Belinda Bencic (Slovak: Belinda Benčičová, pronounced ; born 10 March 1997) is a Swiss professional tennis player. She has a career-high Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) ranking of No. 7 in the world which she first reached in February 2016, and has reached again in 2019. Bencic has won four singles and two doubles titles on the WTA Tour.
Born in Switzerland to Slovak parents at a time when Slovak-Swiss player Martina Hingis was one of the best tennis players in the world, Bencic began playing tennis at the age of two. Her father arranged for her to train with Hingis’s mother and coach Melanie Molitor daily from the age of seven. By the time she was 16, Bencic became the No. 1 ranked junior in the world and won two junior Grand Slam singles titles at the French Open and Wimbledon. On the professional tour, she made her top 100 debut shortly after turning 17. Her first big breakthrough came at the 2014 US Open, where she became the youngest quarterfinalist since Hingis in 1997. Bencic won her first two WTA titles in 2015, including the Canadian Open where she defeated four of the top six players in the world. She then made her top 10 debut the following year while still 18 years old.
From 2016 through 2018, Bencic struggled with a variety of injury issues, most notably needing to have wrist surgery in 2017 that kept her out for five months and saw her ranking drop outside the top 300. Nonetheless, she rebounded quickly and rose back into the top 50 within a year of her comeback. Her second Premier 5 title at the Dubai Tennis Championships helped her climb back into the top 20 in 2019, and she returned to the top 10 later that year after reaching her first Grand Slam semifinal at the US Open.
Barbora Krejčíková (Czech pronunciation: ; born 18 December 1995) is a Czech professional tennis player. She has a career-high singles ranking of world No. 3, achieved on 1 November 2021, and on 22 October 2018, she became world No. 1 in doubles.
Krejčíková is a seven-time Grand Slam champion, having won the 2021 French Open singles title, the women’s doubles titles at the 2018 French Open, 2018 Wimbledon Championships and 2021 French Open, all alongside compatriot Kateřina Siniaková, and the mixed doubles titles at the Australian Open in 2019 and 2021 partnering Rajeev Ram, and in 2020 with Nikola Mektić. She is one of only four active female players to have won a Grand Slam title in all three different disciplines after Serena and Venus Williams, and Samantha Stosur.
Krejčíková has won three singles and nine doubles titles on the WTA Tour, including two at WTA 1000-level in doubles. With Siniaková, she finished runner-up at the 2018 WTA Finals and 2021 Australian Open, and the pair won Olympic gold in doubles at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Krejčíková was also part of the Czech team which won the 2018 Fed Cup.