Garbine Muguruza: Why has former world No. 1 and Grand Slam winner struggled in 2022 season?

The WTA Tour is in Guadalajara this week for the last WTA 1000 event of the 2022 season. It was only 11 months ago that the same venue was covered with confetti after Garbine Muguruza recorded one of the biggest results of her career, beating Anett Kontaveit to win the WTA Finals. It was a victory that capped off a solid year for two-time Grand Slam champion Muguruza, who also won two WTA 500 tournaments, made two other finals and reached the quarter-finals of the singles at the Olympics.

She finished the year ranked No. 3 in the world. Ad Few would have surely predicted that the next time the tour visited Guadalajara, Muguruza would be set to drop out of the top 40 in the world rankings.

WTA SeoulRaducanu beats Uchijima to reach second round in Seoul21/09/2022 AT 15:16 Muguruza’s loss of form is one of the mysteries of the 2022 season. She currently has a 12-17 win-loss record and will finish the year with the worst winning percentage of her career (41.14%). Only once before has Muguruza been under 50% and that was her first year as a professional on tour in 2012.

Muguruza's season did not start on the best note. She had to spend two weeks without her team in Australia after they all tested positive for Covid-19. As the third seed at the Australian Open she lost in the second round to Alize Cornet, two years after making the final.

“It was hard for my preparation to come to the Aussie swing and play and perform well,” said Muguruza. “Physically I wasn’t also feeling my best. It was kind of a stressful start of the year I would say.” Things would not get much better.