PATTAYA. An unremarkable beach resort resting on the gulf of Thailand, most notable, probably, for the blooming health of its sex industry. Other attractions: a long, thin line of beach, some diving, a village of orphaned elephants and, this week, a women’s tennis tournament.
This, the Volvo Women’s Open, is one of the lowest-ranking tournaments on the women’s tour, its past champions including lesser lights such as Henrieta Nagyova and Angelique Widjaja. Last year, the event did not even take place. It is here, in this curious hinterland of the game, that we find Martina Hingis. This evening she plays Marlene Weingartner, the German who is ranked No 73 in the world; she lost her own ranking long ago. After 27 months out, the Swiss Miss makes her comeback.
Except the word “comeback” is banned. It is not a comeback. It is just a one-off.
Tamarine Tanasugarn, the Thailand No 1, was on court yesterday, yet what little visibility this tournament has in Pattaya invariably bears the image of Hingis’s smiling face. And Hingis is here, the story goes, merely to squeeze in a few sets of tennis before returning to her life off court.
How carefree is she about the outcome? So carefree that she has been training for four months, as hard as she did when she was the world No 1 — two hours on court a day plus extra time in the gym. So carefree that, before arriving in Thailand, she had requested that male hitting partners be lined up for her, just the way she did when she was on tour.
All the other women in this tournament are happy to hit with each other. Indeed, Geoffrey Rowe, the tournament director, had never received such a request before. Enter Alex Koch, a Canadian, one of her two male sparring partners. She did not ask for any old bloke, Koch said. “She wanted a guy who can run around a lot and not get tired. Someone who could hit hard, too.” Oh, and she likes to practise in the full heat and humidity of the Thai late morning. “She’s fit alright. It’s been awesome practice for me,” Koch said.
So, if it is not a comeback, what is Hingis doing here? According to a press statement released at the end of November, she is here “to raise funds for a number of Thailand’s leading non-profit organisations which help women and children who have suffered from abuse, deprivation, homelessness and illness”.
She did indeed spend part of Saturday visiting a local orphanage run by the Father Ray Foundation. She also has a deal with the tournament organisers whereby she has forfeited any appearance money and, instead, four named Thai charities will be paid a sum that rises through the week, depending on how far she progresses. Then, on Monday, when the tennis is done, she will make a visit to tsunami-ravaged Phuket.
She is thus playing her part in sport’s ever-growing contribution to charity and worthy causes. In this department, and despite its prominence on the global consciousness, sport has been an undoubted slow starter. When Niall Quinn, the former Ireland footballer, had a testimonial and gave the £1 million he raised to charity, it was noteworthy because it was so unusual. And that was only three years ago.
The tsunami, however, has seen sport at the forefront. Cricket has already staged an international all-star game and football and rugby are to follow suit. Michael Schumacher personally donated $10 million (about £5.3 million), the Tiger Woods Foundation has contributed and Evander Holyfield travelled to South East Asia on a goodwill mission. But this scratches the surface. The point is that the breadth of their contribution and publicity negates the stereotype of sportspeople as egocentric, unworldly and loath to enhance their public influence.
Hingis, it seems, never matched the stereotype anyway. As an ambassador for the World Health Organisation in 2000, she launched the “Match Point Against Polio” campaign. She has also been to Bogotá to represent the United Nations in the war on global poverty.
Her charity work in Pattaya, however, appears to provide a useful diversion. For a start, she has had no previous connection with the Father Ray Foundation. Yes, she does have a long-term connection with charities for underprivileged children, but it is not as if she was driven by a burning desire to visit the Pattaya orphanage and then appended the local tennis tournament to her travel plans, it was the other way round.
To all the world, she had been a retired player, driven from the game at 22 by perpetually painful feet and ankles that had needed surgery. Last year, though, she got back close to the game again in commentary booths and in mid-October made the first noises to Octagon, her management company, that retirement perhaps was not as permanent as had been foreseen.
It was at the end-of-year tournament in Los Angeles, when Rowe was casting around among players’ agents for a field for Pattaya, that Hingis’s name was suggested to him. “I was as surprised as anyone,” he said. Between Rowe and Octagon, the charity work was fixed up and, the package sweetened, the deal was done.
For women’s tennis, these are exciting times. Monica Seles, another former world No 1, is also treading the comeback path and the Australian Open showcased a resurgent Serena Williams. Hingis would be a real draw, as even the small example of Pattaya has witnessed. A few hundred tickets have been sold to fans coming for her alone and, for the first time, the tournament has sold live international TV rights — to Switzerland and Russia.
“Martina has always been unique,” Rowe said. “Her style is different, she has always spoken her mind. She is a breath of fresh air.”
She resists any talk of a permanent return, instead hiding behind the smokescreen that her charity work here provides, giving only glimpses of what the future might hold. “The tournament is a test,” she said last month. “I don’t know how my body will react.” And, at her arrival press conference, asked about a previous statement that she would never play again: “You say things sometimes. I said that because I didn’t know what would happen with my body.”
She knows a lot more now. Koch said that her feet have not bothered her in practice. Yet still the word “comeback” is banned.
For a player such as Hingis, the winner of five grand-slam titles and young enough at 24 to win more, a return is a bold and traumatic experience in which personal pride is just sitting there waiting to be wounded. She does not want to come back to tennis and hang around in the nether regions of the game, to which she has signed up to in Pattaya. And she knows that, in her two years away, the sport has moved on, that she will need to play a better game — or a different one — than before.
So Pattaya is a dip of the toe in the water. Maybe hereafter, she will not require a charity event as an explanation for playing tennis again.
