Being a talented junior player does not always promise success on the professional tour. Many end up burnt out before they even have a chance to leave their mark. However, Timea Bacsinszky overcame several obstacles, including a major foot injury and a difficult relationship with her dad, to make a major comeback and reached the Top 10 of the WTA Rankings.
Bacsinszky was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. She first picked up a racquet at age five, but not by choice. Her father, Igor, was a tennis coach and pressured her to succeed. “Because my dad was my coach when I was a kid, I didn’t have a choice to play or not to play,” Bacsinszky told The New York Times in 2014. “He wanted to live his dream through me, and unlucky for me, I was playing really well.”
She won the prestigious Les Petits As tournament twice, when she was 12 and 13, joining her fellow Swiss prodigy Martina Hingis as the only two-time champions. She also reached three Grand Slam junior semifinals. However, Bacsinszky admitted that she felt like she had to win to maintain peace at home.
“I guess I was playing well because I knew that if I would lose a match, my parents would fight, or something,” she told NYT. “I wanted for us to live like a happy family and everything, so for sure I was fighting even more on the tennis court just to make all the things right. Because I knew that if I would win a match or play well, there would be no troubles,” she explained. Since then, her parents divorced and she is estranged from her father.
Timea Bacsinszky returned to tennis after working in restaurants (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
With that determination, she quickly rose through the ranks, reaching World No. 37 in 2010 after winning her first WTA title in Luxembourg in 2009. However, the following year she suffered an accident that injured her foot, requiring three surgeries, she semi-retired from tennis.
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Her time as waitress and the French Open email that saved her career
After struggling on the lower tiers of the tour, Bacsinszky decided to pursue another career: hotel management school. During that time, she worked in restaurants, bars and kitchens. However, in 2013, she received an email from Roland Garros, informing her she had made the cutoff to participate in the qualifying of the tournament.
After that, she informed her boss and drove five hours from Lausanne, Switzerland, to Paris the next day on her own. “It was like if I had another lung; I could breathe more,” she explained. “It was a pretty strange feeling. Those five hours, they were great. All the excitement, it was like as if I was playing Roland Garros for the first time.”
Timea Bacsinszky plays during French Open (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
While she lost her first match, she decided to return to tennis. Then, she hired Swiss coach, Dimitri Zavialoff, who had worked with Stan Wawrinka. The following year, she made a full comeback, winning all three opening matches at majors and even upsetting World No. 4 Maria Sharapova in Wuhan. She ended the year inside the Top 50.
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Her Top 10 ranking
In 2015, she had the best year in her career. She reached the semifinals of the French Open for the first time, as well as the final of the China Open, to end the year inside the Top 10 (World No. 9). With that feat, she became the first Swiss woman since Martina Hingis to do so. At the end of the year, she won WTA Most Improved Player of the Year.
Other of her best results in Grand Slam include another Roland Garros semifinal in 2017, as well as quarterfinals in Wimbledon in 2015. She won the silver medal in women’s doubles at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, partnering Hingis.
Martina Hingis and Timea Bacsinszky won silver medal in the Olympics (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
She also recorded 11 wins against Top 10 players, including Maria Sharapova, Victoria Azarenka, Petra Kvitova, Agnieszka Radwanska and Simona Halep. In 2021, she announced her retirement from the sport.
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“I am retiring from professional sport today but I will never forget the sparkles I had in my eyes,” Bacsinszky wrote on her announcement. From a little girl that had a complicated relationship with tennis to a Top 10 player, she definitely made her dreams come true.
