Hingis has enough to move on

CARLSBAD -- The artistry of Martina Hingis is less appreciated these days, because tennis fans have fewer opportunities for appreciation.

That’s why her 7-5, 6-2 victory over Michaella Krajicek in a second-round match of the Acura Classic seemed to delight the fans at the LaCosta Resort on Tuesday night.

Hingis, seeded seventh, will be 27 in September. She missed three full seasons starting in 2003 to let injuries heal and to see what retirement felt like and hasn’t won a Grand Slam tournament since the 1999 Australian Open, one of her five Slams.

She returned in 2006 and was still good enough to make lots of money, but now all those major tournament semifinals and finals became fourth rounds and quarterfinals. What contributed to driving her out of the game -- never entirely copped to by her -- was bigger, stronger players. She had wandered into the age of tennis so aptly labeled by broadcaster Mary Carrillo as “Big Babe Tennis.”

Hingis’ return has well established that her opponents still are bigger and stronger and that her body still breaks down, as it did with back and hip injuries that kept her out of this year’s French Open and may have contributed to her elimination at Wimbledon by Laura Granville, the 57th-ranked player in the world.

“It’s been since Indian Wells or maybe Miami [both in March] since I felt like myself,” Hingis said, adding that Tuesday night was close to that. “Everything is responding well. I haven’t felt this good in a long time.

“I’m playing better. Tonight, I got tested right away. [Krajicek] made the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, so I know where I stand now.”

Hingis was 13 when she got a wild card into a satellite event and won it. She was an instant prodigy and so much of what she was all those years of her late teens and early 20s remain.

She still glides the baseline while others run it. She still constructs a point like few others on the tour. When she hits a shot, it is with the next two or three in mind. But for every seven or eight-shot rally that brings her a point, her bigger, stronger opponents will get three or four just by serving bigger or hitting harder, often with no mind to why or how.

Also, unlike many of her opponents, she can play the net and has always been an accomplished doubles player. In her career, she won 42 singles titles and 36 doubles titles, and those net skills add yet another element of entertainment to the game she offers fans.

Tuesday night, when she came to the net, it was with purpose and poise, and something good almost always happened for her. Krajicek, whose brother, Richard, a one-time Wimbledon champion who was a master volleyer in his day, was stiffer and less sure in that part of her game, which still featured enough power to make this a tough early match for Hingis.

“Her serve is quite big,” Hingis said. But she also knew where the Achilles’ heel was for an opponent nine years her junior.

“She is quite young,” Hingis said, part as an explanation and part almost wistfully.

In the second match, second-seeded Serbian Jelena Jankovic romped through young U.S. player Vania King of Long Beach, 6-3, 6-0. Also winning Tuesday were fourth-seeded Nadia Petrova and fifth-seeded Marion Bartoli.

Top-seeded Maria Sharapova plays her first match tonight at 7.

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bill.dwyre@latimes.com