The 10 Best Swiss Tennis Players of All-Time
Switzerland is home to more than eight million people. That puts it in the middle of the pack when it comes to European countries.
Despite this, Switzerland has produced Roger Federer, who is undoubtedly one of the greatest tennis players of modern times. There are other Swiss tennis players of note, even if none of them can match Federer.
Here are ten of the best Swiss tennis players to ever play:
10. Max Ellmer
Most of Max Ellmer’s career happened during the first half of the 20th century. He was good enough to compete in several Grand Slam tournaments. Sadly, Ellmer never managed to win any of them.
9. Heinz Gunthardt
Heinz Gunthardt was a professional tennis player from 1976 to 1990. He won five singles titles, which made him number 22 in the world in April 1986. Furthermore, he was twice a Grand Slam doubles champion and twice a Grand Slam mixed doubles champion. It is interesting to note that Gunthardt went from being a successful tennis player to being a successful tennis coach. After all, he was Steffi Graf’s tennis coach from 1992 to 1999.
8. Lolette Payot
Lolette Payot was a professional tennis player in the 1930s. She was a regular participant in Grand Slam tournaments, though her victories were limited to a single Grand Slam mixed doubles title in 1935. Still, she reached as high as the number 4 position in the world.
Later, Payot retired to teach tennis after a severe, year-long illness, which she continued to do until the 1980s. She competed in some French tournaments in the 1940s. Indeed, she even won the singles title in 1945. However, these French tournaments are not recognized. The Atlantic explains that this is because of complexities in how the French dealt with their experience during World War II.
7. Patty Schnyder
Patty Schnyder peaked at the number 7 position. That was possible because she won 11 singles titles over her career. Besides this, Schnyder is remembered because she managed to pull off underdog victories against the number 1 tennis player in the world on two separate occasions. First, she beat Martina Hingis at the Grand Slam Cup in 1998. Second, she beat Jennifer Capriati at the Family Circle Cup in 2002.
6. Timea Bacsinszky
Timea Bacsinszky made it to the number 9 position, meaning she was once a Top 10 tennis player. Eurosport reported that she was pushed into playing tennis as a child by a controlling, overbearing father.
That caused her to become estranged from her father, though she remained involved in tennis to spectacular results. Besides her tournament victories, Bacsinszky won an Olympic silver medal while paired with Martina Hingis at Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
5. Marc Rosset
Marc Rosset was active in the late 20th century and early 21st century. He won 15 singles titles, which made him the number nine player in the world for a time. However, that was far from his sole achievement.
After all, Rosset also won 8 doubles titles, which included a French Open win in 1992. On top of these things, he is an Olympic gold medalist, courtesy of a five-set match at Barcelona in 1992. Rosset was a very versatile competitor.
That can be seen in how he has won at least one singles title on every kind of surface. Something that more specialized tennis players would struggle with.
4. Belinda Bencic
Belinda Bencic is another Olympic gold medalist. Specifically, she has a gold medal and a silver medal. She won the first medal for singles tennis at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, which wasn’t held until 2021 because of the COVID-19 crisis.
Meanwhile, she won the second medal for doubles tennis at the same event. Bencic is still very active as a tennis player. As a result, it isn’t unthinkable that her already impressive list of achievements will continue to grow in the future.
So far, she has won 8 singles titles, thus resulting in her reaching the number 4 position back in February 2020. People might be interested to know that Bencic was coached by Melanie Molitor, the mother and long-time coach of Martina Hingis.
3. Stan Wawrinka
Amusingly, Stan Wawrinka is yet another Olympic gold medalist. In his case, he won it for doubles tennis in Beijing in 2008. That said, Wawrinka was much better as a singles player than a doubles player.
For proof, look no further than the fact that he defeated the number 1 player in the world at the finals of a Grand Slam singles tournament on three separate occasions.
Moreover, he did so at different tournaments in different years, which made it very clear that this wasn’t some kind of sustained fluke. Despite these victories, Wawrinka was never number 1 in the world. Instead, he peaked at the number 3 position.
2. Martina Hingis
Martina Hingis should be one of the most unsurprising names on this list for interested individuals. She is the greatest female tennis player to come from Switzerland. Simply put, Hingis won a total of 25 Grand Slam titles.
Out of those, 5 were singles titles, 13 were doubles titles, and 7 were mixed doubles titles. These numbers should make her dominance in doubles tennis clear. However, further proof can be found in her silver medal from Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
1. Roger Federer
If people are asked who the greatest male athlete from Switzerland is, chances are good they will answer Roger Federer. This isn’t conjecture. Swiss Info reported that a jury named him the greatest male athlete from Switzerland in the last 70 years, which is more or less in line with other conclusions on the topic delivered elsewhere.
Federer has won 103 singles titles, thus making him the individual with the second-best record in this regard in the Open Era. From the early 2000s to the late 2010s, 20 of those singles titles were Grand Slam wins. As such, it is no wonder that the competition for the greatest male athlete from Switzerland isn’t even close.
You can also read:
- The 10 Best British Female Tennis Players of All-Time
- The 10 Best Tennis Players from the 80s
- The 10 Best Romanian Tennis Players of All-Time
- The 10 Best German Female Tennis Players of All-Time
- What Tennis Racquets ATP Pros Use
