Belinda Bencic
Who was Belinda Bencic?
Swiss tennis player who won Olympic gold in singles at Tokyo 2020 and reached a career-high ranking of No. 4.
Biographical data adapted from Wikipedia’s article on Belinda Bencic (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Biography
Belinda Bencic, born on March 10, 1997, in Flawil, Switzerland, has become one of the top Swiss tennis players of her generation. She was coached from a young age by her father, Ivan Bencic, a former Slovak handball player. Her technical precision helped her reach the professional tennis's top levels. She also trained in the same system that helped shape Martina Hingis, which led to comparisons between them because of their similar Swiss roots and early talent.
Bencic quickly climbed the junior ranks, reaching the world No. 1 junior ranking and winning two junior Grand Slam singles titles in 2013 at the French Open and Wimbledon. She turned pro and entered the top 100 soon after her seventeenth birthday, proving her junior success was no fluke. Her main tour breakthrough happened at the 2014 US Open, where she became the youngest quarterfinalist since Hingis in 1997. In 2015, she won her first two WTA titles, including the Canadian Open, a Premier 5 event, by defeating four players in the top six.
A challenging period of injuries from 2016 to 2018 saw her ranking drop below the top 300. Bencic made a notable comeback in 2019, winning the Dubai Championships, reaching the US Open semifinal, and getting to the WTA Finals semifinals. She ended the year in the top 10 for the first time and was named Comeback Player of the Year by the WTA.
The highlight of her career came at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021 due to the pandemic. Bencic won the gold medal in women's singles, becoming the second Swiss woman to win Olympic gold in tennis, and also earned a silver medal in women's doubles. On February 17, 2020, she achieved her highest singles ranking of No. 4 and has won ten Tour singles titles and two WTA doubles trophies. In 2026, she won a mixed doubles title at the Indian Wells Open with Italian player Flavio Cobolli.
Bencic took maternity leave in September 2023 and returned to competition in 2024. She has consistently been the top-ranked Swiss woman in singles and continues to participate on the WTA Tour.
Before Fame
Belinda Bencic grew up in Flawil, a small town in Switzerland's St. Gallen region. Her father, Ivan, who used to play professional handball, got her into tennis at a young age and was her first coach. She trained at the Melzer Academy and later with Melanie Molitor, Martina Hingis' mom and former coach, tying her early career to Switzerland's top tennis names.
As a junior, Bencic excelled, topping the ITF junior rankings and winning titles at the French Open and Wimbledon in 2013. These achievements marked her as a promising junior player, and she quickly lived up to that reputation after becoming a professional in her mid-teens.
Key Achievements
- Olympic gold medal in women's singles at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics
- Olympic silver medal in women's doubles at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics
- Career-high WTA singles ranking of No. 4, achieved on 17 February 2020
- Former ITF junior world No. 1, with junior Grand Slam titles at the 2013 French Open and Wimbledon
- WTA Comeback Player of the Year award in 2019 after returning from a ranking drop outside the top 300
Did You Know?
- 01.Bencic won both the French Open and Wimbledon junior titles in the same year, 2013, a rare double that underscored her versatility across different court surfaces.
- 02.Her ranking fell outside the top 300 during her injury-plagued years from 2016 to 2018, one of the steepest ranking drops ever experienced by a player who had previously reached the top 10.
- 03.She was trained in part by Melanie Molitor, the mother of Martina Hingis, creating an unusual coaching lineage connecting two generations of top Swiss women's tennis players.
- 04.At the 2014 US Open, Bencic became the youngest quarterfinalist at that tournament in 17 years, matching the benchmark set by Martina Hingis in 1997, the same year Bencic was born.
- 05.At the 2015 Canadian Open, she defeated four players ranked in the top six in the world during a single tournament run, a feat that announced her as a genuine force on the Premier-level circuit.