Spain’s former world number 1 and Wimbledon and French Open champion Garbiñe 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.
“I didn’t miss the discipline and the difficulty of the life I had before. I have been realising 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. She turned professional in 2012 and won her first major title in 2016, defeating Serena Williams in the final of the French Open.
The following year she was crowned Wimbledon champion after a win over Venus Williams in the final, and reached No 1 in the world rankings. She was a finalist at the Australian Open in 2020 and, the following year, won the WTA Finals Championship.