As a new mother, Belinda Bencic believes her best tennis lies ahead

As you read this, Belinda Bencic has already practiced on the court in Sydney’s Ken Rosewall Arena.

But she is not the same, smooth Swiss athlete you saw winning titles two years ago in Adelaide and Abu Dhabi, far distant from the player who won the singles gold medal in Tokyo in 2021. With her husband and fitness coach, Martin Hromkovic, hovering nearby, Bencic has been hitting balls, but her life has dramatically changed. There is now another member of the family. Wrapped in a baby sling across Martin’s chest is baby Bella, Bencic’s 8-month-old daughter.

“Yes, Bella is going to Australia,” Benic said from her home in Bratislava, Slovakia, a week before the family flew to Sydney. “It will be me, my mom [Dana], my husband and the baby. We’re honestly doing pretty well. She likes to come with us to the tennis, even to the gym. It’s cool that we can take her everywhere.”

That means there won’t be any mother-daughter separation anxiety when Team Switzerland meets France on Dec. 28 as the United Cup gets underway in Sydney. It’s all a part of the 18-nation, 10-day Hologic WTA Tour/ATP Tour collaboration. The semifinals and finals will be played in Sydney on Jan. 4 and 5.

When she gave birth last April, Bencic wasn’t sure if she’d get to the line at the start of 2025. She made a conscious effort not to put a clock on her planned return. In Monaco, Bencic started doing some modest core exercise eight weeks after Bella’s arrival.

Three weeks later, she started practicing for 15 minutes on a small court and gradually worked up to an hour on a bigger one. Soon she began wondering what it would be like to play a real match.

In late October, 13 months after her last match in San Diego, she found out. Bencic split two matches at the ITF W75 in Hamburg, then went one better the next week in Luxembourg. 

“I knew I had to get faster, my reaction time was still not there,” Bencic said. “But I worked on that stuff. By Fed Cup, I was already moving better.”

On Friday, Bencic spoke to the media ahead of the United Cup and shared her thoughts on her progress and goals for the season.

"Well, I'm definitely improving every day," she said. "So that's very motivating for me to see improvement. I think my tennis is there. I think that's like riding a bike. I don't think that you lose that.

But it's definitely the physical side that I can still improve. I already did a lot of improvement. I think the most that I needed to improve was my movement, was the reaction and just physical condition."

Bencic helped lead Switzerland to a Billie Jean King Cup qualifying victory over Serbia two weeks later. After that, she reached the final at the WTA 125 in Angers, France. Playing five consecutive matches -- plus doubles -- left her exhausted, so it wasn’t surprising she lost in three sets to Alycia Parks.

“I was really satisfied with how played in France,” Bencic said. “The results went well. I felt like everything I was practicing got better. The movement also in my game. We felt like, `OK, it’s enough. I really have to get back to work now. I need to be ready for United Cup in Australia.’

“Really excited to see how it’s going to go -- to play against better players.”

Life as a mother is everything Bencic thought it would be -- “actually, the nicest time of our lives,” she said.

Bencic reports that Bella is an “easy” baby who sleeps well and doesn’t cry much. The biggest surprise, she added, was “The amount of love you feel.”

Currently ranked No.487, Bencic said she was encouraged by the success of mothers, not just in tennis -- Kim Clijsters won three of her four Grand Slam singles titles as a mom -- but in other disciplines. Track star Wilma Rudolph and basketball players Candace Parker and Sheryl Swoopes all won gold medals as mothers.

Although it seems she’s been on the elite tennis scene for a long time, Bencic is still only 27 -- still younger than Top 10 players Jasmine Paolini, Jessica Pegula and Barbora Krejcikova. That heavily factored into her decision to become a mother in the middle of her career rather than after it.

Is it possible her best tennis could still be ahead?

“Yeah,” Bencic said, “one hundred percent. I really believe that. Because I feel like it’s not impossible to come back and play at least at the level I played before. I really feel like I’m still young. I feel confident I still have a lot of good years ahead of me.

“I’m not coming back just to be an average player, I want to go and have more success.”