Return to Tour Not Without Doubts for New Mom Bencic
’22 CHARLESTON CHAMP: ‘WE LEARN TO OVERCOME, TO KEEP GOING’
For Belinda Bencic, who stepped away from the tour to start a family (she and husband/fitness coach Martin Hromkovic welcomed daughter, Bella, in April 2024), a comeback to the tour didn’t come without doubts.
“Doubts? For sure, every professional athlete, everyone has doubts. It’s normal,” said Bencic, the Credit One Charleston Open champion in 2022. “It’s like after injuries: You have some days where maybe you doubt, ‘Will I really be able to get back to the same level where I was before?’ We learn to overcome that, to keep going.”
“Some days you feel great, confident. But I feel like confidence is very difficult to earn. You have two, three tournaments where you might lose in the first round and the doubts creep in again. I feel like that’s something that we have to deal with all the time. I don’t necessarily think it’s a negative thing. It’s something that maybe can motivate you even more to do better.”
It didn’t take Bencic, a former world No. 4 who claimed gold-medal honors at the Tokyo Olympics, long to reacclimate. Just four months after her return from maternity leave, she captured the Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open title, famously opting to kiss Bella instead of the trophy.
Who could blame her?
“My life has completely changed but for the better,” said Bencic in Charleston, where after an opening-round bye she’ll face American Sofia Kenin. “My priorities have obviously changed. My family is now the most important thing. Now when I’m playing, I’m definitely passionate about what I’m doing on the court, I still want to perform at my best. But now I’m not putting all the pressure on that. I can see there are much more important things now.”
The first-time mom returns to the site where she had some of her earliest success. It was here in Charleston that the Swiss broke through to the semifinals in 2014 (l. to Jana Cepelova, 6-4, 5-7, 7-6(7)).
“It was a long time ago, but I still remember it very clearly because I think it was the first time I ever broke into the Top 100,” she said. “I lost in the semifinals in a heartbreaker, 7-6 in the third. In these situations, you think, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll never have a chance to win such a tournament again.’ But then you keep playing, and I was able to win it here.”
Her trophy run of 2022 culminated with another three-set affair, this time a 6-1, 5-7, 6-4 victory over Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur. She would return to the final the following year, Jabeur returning the favor, 7-6(6), 6-4.
“As a teenager, you maybe play a little bit more freely,” recalled Bencic of that 2014 breakout, when she was just 17. “You are kind of up-and-coming, everyone is maybe more scared to play you because you are a younger player. No one likes to lose against the young ones. Now I’m in the later stages of my career. Time went really fast, but I still feel very good. I still feel I have a lot of great years in front of me.”
Thus far, Bencic, now 28, is happy with her comeback as a mom, having exceeded her goals.
“Everything happened much faster than we expected,” she said. “The results came much faster, better results than we expected. The goals don’t change; we just try to adjust them now. I always say I want to get back in the rankings to where I was before. I would love to compete for the biggest titles once again, but I’m very happy with how it’s going so far.”
