Esther Vergeer did not simply go out on top. She went out after a decade of soaring out of other players’ reach.
Vergeer, a Dutch wheelchair tennis juggernaut, announced her retirement at 31 on Tuesday in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
She retires with an active win streak in singles of 470 matches, her last loss coming a little more than 10 years ago, in January 2003. Vergeer lost only 18 sets during the streak, and she won more than a third of her sets by the score of 6-0. She had 95 6-0, 6-0 victories in her career.
“I’m hugely proud of my performances, my titles and can look back on my career with a great feeling,” Vergeer said. “Keeping going would not add anything.”
Her final tournament was the London Paralympics in September. She captured the gold medal with typical ease, winning 7 of 12 sets in the singles competition by the score of 6-0. It was her fourth Paralympic gold medal in singles, to go along with her 21 Grand Slam singles titles. Although she was not as dominant when sharing the court with a partner, Vergeer also found success in doubles, winning 3 Paralympic gold medals and 23 Grand Slam titles.
“Esther Vergeer is a tremendous ambassador not only for tennis, but also for disability sports,” Francesco Ricci Bitti, the International Tennis Federation’s president, said in a statement. “She is an inspiration to many. Wheelchair tennis owes her a huge debt of gratitude for her professionalism and her quality as a player.”
Vergeer became paraplegic after spinal surgery at 8. Her first forays into wheelchair sports were in basketball, but she picked up tennis at 12 and decided to focus on it in 1998. By 1999, Vergeer had reached the No. 1 ranking.
Vergeer spent 668 weeks at No. 1, including every week from Oct. 2, 2000, to Jan. 21, 2013.
She continued to push to improve even after years of uninterrupted supremacy. In 2009, she began working with the Dutch coach Sven Groeneveld, who coached Monica Seles, Mary Pierce and Ana Ivanovic.
“To work with someone who has been that long undefeated took a little time to adapt,” Groeneveld said. “Because what do you work on? What can be better if you’re undefeated for so long?”
Groeneveld added: “Winning was never really the focus. The growth was the focus.”
In wheelchair tennis, the ball is allowed to bounce many times, instead of once as in standard tennis, to accommodate the players’ often slower changes in direction. But with her anticipation and heavy, powerful ground strokes, Vergeer often hit winners to the back fence before her opponents had time to get in position.
Before her official retirement announcement Tuesday, Vergeer took part in the on-court opening ceremony with Roger Federer at her country’s biggest ATP tournament, the ABN AMRO tournament in Rotterdam.
Federer wrote a foreword for Vergeer’s autobiography, which was released Tuesday to coincide with her retirement announcement.
“She is an astonishing athlete, a huge personality, and she has achieved one of the most amazing feats in our sport,” wrote Federer, a 17-time Grand Slam singles champion.
As part of her announcement, Vergeer read aloud from her book, “Kracht & Kwetsbaarheid,” which is Dutch for power and vulnerability.
Fighting back tears, Vergeer revealed her retirement as she read passages from the last chapter of the book, in which she described her choice to retire. That final decision came last month during the Australian Open, as she watched from the Netherlands.
Vergeer had skipped the tournament, allowing her countrywoman Aniek van Koot to win the title with a dramatic three-set victory, beginning a new era in which other players will be finally able to regularly win titles. Vergeer had beaten van Koot, 6-0, 6-0, in the 2012 Australian Open final.
Vergeer played 73 opponents during her winning streak, but the limited number of elite competitors in women’s wheelchair tennis meant that many of her wins came against just a few opponents. And because the Netherlands has the most successful wheelchair tennis programs in the world, Vergeer was repeatedly beating up on compatriots. The closest call of her streak came on one of the biggest stages. In the gold medal match of the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing, Vergeer faced a match point on her serve at 4-5 in the third set against her countrywoman Korie Homan.
“I was nervous,” she recalled two years later at the United States Open. “Even though you only have 20 seconds in that time, I was thinking a lot of things. About like how my parents would react, or how I would react, or the girl that I was playing would react or the media. Or would I start crying? Or would I have a feeling of relief?”
Vergeer was saved when Homan netted a backhand on her third shot of the rally. Vergeer eventually won the match, 6-2, 4-6, 7-6 (5).
“It is going to be a relief, sort of,” Vergeer said of a streak-ending loss that will never come. “Yeah, it’s going to be a relief — but I’m not going to do it on purpose.”