Spanish World No. 4 Garbine Muguruza unseated reigning champion and World No. 1 Serena Williams yesterday to win the French Open title. It is the first Grand Slam title for the 22-year-old, who like many players from her country, is most adept on clay.
The fourth seed took a straight set victory over one of the greatest players of all time to take the first Major of her own career.
Here are some things you may not have known about the young player:
It is not the first time she has upset Serena Williams
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Muguruza and Williams had met each other on the professional circuit 4 times before the French Open final, with the American winning 3 matches. The only time Muguruza had beat her, not only was that victory also on clay, it was at the French Open.
The pair met at Roland Garros in 2014, with Muguruza taking a 6-2, 6-2 win over Williams in the Round of 64 at the time. It was in fact this victory that put the youngster, then only 20 years old, on the map.
20-year-old Muguruza would lose in the quarterfinals to eventual champion Maria Sharapova, after managing to scalp a set off the Russian former No. 1.
She’s the first Spanish woman in 18 years to win the French Open
The last time a female Spaniard won the Suzanne Lenglen trophy, Muguruza was only four years old. Back then, it was Spanish ace Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario who lifted the trophy; Sanchez-Vicario was very successful at the French Open, and her win in 1998 was her third French Open title. It was also the last ever Grand Slam final for both Sanchez-Vicario and her rival, American Monica Seles.
Of course, one man has dominated the French Open in the last decade – legendary Spaniard Rafael Nadal.
She is only the 2nd player born in the 1990s to win a Grand Slam
One of the youngest Grand Slam finalists – among both men and women, Muguruza had until yesterday never won a Grand Slam. The 1993-born player now becomes only the second player born in the 1990s to win a Grand Slam title. The first is 1990-born Czech ace Petra Kvitova, who won two titles at Wimbledon – one in 2011, and the other three years later in 2014.
She’s actually from Venezuela
Muguruza competes under the Spanish flag, but she was born in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas in 1993. While her mother, Scarlet Blanco, is Venezuelan, her father José Antonio Muguruza is Spanish; as a result, Garbine holds both Spanish and Venezuelan nationality.
The family moved from Caracas to Spain when Muguruza was six years old, so she has in fact lived the majority of her life so far – sixteen years, in Spain.
She had a very early start
Muguruza first picked up a racquet at only three years old, when she still lived with her family in Venezuela. The player and her two brothers would live there for a further three years, following which they moved back to Spain.
That was when Muguruza began her training, on the surface Spanish players go down as being most comfortable with; clay. She enrolled at the Bruguera Tennis Academy in Barcelona at the age of six, and going into the 2016 French Open went on record to say she was ‘looking forward’ to the tournament ‘because it is on clay.’
Several legends, among them Billie Jean King, have described Muguruza's win as a ‘changing of the guard’ in women’s tennis.
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