Foot Fault!

Ever since Caroline Wozniacki rose to the top of the WTA, countless comparisons have been made between her and the great five time Grand Slam Champion Martina Hingis. However, Martina Hingis was having none of it when she spoke to Matt Cronin in San diego;

“I think I had more game than her,” Hingis told me at the Mercury Insurance Open in San Diego: “I don’t want to be cocky about this, but I think I had more [weapons]. She’s a great fighter but I out played [opponents] and I took the ball earlier and didn’t give them as much time.”

Bingo. In recent times, we’ve seen a lot more softer side to Martina Hingis compared to the teenage glory days of trash talking every single opponent, but clearly her annoyance at being compared to a player like Wozniacki as brought about a little of the vintage blunt Martina Hingis of old. And If I was Martina Hingis, I would be offended by these comparisons too.

So often when people do attempt to draw comparisons to Martina and Karolina, they paint Martina as this retriever with great anticipation who stood far behind the baseline and was always beaten when she came up against a player of a certain quality - in other words, they paint her as Wozniacki herself. However you only have to look at any random video on youtube to see how differently Hingis played her tennis.

As she herself said, Martina hugged the baseline and took the ball as early as anyone on tour. She simply controlled matches with her guile, variety, tactics and knowledge of exactly how to read and take apart her opponent rather than with power and weight of shot. The rare times when she was overpowered, it was against the likes of Venus, Serena, Davenport, Pierce, Capriati and co who were/are undoubtedly the most explosive big hitters the game has seen - and not crushed by a 2ft3 Dominika Cibulkova on her worst surface in the fourth round of Wimbledon.