In Praise of ... Martina Hingis

Tennis is a cruel sport. Golfers can miss the cut and slope off, footballers can hide within their team. But there is no hiding place on centre court. That makes Martina Hingis's return to the French Open all the more extraordinary. Three years ago Ms Hingis's career was finished after physiological and psychological injuries caused her game to unravel. Despite having won five grand slam singles titles - including Wimbledon in 1997 - Ms Hingis retired at the age of 22. It seemed she had joined the legion of burnt-out teenage stars alongside Tracy Austin and Andrea Jaeger, who at 16 and 14 years old respectively had contested the final of the 1979 US Open. But last year Hingis announced she was to rejoin the women's circuit, to general disbelief. The new muscular womens' tennis as exhibited by Venus and Serena Williams would, according to critics, make her comeback as doomed as Bjorn Borg's quixotic return using a wooden racket. The pundits were wrong, however. It was a stronger Ms Hingis who reappeared, having mastered the new training techniques that have spread to womens' tennis. Already this year Ms Hingis has reached the quarter-finals of the Australian Open, and 10 days ago, won the Italian Open, her first singles title in four years. Today she returns to the Roland Garros stadium, the place where her career first faltered in 1999. To have got this far is remarkable; a victory would mark one of the finest comebacks in the history of sport.