Martina Hingis

I was glued to the television set yesterday, watching Martina Hingis play in mixed doubles in the Australian Open.

She's back :) The athlete that drew my attention to this sport, and eventually have been watching it since then. She makes tennis ever so enjoyable to watch, using finesse instead of power to become the world champion for quite some time. I'm glad to see her back on the courts after a very long lay-off.

I love her even more than the current crop of athletes, yes, even more than Maria Sharapova. Martina's finesse couple with her furious passion of the sport makes me feel the game, seemingly experiencing everything she's going through: the dismay, the joy, the weariness, the struggle to catch up, the continuous mind games and all.

I remember back in high school where I'd play Anna Kournikova's Smash Court Tennis over and over and use a character that looks and plays like her, but is named differently (obviously due to legal reasons.) And I play her pretty well in singles, as well as in doubles match with my sister as my partner (who usually picks a Monica Seles type of character, or the star of the game, Anna Kournikova [who by the way is really bad considering she's the cover girl])

I upgraded to WTA Tour tennis and Smash Court Pro Tournament, and at last, Martina Hingis in all her polygonal character and name in glory is there. As usual, she doesn't score via aces, but by finesse, and that's where the skill of the player comes in. It takes a tremendous amount of skill to play as Hingis. It perfectly replicates how hard she plays in real life, when she has to outsmart the opponents by placing instead of overpowering everyone by smashing balls all over the place.

That's why I never liked the William sisters. In my opinion, take away the power, they'll never break the top 10. Sadly though, power more often than not defeats finesse hence Venus' victories over Hingis. Similarly, it's not fun to watch men's tennis nowadays. He may be a great player and all, but Roger Federer has single-handedly destroyed the joy of watching tennis with one 200+ mph serve. Boring. Soon, there will be steroid freaks whacking balls so fast that the cameras won't even catch them on tape.

Cheers to you Martina Hingis! Welcome back! Good luck on your mixed doubles semi-finals.

Current singles rank: 349

I hope you manage to return back to the top 10, and find your place on top once more.