Martina Hingis became the youngest grand slam singles winner of the 20th century when she won the 1997 Australian Open, aged just 16 years and three months. Shortly after that she became the youngest ever world number one. Between 1997 and 2000 the "Swiss Miss" was practically unstoppable, winning numerous grand slam events in both singles and doubles, and dominating the women's game.
Unfortunately in 2001 and then again in 2002 she was forced to take time off for surgery on her ankle tendons and was not able to maintain her form. This resulted in Martina announcing her retirement from tennis in 2003, at the age of just 22 - which seems very young, but then again she had been playing professionally from the age of 14!
Luckily we had not seen the last of her, as she made a comeback in 2006. Overall she had a good year with several wins over top 10 opponents, and managed a couple of tournament wins too, to finish the year ranked number seven in the world. The following year continued in a similar vein, although she was once again affected by injuries, which culminated in her November 2007 announced of her permanent retirement from competitive tennis. No doubt the timing of this had a lot to with with the fact that she had tested positive for cocaine during Wimbledon 2007 (although she maintained her innocence and had an independent test done which came back negative). In any event, she was subsequently banned from the WTA tour for two years and did not contest it.
It's a pity Martina's comeback was so short-lived as she was undoubtedly one of the most talented players of her generation and could have cemented her position as one of the all-time greats by reclaiming her former spot at the top of the world rankings, and possibly adding to her tally of majors.
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