Belinda Bencic

With two junior Grand Slam titles to her name, Bencic was the best in the world when she was playing in the junior circuit. She won the 2013 French Open in the girls’ singles category, beating Antonia Lottner in the final. Her second junior Grand Slam success came at the Wimbledon Championships that very year, where she beat Taylor Townsend in the final match. Bencic scripted two pieces of history with these results. First, she became the first Swiss to win a junior Grand Slam since Martina Higgins in 1994. Second, Bencic became the first to win both the French Open and Wimbledon in the girls’ singles category in the same year since Amelie Mauresmo in 1996. At the end of the 2013 season, the Swiss found herself the top ranked junior in the world and was crowned the ITF Junior World Champion.

Bencic won her first WTA singles title in 2015, although her season began in a less than ideal way. The Swiss started finding her rhythm from the grass season that year, reaching the final of the Rosmalen Grass Court Championships where she fell to Camila Giorgi. She won her maiden WTA title at the Eastbourne International where she defeated Agnieszka Radwanska. Bencic then delivered an outstanding performance to win the Canadian Open that year which saw her beat six of the top 25 players in the world at the time. The list included the likes of Caroline Wozniacki, Serena Williams and Simona Halep. Apart from that, Bencic won the Dubai Championships and Kremlin Cup in 2019 and the Charleston Open in 2022. She suffered a slump in her form in 2018 that saw her drop out of the top 50, but regained her form the following year.

One feather that Bencic is yet to add to her cap is a Grand Slam title. Her best Grand Slam performance came at the 2019 US Open where she went as far as the semi-finals. At the Australian Open and Wimbledon, she has gone as far as the second round and at Roland Garros, just the first round. However, what she has in her trophy cabinet is something very few others can boast of. At the Tokyo Olympics, Bencic defeated the likes of Barbora Krejcikova, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Elena Rybakina and Marketa Vondrousova to claim a singles gold medal. She also earned the silver medal in the women’s doubles category with Viktorija Golubic.

Bencic has a net worth of USD 5 million as of 2022, primarily from her career as a professional tennis player. Similarly, Bencic has been playing professionally for the past eight years. In those eight years, Bencic has won more than USD 10 million in prize money. Tennis players also do not receive a yearly income because they are not tied to anyone. Instead, they must rely on their prize money.

Dana and Ivan Bencic gave birth to Belinda on March 10, 1997 in Flawil, Switzerland. Her father, Ivan, was a professional hockey player in the Swiss National League A and National League B before becoming an insurance broker. Dana, her mother, was a top-level handball player. Her father was a recreational tennis player who introduced Belinda to the game at the age of two after being impressed by then-World No. 1 Martina Hingis and wishing Belinda would follow in Martina’s footsteps. Ivan is still Belinda’s coach, and he left his work as an insurance broker to be a full-time coach for his daughter.