This is a really sad end to a great career.
Martina Hingis, the youngest number one player in the history of tennis, said Thursday that she has been accused of testing positive for cocaine use at this year's Wimbledon tournament and she has decided to retire from tennis rather than fight the allegations.
I was no fan of Martina when she was ruling the game 1997-99 because she appeared so arrogant and was disrespectful of the legendary Steffi Graf in her final years on tour. One of my sweetest memories in 20 years of watching tennis was when the supposedly over-the-hill Graf came back from the brink of defeat to beat Hingis in the finals of the 1999 French Open.
Graf retired from the game a month later. Hingiis was never the same.
But after Hingis' young body broke down and she was forced to take four years off from the tennis tour, I found myself rooting for her during a successful comeback that had her winning some big titles and rising to as high as number six in the world. Watched her practice this spring during a tournament I attended in Palm Springs and the fans were so happy to see her there.
So to see that comeback, less than two years in, cut short is sad to me.
"I find this accusation so horrendous, so monstrous that I've decided to confront it head on by talking to the press," Hingis, 27, said at a press conference in Switzerlkand today. "I am frustrated and angry. I believe that I am absolutely 100 percent innocent."
Hingis said the positive test, which could lead to a doping suspension of up to two years, led to her retirement because she doesn't want to spend years fighting the case.
She had won three straight Australian Open titles from 1997-99, and Wimbledon and the U.S. Open championships in 1997. Last year, she won the prestigious Italian Open title and retires ranked number 19 in the world.
"They say that cocaine increases self-confidence and creates a type of euphoria," she said in a statement. "I don't know. I only know that if I were to try to hit the ball while in any state of euphoria, it simply wouldn't work. ..I would think that it would be impossible for anyone to maintain the coordination required to play top class tennis while under the influence of drugs. And I know one other thing -- I would personally be terrified of taking drugs...I have no desire to spend the next several years of my life reduced to fighting against the doping officials. The fact is that it is more and more difficult for me, physically, to keep playing at the top of the game. And frankly, accusations such as these don't exactly provide me with motivation to even make another attempt to do so."
Sad way to go out.