- published: 19 Jan 2014
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Jennifer Marie Capriati (born March 29, 1976) is a former world number one ranked professional tennis player, and the winner of three women's singles championships in Grand Slam tournaments. Capriati made her professional debut in 1990 at the age of 13 years 11 months when she reached the finals of the hard court tournament in Boca Raton, Florida, losing there to Gabriela Sabatini. Capriati reached the semifinals of the French Open in her debut and later became the youngest ever player to crack the top 10 at age 14 years, 235 days in October of that year. Between 1990 and 1993, Capriati won six singles titles, including a Gold Medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, defeating Steffi Graf in the final. Following a first round loss at the 1993 U.S. Open, the burned out Capriati took a 14-month break from competitive pro tennis. Her personal struggles during this time (including arrests for shoplifting and possession of marijuana) were well-documented by the press.
In 1998, Capriati won her first Grand Slam singles match in five years at Wimbledon. During the next two years, Capriati slowly returned to championship form, winning her first title in six years in Strasbourg, France in 1999 and regaining a top 20 ranking. At the 2001 Australian Open, the reinvigorated Capriati became the lowest seed to ever win the championship when she defeated Martina Hingis (ranked number one in the world at the time) in straight sets for her first Grand Slam championship. She also won the French Open that year, claiming the number one ranking in October. After successfully defending her Australian Open crown in 2002, Capriati became a top ten mainstay until injuries derailed her career in 2004.
Martina Hingis (born 30 September 1980) is a retired Swiss professional tennis player who spent a total of 209 weeks as World No. 1. She won five Grand Slam singles titles (three Australian Opens, one Wimbledon, and one US Open). She also won nine Grand Slam women's doubles titles, winning a calendar year doubles Grand Slam in 1998, and one Grand Slam mixed doubles title.
Hingis set a series of "youngest-ever" records before ligament injuries in both ankles forced her to withdraw temporarily from professional tennis in 2002 at the age of 22. After several surgeries and long recuperations, Hingis returned to the WTA tour in 2006. She then climbed to world number 6 and won three singles titles. On 1 November 2007, Hingis announced her retirement from tennis after testing positive for cocaine during Wimbledon in 2007. She denied using the drug, but decided not to appeal the imminent ban.
In June 2011, she was named one of the "30 Legends of Women's Tennis: Past, Present and Future" by Time.
Hingis was born in Košice, (then part of Czechoslovakia, now in modern Slovakia), to accomplished tennis players Melanie Molitorová and Karol Hingis. Molitorová was a professional tennis player, who was once ranked tenth among women in Czechoslovakia, and was determined to develop Hingis into a top player as early as pregnancy. Her father was ranked as high as nineteenth in the Czechoslovakian tennis rankings. Hingis's parents divorced when she was six, and she and her mother relocated around a year later to Trübbach in Switzerland. Her father, who continued to live in Košice as a tennis coach, said in 1997 that he had seen little of his daughter after the split.
Serena Jameka Williams (born September 26, 1981) is an American professional tennis player and a former world no. 1. The Women's Tennis Association has ranked her world no. 1 in singles on five separate occasions. She became the world no. 1 for the first time on July 8, 2002 and regained this ranking for the fifth time on November 2, 2009. She is the only female player to have won over $35 million in prize money.
Her 27 Grand Slam titles places her ninth on the all-time list: 13 in singles, 12 in women's doubles, and 2 in mixed doubles. She is the most recent player, male or female, to have held all four Grand Slam singles titles simultaneously and only the fifth woman in history to do so. She was also the first woman, along with sister Venus Williams, to hold all four Grand Slam doubles titles simultaneously since Martina Hingis did so in 1998. Her 13 Grand Slam singles titles is sixth on the all-time list. Williams ranks fourth in Grand Slam women's singles titles won during the open era, behind Steffi Graf (22 titles) and Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova (18 titles each). She has won more Major titles in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles than any other active player, male or female.