Tennis - Australian Open - Melbourne Park, Melbourne, Australia - January 17, 2023 Spain's Garbine Muguruza in action during her first round match against Belgium's Elise Mertens REUTERS/Loren Elliott/ File Photo
(Reuters) - Spain's former world number 1 and Wimbledon and French Open champion Garbine Muguruza announced her retirement at a news conference on Saturday, making the extended break she had announced a year ago a permanent step.
Venezuelan-born Muguruza won the French Open in 2016 and Wimbledon in 2017, and she reached the final of the Australian Open in 2020. Last April she said she would take a break from competition to spend more time with her family.
"I didn't miss the discipline and the difficulty of the life I had before. I have been realizing that what I most want to look forward to is my next chapter and not the tennis chapter," she said at a news conference in Madrid.
Muguruza, 30, was ranked number one in 2017 and was ranked as high as third by the end of 2021 when she won three WTA titles.
(Reporting by Tommy Lund in Gdansk; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
