By Belinda Bencic claimed perhaps the most memorable victory of her tennis career on Saturday, unrelated to anything that happened on the court.
Instead, it was the support from the stands that made her win at the Abu Dhabi Open so special to Bencic, cheered on by her husband and nine-month-old daughter Bella.
“It meant the world to me,” Bencic told CNN Sport’s Patrick Snell. “I just worked really hard to be where I am and it’s a mini dream come true that she was able to be with me and to see this.”
The 4-6, 6-1, 6-1 victory against USA’s Ashlyn Krueger was Bencic’s ninth WTA title and her first as a mom. The Swiss player is also the first mother to win a WTA title since Elina Svitolina in May 2023.
Having lost a close first set against Krueger, Bencic responded in impressive fashion by playing more aggressive tennis and breaking her opponent’s serve five times over the next two sets.
She completed the victory in two hours and 23 minutes before carrying her daughter onto the court during the trophy ceremony.
“It’s been such a special moment,” said Bencic, whose last title was in Abu Dhabi two years ago. “We had great emotions after the match. In the third set, my husband and Bella were cheering me on from courtside … I had an extra boost and extra energy coming from them.”
Bencic, the 2021 Olympic gold medalist and former world No. 4, was only playing in her fourth tour-level event since giving birth to her daughter in April last year.
The protected ranking system means that she is able to compete in a certain number of tournaments based on the ranking she held before going on maternity leave. Currently No. 157 in the world, Bencic is the third-lowest-ranked player ever to win a WTA 500-level tournament, according to the Tour.
Clearly, it hasn’t taken her long to get back to where she left off, but she said it hasn’t been easy by any means.
“When I had my first run after giving birth – that was, I think, (after) maybe eight or 10 weeks – I couldn’t run, it was crazy,” says Bencic. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is gonna be tough.
“But then slowly I started building up, and then suddenly the muscle memory kicked in and my body was like, ‘Okay, I know what we’re doing now.’ And from then on, it went a bit smoother.”
Bencic has joined a growing number of mothers in the women’s game, including past grand slam champions Naomi Osaka, Carolina Wozniacki, and Angelique Kerber.
She has been helped by the fact that her husband, Martin Hromkovič, is also her fitness coach. Along with daughter Bella, the family are getting used to traveling together to tournaments around the world. Dubai is up next, before a run of events in the US.
“You cannot really describe the love before you have children, and we are very blessed and very grateful,” says Bencic. “She’s healthy and she’s really a happy baby. She doesn’t cry much, and it’s very easy right now to travel with her. She just started crawling, and, yeah, just very lucky to be able to have her.”
The 27-year-old was ranked as low as No. 1,213 in the world near the end of last year, but is set to climb well inside the top 100 with the victory at the Abu Dhabi Open.
For Bencic, among the many joys of becoming a mother has been the ability to separate her private life from what happens on the tennis court.
“I feel like a bad day at the office kind of stays on the court,” she says, “and then when I’m off the court, I have so many other things to worry about and to do … If I lose, then it’s not terrible, and we just have a nice day together as a family.”
