Word: martina
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...future is not just coming, she is rushing the net. Martina Hingis danced across the courts at the U.S. Open in Queens, New York, the past two weeks, displaying an amazing variety of shots, a real flair for the gamble, an occasional peevishness and a smile as winning as her cross-court forehand. The fact that she is 15 is both sublime and ridiculous. Her surprise victim in the quarterfinals, Jana Novotna, remarked, "She has a very light game." Pressed to elaborate, Novotna said, "You saw it. Light. Effortless...
...Collins, the renowned tennis writer and commentator, immediately dubbed the 5-ft. 6-in. phenomenon "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" Hingis. Like Milan Kundera's novel, Hingis was conceived in Czechoslovakia. She was named by her tennis-loving parents for the national heroine and acquaintance Martina Navratilova. By the age of two, the little Martina was playing outdoors, and at five she was playing in tournaments. She spent her first eight years in what is now Slovakia, and after her parents' divorce and her mother Melanie's subsequent marriage to a Swiss computer executive, she moved to Trubbach, Switzerland...
...Little Martina is in the vanguard of a new generation of players that also includes 15-year-olds Anna Kournikova and Venus Williams. But it's the last generation of teenyboppers as far as the Women's Tennis Association is concerned. Mindful of the burnout suffered by child prodigies Jennifer Capriati, Andrea Jaeger and Tracy Austin, the w.t.a. has instituted new age restrictions: players 14 and under are barred from tour events, and players 15 to 17 will be gently introduced to topflight competition. Hingis, Kournikova and Williams turned pro before the rules went into effect, so they are exempt...
...teenage phenom who at 16 became the youngest singles champion in Open history, beating the ancient Chris Evert, 24. Two years later she beat Martina Navratilova to recapture the title. An inexhaustible baseline player, Austin helped usher in the era of brat tennis. She was ahead of her time in other ways too. At 29, she was the youngest player inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, having quit eight years earlier, plagued by a sciatic-nerve problem. Two comebacks later, she retired for good. Now married to mortgage broker Scott Holt, she had their first child, Dylan...
...couple of decades ago, Tin Pan Alley moved to the South and changed its name to Nashville. There the division of musical labor still largely applied: singers sang and songwriters wrote. In the past few years one distinct author's voice has emerged from the throats of Martina McBride (Independence Day), Patty Loveless (You Don't Even Know Who I Am) and Trisha Yearwood (On a Bus to St. Cloud). The composer is Gretchen Peters, and her own first album, The Secret of Life (Imprint), offers 10 fresh reasons to elect her to the country songwriter's Hall of Fame...