Garbine Muguruza announces retirement: A look at the former Wimbledon and French Open champion’s career

Spain’s former world number 1 and Wimbledon and French Open champion Garbine Muguruza announced her retirement at a news conference on Saturday, making the extended break she had announced a year ago a permanent step.

Venezuelan-born Muguruza won the French Open in 2016 and Wimbledon in 2017, and she reached the final of the Australian Open in 2020. Last April she said she would take a break from competition to spend more time with her family. She beat Serena Williams in the 2016 Roland Garros final and defeated Venus Williams in the 2017 final in Wimbledon, making her the only player to defeat each Williams sister in a Grand Slam title match.

“I didn’t miss the discipline and the difficulty of the life I had before. I have been realizing that what I most want to look forward to is my next chapter and not the tennis chapter,” she said at a news conference in Madrid.

Muguruza, 30, was ranked number one in 2017 and was ranked as high as third by the end of 2021 when she won three WTA titles.

(With inputs from Reuters, AP)