bright future,” she said earlier this week. “She’s just won her first big tournament in Paris so it’s early days for her.”
Understandably, Bencic is already wary of the inevitable comparisons.
“She was my biggest hero, but now I think I know her well,” she says. “We see each other at the Grand Slams. I’m really honored that she sometimes comes to my matches and she tells me what I can do better.
“Achieving anything like her would be amazing. But I just focus on me and how I’m playing. I don’t want to be under pressure that I have to be like where she was at that age because it’s almost impossible now.”
Like Bencic, Hingis had her breakthrough by winning the French Open junior title, but for Hingis it was at age 12. At 16, she won three Grand Slam titles on the main tour, including Wimbledon, when she beat Jana Novotna, almost oblivious of what she was achieving.
“I wasn’t really nervous back then,” she says. “I think when you’re 16, you don’t really have the doubts you have when you’re older. You don’t question yourself, you just go out and play. When it came to the Wimbledon final, I’d beaten Novotna before so it was just like, ‘Why not again?’ It’s not really pressure. You just go out and do your best, you don’t think too much about what’s happened before.”
But while Bencic still exudes the wide-eyed innocence of youth, at 16, Hingis was already a seasoned professional having been on the women’s circuit for two full years.
“You definitely have to grow up fast on the tour,” Hingis said. “You’re competing against girls who can be 10 years older so you have to mature. But it’s still strange when I return to Wimbledon, and I see the pictures of myself, and I look so young.”
Growing up in the spotlight is not easy, and these days there are regulations in place to prevent teenagers like Bencic from competing too much. She will not be able to play a full season on the women’s tour for another two years. Such is her promise that she is already receiving wild cards, and she made her full WTA debut last autumn, losing to Venus Williams in Luxembourg. But for now, Molitor still has plenty of work to do away from the television cameras.
“She makes me work very hard for sure,” Bencic said of Molitor. “She’s very tough on the court, and she wants me to do what she says, but she’s very encouraging too. It’s all about getting everything a little bit better.”
Who knows we might see this youngster break into the WTA tour in couple of years time. Fresh blood is desperately needed in the WTA these days, especially someone similar to Hingis's talent.
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