In 2022, I’m counting down the 128 best players of the last century. With luck, we’ll get to #1 in December. Enjoy!
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Conchita Martínez [ESP]Born: 16 April 1972
Career: 1988-2006
Plays: Right-handed (one-handed backhand)
Peak rank: 2 (1995)
Peak Elo rating: 2,328 (2nd place, 1995)
Major singles titles: 1
Total singles titles: 33
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Didn’t see this one coming, did you?
There is probably no Open era player more underrated than Conchita Martínez. Her timing is partly to blame: She arrived on the scene alongside other players who peaked sooner. Steffi Graf and Gabriela Sabatini were already there. Monica Seles, while a year and a half younger than Martínez, was one of the great teen sensations of all time. Arantxa Sánchez Vicario was four months older, and she won the hearts of her countrymen before many of them knew Conchita’s name.
Then there’s her playing style. Graf, Seles, and Jennifer Capriati hit harder than anyone who had come before them. Arantxa excelled at a retrieving game that made her a lovable underdog. Martínez, by contrast, was a less graceful version of Sabatini, complete with an increasingly anachronistic one-handed backhand. She outlasted opponents by alternating heavy topspin with a sizzling slice backhand, camping out several feet behind the court while her contemporaries refused to give an inch at the baseline.
She earned the nickname “Señorita Topspin,” playing a game that connoisseurs could appreciate but would rarely inspire oohs and aahs from the crowd.
Conchita’s career trajectory, as well, is of the type that defies full recognition. Tennis fans love the youthful breakout, the stratospheric peak. There were plenty of those in the early 1990s. Martínez opted for the slow burn. She won her first tour-level title in 1988, when she was 16 years old. She ultimately picked up at least one winner’s trophy in thirteen different seasons, hoisting the last one in 2005, when she was 32.
From 1993 to 2000, she reached the third round at thirty consecutive majors. Yes, I know, grand slam third rounds aren’t exactly the currency of tennis greatness. But players outside the innermost circle of the Hall of Fame almost never put together streaks like that. Sánchez Vicario is the only other woman since 1990 to reach more than 18 in a row. Elise Mertens was the active leader with 17 until last month, when she lost to Irina-Camelia Begu in the first round of the US Open. Mertens fell more than three years short of Conchita’s standard.
Most of all, fans fail to appreciate Martínez because she peaked in the most unassuming fashion imaginable.
Conchita, thinking
The Spaniard won her lone major title at Wimbledon in 1994. (Yes, the consummate dirtballer won Wimbledon–we’ll come back to that.) She would’ve been the underdog against almost anyone, and as things turned out, her victory was also the secondary news item of the day–by far. She defeated Martina Navratilova in what was almost the highlight of the nine-time champion’s retirement tour. Martina’s farewell was, understandably, the story of the tournament. Conchita was merely the anonymous challenger who stopped her from going out with a tenth crown.
Martínez won the biggest title in tennis–something Arantxa never did, incidentally–and she didn’t gain a single endorsement. Not one.
She went on a tear the following Spring, dominating the clay court swing and posting results so strong that, had the WTA used the same ranking formula they use today, she would likely have become number one. Steffi Graf ended the Spaniard’s hot streak at Roland Garros, and Conchita resumed her old role as the forgotten woman of the WTA.
During her playing days, Martínez usually gave the impression that she was content to fade into the background. She deserved better, and she still does.
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Conchita only came to global attention in 1994. Still, if you didn’t know her name by then, you hadn’t been paying attention.
In March 1992, when the Spaniard was still 19 years old, the WTA published a list of the top players on tour–minimum 200 matches–ranked by career winning percentage. Martínez came in fourth, ahead of Sabatini, behind only Seles, Graf, and Navratilova.
She won three titles in 1990, despite taking the summer off. In 1991, she added three more–all on European clay–while grappling with an injured thigh. The pain management shifted to her right arm in 1992, as she struggled with tendonitis. It hurt to serve, it hurt to hit a forehand, yet she still picked up a title in Kitzbühel and reached a fourth-straight French Open quarter-final. She made it to four other finals, where she lost to Graf, Seles, Sabatini, and Capriati.
Conchita suffered a bit every time she struck a topspin forehand that season, but her opponents often had it worse.
Señorita Topspin hits a forehand at the 1996 US Open
Early in 1990, her coach Eduardo Osta thought that the Martínez forehand was second only to Graf’s. Like Steffi, Conchita hit the shot whenever she could, often drifting far into the backhand corner to stick with her preferred wing.
“I was born with my forehand,” she said in 1995. “That’s natural.”
Natural as it was, Martínez was more sophisticated than the typical slugger. She always had been. Her long-time coach Eric van Harpen recognized that, as a junior, she didn’t play like the other girls her age. “She was so clever, so professional in the shots she chose,” he said.
Shot selection may have been Conchita’s strongest weapon of all. When she beat Sánchez Vicario in a 1992 Hilton Head semi-final, the New York Times described her attack as “a steady spattering of astrologically correct moonballs interspersed with high-paced forehand drives.” By that time, Arantxa knew her game better than anyone. But even she couldn’t always handle the variation.
Once she put the tendonitis behind her, Martínez’s favorite shot grew even more vicious. In 1993, it won her titles on three surfaces, and she nearly pulled even with Graf. Playing only her second Wimbledon, Conchita reached the semi-final, where she pushed Steffi to a first-set tiebreak. In Philadelphia later that year, she beat the German in straights.
The 21-year-old cracked the top five in August, and she ended the season at number four. The tour had the makings of a new star.
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If Martínez was going to break through at a major, the smart money favored her at Roland Garros. She had grown up on clay courts, and her game was built for them.
Conchita’s most impressive achievement in 1993 was her first title at the Italian Open, home of some of the slowest conditions on tour. She defeated Navratilova and Mary Joe Fernández to reach the final, then wore down Sabatini for the championship. The third game of the title match lasted 32 points, and the women traded seven consecutive breaks of serve in an 89-minute first set. Martínez could do that all day, but her opponent couldn’t, and she cruised to a 7-5, 6-1 victory.
The Spaniard wouldn’t lose again in Rome until 1997, when Mary Pierce beat her in that year’s final. She won the circuit’s second-most prestigious clay court tournament four years in a row. In her 24-match reign at the event, she lost only three sets.
The Martínez one-handed backhand was a
perfect match for the Roman clay
Conchita’s dirtballing magic didn’t have quite the same effect in Paris. She reached the second week of the French Open for 13 consecutive years, from 1988 to 2000. But she didn’t clear the quarter-finals until 1994, in large part because she had a nasty habit of colliding with Graf, Seles, or Sabatini in the final eight. In the 1994 semi, one step closer to the title, she fell flat against Sánchez Vicario. She managed only four games in a disappointing clash with her more decorated countrywoman.
Van Harpen thought she wasn’t fit enough to be the perfect clay-courter. She certainly couldn’t out-scamper Arantxa, though in fairness, no one could. He kept after Martínez for years, insisting that she lose weight. For the coach, it was the obvious route to dominance. “[W]hat would be easier, for Graf to get that topspin backhand she needs, or for Sánchez Vicario to get a forehand like Conchita’s or for Conchita to get the fitness of both of them?”
In a different context, van Harpen said that his charge “should stop telling everybody she’s a clay-court player.” This time, he wasn’t criticizing her preparedness. He believed her style was good enough to win anywhere.
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By the time Martínez rose to stardom, the women’s serve-and-volley game was dying out. While Jana Novotná would keep it alive to the end of the century, Navratilova’s retirement signaled the end of an era.
An alternative reading is that serve-and-volley didn’t fade out. Instead, it was Conchita who killed it.
Okay, okay, that’s not really what happened. There weren’t legions of teenage wannabe serve-and-volleyers who saw the Spaniard’s topspin forehand and, terrified, never rushed the net again. But judging by Martínez’s results against the players who did dare to come forward, if serve-and-volley tennis hadn’t been on the way out, Conchita would’ve at least nudged it toward the door.
Martínez arrived at Wimbledon in 1994 as a 33-to-1 longshot. Her odds improved on the first day, when Lori McNeil recorded one of the great upsets in tournament history by ousting five-time champion Steffi Graf. Still, no one was about to pick Conchita as the new favorite. Despite her status as the third seed, she was playing only her fourth career grass-court event.
The first time the Spaniard ventured onto the turf, at Eastbourne in 1992, McNeil showed her how much she still had to learn. The hyper-aggressive American eased through, 6-0, 6-3.
At Wimbledon in 1994
Two years later, McNeil rode her first-round upset at Wimbledon to a semi-final meeting with Martínez. The pair split the first two sets. Then, as the New York Times put it, they “dug themselves into their respective trenches … and waited for attrition to take its toll.” Clearly McNeil didn’t have a good scouting report on her opponent. Attrition was the name of Conchita’s game. The Spaniard won the third set, 10-8.
Martínez piled up passing-shot winners throughout the tournament. Her opponents stuck with the grass-court playbook. Señorita Topspin said, “[E]verybody is coming in, and it’s like, thank you.”
It was no different in the final. Navratilova, who had earned her living at the net for two decades, watched one groundstroke after another fly by. The veteran came forward 113 times. Conchita took 60 of those points. In three sets, the underdog claimed the match and the title.
Navratilova explained how Martínez did it:
She passed me as well as anybody ever has, even Monica Seles, because she passed well from both sides. She has a lot of dip on the ball, so it comes over lower by the time it gets to you, which made it more difficult to volley well, and she stands back behind the baseline for her return of serve, which gives her time to line up her shots.
“She’s playing great tennis, period,” said Martina. “And that works on any surface.”
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Conchita flailed a bit that fall. In a post-Wimbledon swoon, she lost three matches in a row for the first time since 1991. Even though she remained under the radar, pressure mounted from some quarters.
Van Harpen was part of the problem. He believed Martínez could become number one, perhaps more strongly than she did herself. He certainly cared about it more. “I’m the kind of person who would give up two fingers to be number one,” he said. “I’d give one finger for her to be number one.”
It had always been a bit rocky between the unassuming player and the overweening coach. In their seven-year relationship, they had split multiple times only to team up again. Finally, in early 1995, Conchita moved on for good, throwing in her lot with Carlos Kirmayr, Sabatini’s former coach.
The results were immediate, and they were stunning. After losing to Graf in the Delray Beach final in March, Martínez began what her fans call, simply, The Streak.
On clay courts in North America and Europe–with a Fed Cup tie on carpet thrown in for good measure–the reigning Wimbledon champ reeled off 26 wins in a row. At the German Open in Hamburg, the Spaniard double-bageled Magdalena Maleeva in the semi-finals and beat the 14-year-old Martina Hingis in the final, 6-1, 6-0. At the Italian the following week, she straight-setted Fernández, Pierce, and Sánchez Vicario in succession. The only woman who could stop her was Graf–again–in the semis at the French.
In those 26 matches, she lost only two sets. She won 11 bagel sets. Another 15 went her way by a score of 6-1.
Conchita was nearly as good on hard courts between Wimbledon and the US Open. She swept a Fed Cup tie, then won back-to-back titles at San Diego and Manhattan Beach. For the season as a whole, she won 63 of 73 matches. That was good for six titles, semi-final showings at all four majors, and an undefeated performance in three Fed Cup ties as she led Spain to third consecutive championship.
(These streaks start to blend together, but there’s one more worth mentioning. The six Fed Cup wins were part of a five-year run in which Martínez won 19 of 20 singles rubbers. The one loss came in 1994 to the German Sabine Hack. The next year, she beat Hack 6-0, 6-0–twice.)
In November, she rose to the number two ranking. That’s when, under a rating system that rewarded quantity more heavily, like the WTA’s current formula, she might have grabbed her moment in the top spot.
Still, the woman who the New York Times called “the world’s most highly ranked low-visibility performer” couldn’t quite beat everybody. Bud Collins explained what he demanded of a “champion.” He said, “She still has to come to grips with what’s expected…. You don’t [need to] win all the time, but more than she has done.”
It was bad enough having to play for a decade in the Steffi Graf era. It might have been even worse to be judged by the impossibly high standards that Steffi set.
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There’s one more reason why Conchita has remained so underrated. She hung around on tour for a decade after her peak, playing well enough that everyone knew she was there, rarely well enough that anyone would call her great.
She picked up her fourth consecutive Italian title in 1996, but lost to a player outside the top 100 at her next tournament in Madrid. She fell out of the top five in early 1997, to return only briefly a few years later. She remained capable of a big win, advancing to the Australian Open final in 1998 behind a three-set upset of second seed Lindsay Davenport. But as injuries and age took their toll, she was rarely considered a prime contender for another major title.
Had Conchita chosen to pursue a second career as a doubles specialist, she might have lasted another decade beyond her 18-year pro career. In 2004, she and Virginia Ruano Pascual won the women’s doubles silver medal at the Athens Olympics. It was Martínez’s third medal. A year later, she finished her grand slam career with a semi-final showing at the US Open. She and Ruano Pascual only gave way after pushing Lisa Raymond and Sam Stosur, the eventual champions, to a deciding-set tiebreak.
In 1994, coach van Harpen said, “For sure, she is overlooked. For sure, she doesn’t like this. Even in Spain. She is not the people’s darling.” Her fan club was never as big as Arantxa’s, if she had a fan club at all. Yet when all was said and done, Conchita had more tour-level titles: 33 to her countrywoman’s 29.
One of those titles, of course, was the most important of all. Señorita Topspin was the first Spanish woman to win Wimbledon. There wouldn’t be another for more than two decades. Finally, in 2017, when Garbiñe Muguruza added her name to the list, sitting courtside was Garbi’s part-time coach, Conchita Martínez.
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This post is dedicated to Jeff McFarland.