[GoGoMaggie]

I dunno when the media started hyping her but if my memory serves, she won a junior GS title at 12. Was she already hyped and quite well known already then? She turned professional at like 13 or 14... which is crazy from today's standard.
What about Jennifer Capriati?
Nowadays when a 16-year-old beats a couple of decent players, it's quite big news. Things have changed a lot in tennis in the last decade and a half.

 

[irma]

I think she was more famous then some players in the top 5 like asv or conchita.

 

[GoGoMaggie]

I think she was more famous then some players in the top 5 like asv or conchita.

Oh my god... are you sure??
I was too young back then to follow tennis so closely...
I didn't know Hingis until the 95 AO where she made her GS debut.
Incidently she lost to my country's girl, Nagatsuka. but it was hardly news here as we knew little about Hingis.

 

[irma]

of course my main source was german media and martina was swiss and spoke german so they were more interested in her anyway. in america venus and anna were hyped even more from judging the american tennismagazin

but I hardly read anything about conchita like a bio report or something like that
only one about asv after the us open 94.

 

[wave]

She was not more famous than players of the top 5. Irma you are exaggerating. There was a hype around her mostly caused by the WTA herself. It is just the same hype that is now arround Maria Sharapova, that was around Anna K. and that was also around the sisters (but here more caused by Richards W.), Jen, Monica and even Steffi. The WTA wants to earn money so they try to present new stars before they even are stars.
They become famous to the public when they start playing in big tournaments and win against good players. And that was definitely not the case with 12 years.
This rumours about a new rising star being younger and better at that age than anybody before will reappear every 5 years at least. The WTA has reduced it a bit by the age rules after the Capriaty incident but I think that Martina got an extempt to that (if I can remember right).

 

[irma]

I base it on the reports I read and I read many analyses of future star martina while conchita was pretty unknown even when she won wimbledon. did you read the book grand slam 95? there was a little part about conchita in that and it was pretty accurate not only for wimbledon

when martina played her first pro tournament it was full with journalists even when she only showed up to make the draw

but maybe it was me being interested in martina

 

[moby]

irma is/was a martina fan?!?

 

[hingis-seles]

Ofcourse she was/is, Moby!

Irma loves Martina more than she does Serena, Steffi and Kim combined.

 

[skanky~skanketta]

no way she was more famous than ASV or conchita as a twelve year old!

 

[irma]

my family knew who martina was but I doubt they knew who conchita was (I am not talking about asv since my mother liked her and she played steffi all the time so they could not look over her anyway)

and of course I am a martina fan

 

[TonyP]

I don't think that she was better known than most top pros when she was 12. There was a lot of buzz about her inside the sport, but not necessarily with the fans except in places where they had seen her play.

But I don't think people should forget what she accomplished at that age, too. She won the Roland Garros Juniors championship at age 12. You can play I believe until you are 18 in the juniors. So that did generate a certain amount of press and justifiably so. The hype, just as it was with Capriati, was well deserved.

 

[Fantastic]

Martina was very hyped in Switzerland since the age of nine, I believe, but famous... I'm not so sure. When she won the junior FO at 12, she caused a few minor ripples amongst the media and the other players because of her age. Then at Wimbledon, Martina Navratilova slammed Melanie for even allowing her daughter to play juniors. This riled Hingis up and she replied, "Why does she say I'm too young when I don't say she is too old?" Those comments echoed over the second week of Wimbledon until Hingis was eliminated from the girls' singles. That was about the extent of Martina's fame as a 12-year-old. She didn't play the junior US Open that year and turned 13 in October.

I wouldn't say she was incredibly well-known back then, but her name did pop up occasionally. She was noted rather than notable. So much happened in womens' tennis in 1993 that I'd be surprised if Martina wasn't used as a distraction to help reprieve the horrific images that we came to associate with Monica Seles.

 

[Bella]

Famous at 12 in the US? She was not even remotely famous. Venus was already on the cover of Newsweek, but Martina wasn't known until her WTA success and even then it was only in the tennis/sports-following community. What coverage she got did not go beyond the norm. If you weren't interested in tennis, it would go right by you. It was tennis magazines and a GQ cheesecake cover, the occasional (tied to the slams) sports columns, back pages of the sports section of the paper, and special coverage of Grand Slams and the biggest tournaments in magazines and papers.

What country are you from, gogoMaggie? "Nowadays when a 16-year-old beats a couple of decent players, it's quite big news." ? Here, a younster beating a top player doesn't get any mention beyond the tiny print results box in the paper and they get ink only in the limited coverage of tennis in the papers. No pictures. They get two or three sentences instead of one if they mentioned in conjunction with the loss of the famous person. During televised coverage of slams, they get covered as the shows hype the matches, but they only talk about the ones whose matches will be televised. You have to be into tennis and looking for information for more than that. (For women's tennis, anyway. Not men's.) Same thing with print media—slam or Miami only "give the people a summary of what's coming up" coverage.

Martina never got that much attention until she was beating Venus and Serena as people were interested in them. Now, some people other than tennis fans recognized her name. Not a lot, though, until Venus and Serena focused on her. They made her much more famous than she ever would have been.

 

[TonyP]

While Bella has some points, you highly exaggerate the importance of the Williams sisters. Hingis was on the cover of Parade Magainze in the US at the age of 16, long before Serena made it.

Hingis was on Jay Leno and Letterman at that age, too.

I don't think Venus or Serena had anything to do with Hingis' fame. She was famous for being the youngest number one player in history, the youngest Wimbledon winner in the 20th century, etc.

I admit her fame was mostly limited in the US to the sports world, but as I noted, she did appear in some magazines and general interest TV shows and it had absolutely nothing to do with the Williams sisters.

 

[Jamie]

BELLA. She was really noticed when she kept beating the crap out of Venus at her YOUNG age. Please give credit. Venus and Serena are NOT the only players that exist. Thank you!

P.S Vesus is OLDER too.

 

[Playa]

I think she was more famous then some players in the top 5 like asv or conchita.

correct me if i'm wrong here.
When ASV won RG, Hingis was still in the kindergarten
and when Hingis was 12 years old, ASV was probably No1
How in the hell was she more famous ??
Even Conchita was more famous than hingis.
let's not forget one thing, Hingis was arguably one of the greatest player.
But ASV is a Legend.

 

[Caz]

To be honest, I don't remember hearing much about Martina Hingis, other than little snippets of info. about a rising star who was so young before she won the womens doubles at Wimbledon aged, I think, 15. Of course, then, since it it was Wimbledon doubles she won, there was lots of hype about her here in England.

When she was 12 I don't think I even really knew who she was or what she looked like, so as far as I'm aware all the top players were definately more famous than she was....to me at least. But then of course, that may be because I am looking at it from the English media's point of view and Steffi, Martina N., Monica, ASV, Conchita and even Jana were all doing remarkably well at Wimbledon during that period.

 

[Bella]

Until she was the nemesis, the average person couldn't tell you who she was. People who couldn't name any tennis players knew her, afterward. Of course there are other players. It damn sure wasn't for playing them that she became know.

A few appearances does not make someone famous. Who won golf's British Open? Ask the average person two months from now. She was not famous here. We see huge numbers of people go by in a year on a lot of TV and media in a country this big. She didn't do advertising here. That's telling as well. She would have if she was famous.

JAMIE. (return emphasis, period) It was the Williams sisters who her fame is associated with. I stand by that point. She had plenty of success and was not known. I don't understand the reason for the denial. It's to Venus and Serena's benefit to be the reason. To deny that is positively weird.

 

[Pamela Shriver]

Martina aged 0 was more famous than me.

 

[irma]

btw I said conchita didn't get any attention im my memory. I forgot her dear coach telling the media all day how lazy she was and how hard his life was with her