page_title: Belinda Bencic
section_title: 2016–17: Top 10 debut, injury layoffs
hierarchical_section_title: Belinda Bencic / Professional career / 2016–17: Top 10 debut, injury layoffs
caption_attribution_description: DSC_2269
context_page_description: Belinda Bencic is a Swiss professional tennis player. She has a career-high singles ranking of No. 4 in the world which she reached in February 2020. To date, 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.
context_section_description: Bencic returned to the tour for the Australian hard court season. She had a strong start to the year, reaching the semifinals at the Sydney International and losing in the fourth round at the Australian Open to No. 5, Maria Sharapova. At the St. Petersburg Ladies' Trophy, Bencic was the top seed and finished runner-up to Roberta Vinci. This performance helped her enter the top 10 for the first time while still 18 years old, making her the first teenager in the top 10 of the WTA rankings since Caroline Wozniacki in 2009. After St. Petersburg, Bencic began to struggle. She retired from her second-round match at the Miami Open and was forced to miss nearly the entire clay court season due to a back injury, including the French Open. Bencic returned for the grass-court season, but could not match her level of success prior to being injured. She recorded multiple wins at just two more events the rest of the year, the Rosmalen Grass Court Championships where she reached the semifinals and the US Open where she reached the third round. She also had to retire from her second-round match at Wimbledon due to a wrist injury. As a result, Bencic fell to No. 43 in the rankings by the end of the season.
  Bencic continued to struggle at the beginning of 2017. She recorded just one WTA singles match win through the first four months of the year. In late April, she underwent surgery on her left wrist that was expected to keep her out for several months. She did not return until September, at which point her ranking had dropped to No. 312 in the world. Bencic was able to rise back into the top 200 in just one week after winning her first comeback tournament, the $100K Neva Cup. She then received a wild card to play at the Linz Open and made the quarterfinals in her only WTA event before the end of the season. Bencic finished the year by winning three tournaments in a row in Asia. She won two WTA 125K events in back-to-back weeks in November at the Hua Hin Championships and the Taipei Challenger before also winning the $100K Al Habtoor Challenge in Dubai one month later. With these three titles, she moved back into the top 100, ending the year at No. 74 in the world.
caption: Bencic at the 2016 Eastbourne International
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