Garbine Muguruza retires with legacy secured but she could have achieved even more

The last time The National spoke with Garbine Muguruza, she described her tennis career as a "rollercoaster". That was on the eve of the inaugural Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open in February 2023 and the Spaniard, once the best player in the world, was attempting to piece her career back together after a curious and alarming collapse in form.

Muguruza had arrived in the capital ranked outside the top 80 following a 2022 campaign that saw her win just 12 matches. There had been no major injury setbacks, just a crisis of confidence made all the more mysterious given her highly successful 2021.

She had collected three significant titles that previous season, ending a two-year trophy drought by winning the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, then won another WTA 500 at the Chicago Open, before signing off the year with a triumph at the prestigious WTA Finals.

Back at world No 3 and heading into the 2022 season on a high, it appeared Muguruza had fully reset having shown promising signs of revival in 2020 following a gradual decline in 2018 and 2019 that saw her slip out of the top 30.

The latest dip, though, proved irreversible. Following the disaster of 2022, Muguruza told The National she was taking a "calm and simple" approach to 2023 having "put myself under a lot of pressure" the previous season.

That didn't seem to work either, as Muguruza began the year with four straight defeats before withdrawing from Abu Dhabi and announcing an extended hiatus.

Well, that hiatus has now transformed into retirement, the two-time Grand Slam champion announcing on Saturday that she has officially brought the "rollercoaster" to a permanent halt.

“I feel that it is time to retire and open up a new chapter in my life,” she told a press