Show Court 3 was not far from empty as Yulia Putintseva and Eugenie Bouchard played in the full heat of a Melbourne summer in the semi-finals of the Australian Open girls tournament.
In the third row of the stands, under a broad-brimmed straw hat and without the benefit of a racket, Martina Hingis put both clenched fists together and imitated the backhand stroke that she wished she had just seen from Putintseva.
Hingis, now 31, did not see many empty seats during her playing career. The ultimate tennis prodigy, she turned pro at 14 after dominating her elders as a junior and won her first major title at age 16 at the Australian Open, becoming the youngest Grand Slam singles champion in the 20th century.
Two months later, she was the youngest No. 1 in tennis history and went on to reach the final of the French Open and win Wimbledon and the US Open ' all before she turned 17.
Times, physical demands and training methods have changed. Putintseva ' a stocky, deeply tanned Russian who likes to smash rackets as well as forehands ' turned 17 earlier this month and is still working and storming her way through the juniors. She lost in the final here to the American Taylor Townsend (and did not go quietly).
"I enjoy watching the girls, the younger ones," Hingis said. "It's not always the easiest; I know how I was at 17 or 18. Sometimes I watch the old videos and I'm like, 'Oh, my God,' you know? I wasn't always the best listener with my mom."
Hingis, long coached by her mother, Melanie Molitor, is now the one trying to make her case to teenagers. She is working as a coaching consultant with Putintseva and four other young women in France. All have their personal coaches and all are based at the Mouratoglou Tennis Academy, west of Paris, in the suburb of Thiverval-Grignon. The group includes two Russians, including the former US Open junior champion Daria Gavrilova, an American, a Briton and a French player.
"It's good because I was multicultural, too, so that helps," said Hingis, who is Swiss but was born in Kosice in what is now Slovakia.
Hingis, who married Thibault Hutin of France in December 2010, was the one who initiated the coaching job: approaching the academy's founder, Patrick Mouratoglou, at the US Open last year.
"I think now I'm ready to do it," Hingis said. "Before I was more thinking about maybe playing or doing this and that, and now I'm ready more to give, and I love working with the kids, too. I say kids, but I should say young women. I think it's a very interesting age."
There are no comments yet