Patty Schnyder

Patty Schnyder (born 14 December 1978) is a Swiss retired tennis player.

In 1996, Schnyder made her Grand Slam main-draw debut at the French Open.

In 1997, she quickly rose up through the rankings, and by August 1998 she had entered the WTA top 10.

A former top 10 player in singles, she twice defeated a reigning world No. 1 player in her career: Martina Hingis at the 1998 Grand Slam Cup (by retirement) and Jennifer Capriati at the Family Circle Cup in 2002.

In addition, she has notable wins over such former No. 1 players as Lindsay Davenport, Serena Williams, Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, Steffi Graf, Kim Clijsters, Justine Henin, Amélie Mauresmo, Maria Sharapova, Jelena Janković, Ana Ivanovic, and Caroline Wozniacki.

In her career, she reached six Grand Slam singles quarterfinals and one major singles semifinal.

She won eleven WTA Tour singles titles including Zurich Open (Tier I), and five WTA doubles titles, and earned almost $8.6 million in prize money.

However, Schnyder fell out of the top 10 in April 1999 and spent the next six years ranked in the 15–30 range before re-entering the top 10 in May 2005.

Schnyder defeated four top-10 players consecutively, including Serena Williams and then-world No. 1 Jennifer Capriati, in 2002 at the Family Circle Cup in Charleston, which is the largest women-only tennis event held in the United States.

On 5 December 2003, Schnyder married her German coach Rainer Hofmann, who was also an IT specialist, at a resort in Baden-Baden, Germany.

In December 2003, Schnyder married Rainer Hofmann, who had accompanied her on the WTA Tour since 1999 and became her full-time tennis coach in early 2003.

Schnyder won eleven singles titles, including a victory in Zürich (Tier-I event) over former No. 1, Lindsay Davenport, and five doubles titles.

Schnyder's best Grand Slam performance came at the 2004 Australian Open, where she reached the semifinals, before falling to Kim Clijsters.

Later that season, she also reached the semifinals at the Tier-I tournaments in Charleston and Zurich, two large WTA events where Schnyder compiled an excellent record.

Her first title on U.S. soil came in August 2005, when she won at Cincinnati's Western & Southern Open.

2005 was Schnyder's most consistent overall season to date.

She reached five tour finals, winning two of them (Gold Coast and Cincinnati, both Tier-III events).

She was runner-up at the Tier-I events Rome (to Amélie Mauresmo) and Zurich (to Lindsay Davenport).

She also reached the final in Linz (Tier II), falling to Nadia Petrova.

She reached the career high of world No. 7 after the end-of-season WTA Championships.

2006 proved to be a good season for Schnyder also, staying within the top 10 and reaching the finals in Charleston (defeating top seed and defending champion Justine Henin in the semifinals and also ending Henin's winning streak on clay, though Schnyder lost to Petrova in the final), and in Stanford (falling to top seed and defending champion Kim Clijsters).

Schnyder had a mediocre year in 2007, and she lost her top-10 ranking.

First, she obtained an invitation to play in the Watsons Water Champions Challenge.

She reached the fourth round of the Australian Open, where she lost to Anna Chakvetadze after leading 4–1 in the first set.

At the French Open, she reached the fourth round, where she had two match points against Maria Sharapova, but ended up losing 7–9 in the final set.

At Wimbledon, she was beaten in the fourth round by No. 1, Justine Henin, in straight sets.

At the Acura Classic in July, she reached the final, beating former No. 1 and compatriot, Martina Hingis, in three sets, and Russian Elena Dementieva, along the way, before losing to Sharapova, again in three sets.

Schnyder briefly moved up due to this.

However, at the US Open, she lost in the third round to the unseeded Austrian Tamira Paszek in a final-set tie-break, again wasting leads.

After that, she played at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart, where she lost to Ana Ivanovic.

She finished her year with a run to the Generali Ladies Linz final, beating Chakvetadze in the quarterfinals and Marion Bartoli in the semifinals, before convincingly losing in the final to Hantuchová.

Schnyder began 2008 by beating Mauresmo in the quarterfinals of the Mondial Women's Hardcourts tournament in the Gold Coast before losing to Li Na in the semifinals.

At the Australian Open, she lost in the second round to Australian Casey Dellacqua.

She then lost in the second round of the Proximus Diamond Games to eventual finalist Karin Knapp, losing in a final-set tiebreak.

She entered the Qatar Open and beat Paszek easily.

She lost to Slovakia's Dominika Cibulková in the second round.

Schnyder then competed in the Bangalore Open, a Tier-II event in India.

In early 2014, three years following her retirement from tennis, Schnyder announced her divorce to Hofman.

In November 2014, she gave birth to a daughter, Kim Ayla, and initially kept the father's name a secret.

She later named Jan Heino, her current partner, as Kim's father.