The scene takes place in 2016, at the top of a skyscraper in Singapore, where the eight best players in the world are going to measure their strength in the Masters Cup. Garbiñe Muguruza, 23 years old and already a Roland Garros champion, asserts when asked about the impact that her growing success may have on her personality: “Whatever happens, I will continue to be the same as always. I’m not going to change”. And she adds to this newspaper the tennis player, who now, in her early thirties and after a year of sabbatical reflection, decides to hang up her racket: “Before it was like: Has Garbiñe won or not? And now it is: Garbiñe has to win. But no, I don’t have to always win.” Later, when she slips him that she is already one of the 30 most influential European personalities under 30 years old, she reacts: “I don’t know, don’t put any more pressure on me!”
At the meeting, the tennis player also categorized the tennis players, and came to say that she was in an indefinite space, between those who won almost everything – in the case of her admired Serena Williams -, or those others who reached the final rounds, but who used to keep honey on their lips. “Now do I always have to play well because people are more aware? Doubts. “I can be my own worst enemy.” “I keep hearing that word: regularity, consistency. There are people who have it and others who don’t. But what is better? Win one big tournament a year or reach the quarterfinals in all of them? I try to win, and if I don’t win, I don’t win. I try and give my best, but I can’t think about those words all the time: regularity, perseverance…” “Sometimes I am cruel to myself.”
Muguruza was always a special competitor, above all selective. Her level could reach such a high level that she acted fundamentally from inspiration. “She is a winner, she dominates the game and hits the ball hard. She has it all, but she will be what she decides to be,” warned Nick Bollettieri at that time, the training guru who molded figures of the stature of Hingis, Seles and Sharapova in Bradenton. Old Nick was right because, against all odds, Muguruza got as far as she wanted to go. Very far away, in fact, as far as practically no one can: a Roland Garros (2016), a Wimbledon (2017), a Masters Cup (2021) and seven more titles, in addition to having reached the pinnacle (2017) and having been able to he williams empire.
“I don’t really understand when history is made, if it consists of winning 25 majors, but I have made my history, which has been fantastic. It was my own decision, I needed it; It has been a response to what I needed, to what I felt. It has been easy, because I have been taking it little by little,” he explained on Saturday at the Palacio de Cibeles in Madrid, during the conference in which he confirmed his goodbye.
Garbiñe is leaving now, but in reality he had already left a long time ago. From the moment she announced an indefinite break, in July of last year, the disconnection had already occurred. She had discovered a new world that brought her the happiness that she had lost in tennis, which had become a rather oppressive activity for her for several years. Under the unique thought Installed in Spanish tennis that success involves, above all, suffering, winning and winning—a big mistake, the professionals maintain—she always stood out. “Today, I have no intention of returning,” she anticipated in October. “My plan right now is to sleep, rest, be with my loved ones, make up for lost time… I don’t see beyond what I’m doing today, tomorrow and this week. And I am very happy like this,” she explained.
Muguruza was always unique. From his landing in the elite — he opted to play for Spain, despite being born in Caracas — to this early farewell, when he could still have years left. He was forced into what he didn’t want to be, to go against his nature, and he chose. In his way. He never fooled anyone. “I feel like the time has come. These months of break have been key. When I returned home, I welcomed the break with open arms and felt better with each passing day. I didn’t miss the discipline or the daily difficulty of tennis; The tournaments went by and I realized that things had changed. We take everything to the maximum, and that’s why now I enjoy that it’s not like that, extreme. I want to look at the next chapter, and not the tennis one,” he reasoned on Saturday.
From the age of three with the racket in his hand, Muguruza never hid the fact that other concerns existed in his mind beyond tennis, nor did he have the fear that most tennis players carry the day after. On the contrary, she is attracted to him. “I am complex, I tend to be in my bubble,” she defines herself, “It is a dream for any coach,” adds Conchita Martínez, the technique that she understood best and with which she connected the most. “She is a fighter, competitive, a survivor. Protector of her own,” a person she trusts most describes. She started walking earlier than normal – says her mother Scarlet -, she wears a size 42, she is fluent in English like few other players – she is represented by the multinational IMG – and in her behavior you can see marked Basque and Venezuelan traits. At the age of seven she moved to Barcelona to train at the Bruguera academy and at 21 she exploded, despite the fact that the previous year (2014) she had already dispatched Serena from Roland Garros.
She did it at Wimbledon, where she broke into the 2015 final. Then she couldn’t beat the almighty Williams – her true inspiration – but she did the following year, in Paris. “Without humility I will not get anywhere,” she stated then in an interview with EL PAÍS. “On the dance floor you have to be a bit of an actress,” she answered in 2017, after performing Venus and also having conquered the London sanctuary. “You should never doubt yourself,” she added in 2021, after having become teacher —the first and only Spanish woman to achieve it, already joined by Manuel Orantes and Àlex Corretja— when probably few expected it. Before she was also close to triumphing in Australia, but she lost in a strange final against Sophia Kenin. In any case, her break-and-tear tennis—powerful from both profiles, very visceral, with a must in the volley and mobility—was valid until the end, but mentally she had emptied herself and she required distance.
So now, after having shared more than necessary time with his father José Antonio, his mother and his brothers, Asier and Igor, he puts the final point with elegance and discretion, and is ready to enjoy the new life he began ago. a year with his partner. Against the current, she leaves young, always governed by her own code: getting to where she wanted to go. “I want to make up for lost time. Doing common things, being with my people, getting married, starting a family and even having a dog, which seems silly but until now I couldn’t do it. “I’m not a person who sits still,” Muguruza, a brilliant and genuine tennis player, also misunderstood, said goodbye this Saturday. Garbiñe until the end.
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