When talking about female tennis players, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario name cannot go unnoticed. This Spanish lady is a former tennis player who was in Barcelona on 18th December 1971. At the age of four Sanchez Vicario held her first tennis racquet and it was then when she made her first move towards a great career. Both her elder brothers were her idol and also a pillar that supported in building her dream career. Her brothers Javier Sanchez and Emilio Sanchez were tennis players, and Arantxa with her tiny feet followed them in to the court with her own tennis ball and racquet in hand.
Arantxa Sanchez Vicario began her tennis days with hitting the balls on the wall with her racquet. She grew up to be one of the finest tennis players the world had ever come across. At the age of seventeen years she participated in the 1989 French Open and was one of the youngest women to have ever won the woman’s single that too by defeating World’s No.1 at that point of time, Steffi Graf in the finals. Within no time Arantxa gained popularity and became media’s favourite personality to talk upon. Her confidence kept getting stronger and stronger by every match, and refused to be defeated at any point.
Many commentators had loads to say about Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, especially Bud Collins who had also named her the ‘Barcelona Bumblebee’. In Bud Collins own words Arantxa was described as the “unceasing in determined pursuit of tennis balls, none seeming too distant to be retrieved in some manner and returned again and again to demoralize opponents”. She was the only woman to have won six Grand Slam women’s doubles title and four Grand Slam women’s single titles and another four Grand Slams mixed doubles titles. In the year 1991 she even took home the Fed Cup title which was a first for Spain.
Since then Arantxa Sanchez Vicario has been helping Spain to take home the Fed Cup in the years 1993, 1994, 1995 and 1998. Arantxa throughout her tennis career won a total of twenty nine titles for singles and sixty nine titles for doubles. She also holds a record for playing and winning a total number of seventy two matches in the Fed Cup tournament. She also holds a record for having a maximum number of ties played i.e. fifty eight matches. In the years 1990 and 2002 she became a member of the Spanish team and brought home the Hopman Cup.
Arantxa Sanchez Vicario has created some great history in the industry of tennis. In the year 2004 she participated in the Summer Olympic and as usual again created a record of being the only tennis player to have played five Olympics. From her five Olympic participations she had achieved two bronze and two silver medals. The Tennis Magazine had her placed on the twenty seventh positions in the year 2005. Arantxa is one candidate of the tennis world whose entire record history is hard to be broken by one single candidate at present.