Interclub comeback by Martina Hingis

The woman who was once best female tennis player in the world is now the flagship of the new NLB team of TC Zug. A visit to the training  session shows that the 39-year-old is also excited before her performances on a much smaller stage.

"Breaded chicken breast, Lugano style" stands on the poster. The lunchtime menu in the Tennis Club Zug must be tasty, because guests appear to be more interested in that than for what is happening on the court below the terrace. Four women on the threshold of middle age are showing what they can do as part of a training session. And If you believe what a group of middle-age observers are saying, that's quite a lot. "She's certainly the best, quite clearly," says one of them with an expert eye.

By ‘she’, they mean Martina Hingis, the 25-time Grand Slam winner in singles (5), doubles (13) and mixed (7) tennis. Having spent 209 weeks at the top of the world rankings in singles, she is fifth in the all-time ranking, despite the fact that she was only 22 years old in 2003, when she first retired from tennis for health reasons. A number of ups and downs followed. She was not able to repeat her earlier successes when she returned to the singles tour, and, at her lowest point, she was suspended for two years by the ITF for doping as a result of the use of cocaine, which she has always denied.

She returned to the doubles and mixed doubles tour with brilliant success in 2013, and also . won the Olympic silver medal in doubles alongside Timea Bacsinszky in the summer of 2016. Her definitive retirement took place in October 2017.

Last played for the Interclub 25 years ago
Martina Hingis is now facing a comeback on a smaller stage – at the Interclub. She and her tennis friends Geraldine Dondit, Barbara Suter-Keller and Nadine Kenzelmann now form the NLB regular team of the TC Zug in the upcoming season. The four players in the 1976-1980 vintage range could also have competed in the 40+ category, i.e. with the so-called ‘senior women’, but they are too ambitious to do so. At the age of 39, Hingis is the youngest of them, although not within the whole team: two foreign juniors are also included -  Julia Stusek (born in 2008) and Isabella Kellenberger (2007).

Both are very young – but older than Hingis when she first became Swiss Interclub Champion in the summer of 1992. She was not yet 12 years old when she won all her individual games for the TC Schützenwiese Winterthur and thereby contributed significantly to its first title win. Two years later, she led "Schützi" to their second, and to this day last triumph. She has not take part in the Interclub competition since 1995 – until now, 25 years later.

Photo 1: Martina Hingis (at the front) in doubles with Barbara Suter-Keller) is playing for TC Zug in the NLB Championship.
Photo 2: Timea Bacsinszky (right) and Martina Hingis celebrate their silver medal in the "House of Switzerland"
Photo 3: Geraldine Dondit, Nadine Kenzelmann, Martina Hingis and Barbara Suter-Keller (from left) are just playing for fun.
 

Nadine Kenzelmann, who was also part of the Winterthur championship team in 1994, set up the ‘Zuger Equipe’. The financial professional recently moved to the city, where Hingis also lives with her husband Harry and their one-and-a-half-year-old daughter Lia. The other two regular players live not far away: Geraldine Dondit, the former director of the tournament in Lugano, lives in Affoltern am Albis, while policewoman Barbara Suter-Keller lives in Brunnen.

Lunch is over, and the terrace and clubhouse have emptied. Strong winds start to blow – a harbinger of the oncoming summer thunderstorm. The four women don’t consider stopping, however, until the last ball of the doubles has been completed.

Martina Hingis is the first to return from the dressing room and enter the clubhouse. When asked whether there’s anything left to eat, the employee refers her to the chef, who is not there at the time. "Otherwise I'll take some of those, no problem," says Hingis, pointing to an open Tupperware container with three leftover pieces of the breaded chicken breast Lugano style. A few minutes later, the chef returns and prepares her a plate of spaghetti.

Demonstrating unity with specially designed shirts
The former best tennis player in the world makes a happy and excited impression as she talks about her upcoming return to the Interclub with the new team. The shirts that have been designed according to their wishes will soon arrive. Hingis stops eating her spaghetti, reaches into her bag and pulls out a shirt. "That's what they're going to look like, this is where the TC Zug logo will go - chic, isn't it?" she asks, laughing. "We will appear as a unit in blue and white, and thereby demonstrate strength," she explains, clenching her fist.

How strong do you think the team will be compared to the other NLB teams? There’s little to go on. Hingis has been classified as N1.8 by the association, and she will have to justify this classification. All her teammates were once among the top players in Switzerland. Today, however, they are classified as R2, and – with the exception of last year's Interclub player Nadine Kenzelmann – have not played any serious games for a long time.

There are also question marks regarding the ability of the opponents, and the Zug players study the published squads in the dressing room after the training session,. According to Martina Hingis, however, they were not able to draw any definitive conclusions from this. When asked about the goal of the season, she says unapologetically: "We want to stay in the NLB, and we’ll see how everything else goes then."

More attention for the Interclub?
How many people will come to watch the Zug women competing in this endeavour remains to be seen, despite the prominent figurehead players. It’s true, however, that it was only a few weeks ago that, on the occasion of the anniversary, the country's editorial offices published updated retrospectives of her Wimbledon singles title, which she won at the age of 16.

That was in 1997, however and is a long time ago in sporting terms. Her more recent successes in doubles and mixed at the side of unknown Asian partners made her popular, especially in her partners’ countries. In addition, the successes of Roger Federer and his aura since the early 2000s have outshined everything and everyone in current tennis. "There aren't that many people in Switzerland who still remember me  today," says Hingis

As if to prove the contrary, a man come up to her table in the clubhouse of the TC Zug during the course of the conversation. "You're Martina Hingis, aren't you?" he asks in English, introducing himself as a fan of Indian origin who would like to take a photo of her together with himself and his son. She’s happy to comply with this request.

In the early 1990s, with the absence of smartphones, fans weren’t able to take spontaneous  photos of their idols. Autographs were more in demand, and Hingis wrote some of these as a teenager in her first Interclub seasons, according to newspaper articles from that time, which referred to her as a child prodigy. "The Interclub attraction is called Martina Hingis" was a typical headline, even in the then very influential "Blick".

No compensation for the team
Normally, virtually no one outside the participating clubs is interested in this team competition. Nevertheless, the clubs and/or their wealthy patrons still bring in prominent supporters from the world rankings for teams of both sexes, with some receiving several thousand of Swiss Francs per assignment or day.

Martina Hingis doesn’t need this, however. According to official figures, she won nearly $25 million in prize money in her career. When asked about compensation for the Zug NLB players, she makes it clear:

"We just doing this for fun. The four of us can all look after ourselves very well."

She has to sign her name for her plate of spaghetti and the subsequent coffee in the clubhouse, however: the card payment device in the clubhouse didn’t work!