“The time has come for say goodbye. I have come this far. My history in this sport has been very good. I have achieved many dreams that I had as a child. I’ve done my story has been fantastic”. With these words, Garbiñe Muguruza, the woman who once again put women’s tennis in Spain in the spotlight, announced her retirement. At 30 years old, inactive for just over a year, a great athlete, Roland Garros and Wimbledon champion and former world number 1, says goodbye.
In an emotional press conference, Muguruza explained the reasons for the decision: “The time has come for me to retire, to open this chapter of my life, a new era of my life. The word withdrawn It sounds very strong because I’m still 30 years old-he said- but it has been 25 years since I started playing tennis in which I have achieved so much. I feel proud to have achieved it, to have resisted when you set a goal by resisting moments of difficulty and also the good ones are without a doubt what I am most proud of.”
Garbiñe Muguruza was born in Guatire, a town in the Venezuelan state of Miranda, on October 8, 1993. Her father, the Basque José Antonio Muguruza, had a factory making copper pipes, screws and other metal parts in bustling Caracas. Her mother, Scarlet Blanco, was born in the Caribbean country. When she was a child, Ella Garbiñe spent many hours on the tennis courts of the Mansión Mampote club. She had an easy time controlling the racket and hit very hard.
“She had a spectacular temperament, she was very active and learned everything very quickly,” René Fajardo, her first teacher, recalled to LA NACION a few years ago. She “she had too much personality. She did not let her father enter the court to give her instructions. One day she told him that he didn’t know about tennis, that he should shut up because I was the one who had to teach him how to execute the shots,” Fajardo adds melancholy.
When he was six years old, Garbiñe moved to Barcelona and trained at Sergi Bruguera’s academy until he was 16 years old. She linked up with Alejo Mancisidor (120th ATP in 1995) as a coach. Her evolution practically did not stop. But she played on grass for the first time at the age of 18, when she participated in the Wimbledon qualification (she didn’t surpass it, of course). She didn’t like competing on that surface. At first, she cursed at every match, she felt uncomfortable. A few years later, her name would be inscribed on the famous champions’ board. At the age of 23, she conquered Wimbledon by beating a legend like the American Venus Williams in the final, 7-5, 6-0, in one hour and 17 minutes.
In 2017, Muguruza reached the top of the ranking: he conquered number 1 in the world, and returned to Spanish tennis the prominence that it had not had since the times of Arantxa Sánchez Vicario (who reached the top in 1995) and Conchita Martínez (which was very close to achieving).
In addition to the conquests of Roland Garros and Wimbledon and the WTA Finals in 2021, she played other two Grand Slam finals (in 2015, at Wimbledon she fell to Serena Williams, and in 2020, at the Australia Open, she lost to Sofia Kenin) and obtained another seven WTA circuit titles: Hobart (2014), Beijing (2015), Cincinatti (2017), Monterrey (2018 and 2019), Dubai and Chicago (2021).