• The two-time Grand Slam winner, 29, is getting hitched to model Arthur Borges 
• Muguruza told fans she won’t feature at Wimbledon or the French Open this year

Garbine Muguruza has revealed that she’s set to tie to the knot with a fan that she randomly met in Central Park, following an announcement that she’s taking a break from tennis to focus on her family.

The one-time Wimbledon champion (2017) is getting hitched to Arthur Borges – two years after the model came near the 29-year-old athlete in New York during the 2021 U.S. Open.

‘My hotel was close to Central Park and I was bored, so I thought I should go for a walk,’ Muguruza recalled, according to The Sun. ‘I go out and I run into him on the street.

‘Suddenly, he turns and says, ”Good luck at the U.S. Open.” I was left thinking, ”Wow, he’s so handsome.”’

The pair got to know each other by regularly strolling through Central Park, The Sun reports, embarking in a romantic relationship well beyond Muguruza’s fourth-round exit.

Muguruza, who was once ranked as the world’s No. 1 in 2017, revealed that Borges got down on one knee earlier in May.

‘You had me at ”Hello,”’ she shared on Instagram from Marbella, Spain, where the proposal was made.

Muguruza also opened up on when and where her ideal wedding would take place.

‘We would like to be next year, in the summer, near the beach and in Spain, because it is the place that most unites us,’ the tennis tard told Spanish-language publication ¡Hola!

Born in Spain but having lived most of his life in Finland, Borges met his wife-to-be while working in New York for Tom Ford.

‘He’s a mix, like me,’ Muguruza –  a two-time Grand Slam champion, winning the French Open in 2016 and Wimbledon a year later – told ¡Hola! ‘I’m half-Venezuelan and half-Spanish, so we understand each other. We share that feeling of being citizens of the world.’

As of late, Murguruza communicated to fans that she’s taking a period of absence from tennis, sharing in April that she is ‘going to lengthen this period till summer.’

‘Hey guys what’s going on,’ wrote the right-hander on Instagram. ‘Spending time with family and friends and it’s really been healthy and amazing so I am going to lenghthen this period till summer.. therefore I am going to miss clay and grass season.

‘Thanks for all the lovely messages and will be updating you guys.’

It remains unclear if the tennis star will compete at the US Open, which begins late August.

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Garbine Muguruza reveals she is marrying a fan she randomly met in Central Park during 2021 US Open

Garbine Muguruza has had a disappointing start to the 2023 season, losing all four of her matches so far. With first-round exits at the Adelaide International 1, the Adelaide International 2, the Australian Open and the Lyon Open, the former World No. 1 has nowhere to go but up for the rest of the year.

Despite all that, the Spaniard has not lost hope just yet and is confident of turning things around for herself. Set to play against Karolina Pliskova in her opener at the Abu Dhabi Open up next, Muguruza spoke to The National recently, touching on her run of form of late.

A seasoned pro with more than a decade of experience under her belt, the two-time Grand Slam champion pointed to how tennis is a sport with “no memory” — meaning one can lose early one week and still go on to win a title the next week. Having gone through all that, Garbine Muguruza knows she just has to remain calm and keep working hard to get herself out of the slump she’s in right now.

“In tennis everything changes very quickly, this sport has no memory. One week things can go very wrong for you and the next you can win a tournament. Keeping calm is essential, being humble enough to accept the situation and keep working hard,” Muguruza said. “I am a tennis player who has gone through ups and downs in her career, I have experience and I must simplify things.”

The 29-year-old admitted that she had put too much pressure on herself last year, a season that did not go according to plan either. Starting 2022 as the World No. 3, Muguruza ended the year in the 55th spot, registering a 12-17 win/loss record and reaching no semifinals.Gar

But now that she has nothing to lose, Muguruza is confident in her own abilities, hoping she can enjoy her time on the court along the way. The optimist that she is, the two-time Grand Slam champion looks forward to seeing how quickly everything can change, especially when one least expects it.

“Last year I put too much pressure on myself, but now the ranking is not paramount, although I know I need to win games to improve a little. In any case I try not to think about it, I think the best thing I can do is enjoy the time on the pitch and try to win titles,” Garbine Muguruza said. “I am optimistic, I know that as much as things have not been going well lately, everything can change when you least expect it and quickly.”

“It’s time to be humble” – Garbine Muguruza after Australian Open exit

Speaking to the press after her exit at the 2023 Australian Open at the hands of Elise Mertens, Garbine Muguruza admitted that it was time for her to be “humble” and start playing the smaller 250 tournaments.

As to why she kept losing despite making early inroads, the Spaniard attributed it to a combination of tension and fatigue, which prevented her from capitalizing on the key moments of the game.

“I will have to make a proper calendar with my ranking,” Garbine Muguruza said. “I’ll try to play the best tournaments too but when I can’t I’ll look at other lesser ones. I will value these type of tournaments. It’s time to be humble. I think it has been a mixture of tension and fatigue. Physically I have noticed a downturn. The truth is that the key moments are costing me.”

Former Wimbledon champion Garbine Muguruza has announced she will take an extended break from tennis this summer

The former Wimbledon champion Garbiñe Muguruza has become the latest high-profile woman to walk away from tennis, further depleting a tour which is already starved of star power.

In an Instagram post, Muguruza said that she was “spending time with family and friends” before adding that “I am going to lengthen this period till summer, therefore I am going to miss clay and grass season”.

While Muguruza’s post implies that she should be back for the autumn, there is no firm commitment. Like Ashleigh Barty – another Wimbledon champion who retired suddenly a year ago – she appears to have lost her enthusiasm for the tennis carousel.

At 29, Muguruza is two-and-a-half years older than Barty, and has more miles on the clock. She is closer in age to 31-year-old Simona Halep – another Wimbledon champion – who hasn’t played since testing positive for a banned substance at last year’s US Open. It’s understood that Halep is still several weeks away from being ready to bring her defence to a tribunal.

Another big name who has been absent since September is 25-year-old Naomi Osaka, a four-time major champion on hard courts. In Osaka’s case, she is taking maternity leave in preparation for the birth of her first child, and has insisted that she is keen to return to professional tennis in the future. And yet, as with Muguruza, Osaka has not always given the impression of enjoying the touring life.

With Serena Williams having retired last year, and Venus Williams a very occasional visitor, the WTA Tour is now dominated by Eastern European women. This season, the trio of Poland’s Iga Swiatek, Belarus’s Aryna Sabalenka and Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina have been the most effective performers, although the Czech Republic’s Petra Kvitova – yet another Wimbledon champion – beat Rybakina in Sunday’s final of the Miami Open.

Given that tennis’s commercial pull is hugely reliant on star names and reliable rivalries, you can see how the absence of so many potential draw cards is hurting the WTA’s balance sheet. In fact, the WTA board recently sold off a 20 per cent stake in the tour’s commercial operations to private equity firm CVC, in an attempt to balance the books.

With the exception of Romania’s Halep, the other women mentioned above all hail from relatively large markets: Muguruza from Spain, Barty from Australia, Osaka from Japan and the Williams sisters from the United States. It is an unfortunate reality that these nations offer more commercial opportunities than the former Eastern bloc.

In Muguruza’s case, she has suffered a prolonged form slump that dates back to her last tournament win – which came at the WTA Finals in Guadalajara 17 months ago. She delivered a career-worst season in 2022, registering only 12 wins alongside 17 defeats, and has lost all four matches that she contested this year.

As a result, Muguruza’s ranking has slumped to No 132 in the world – her lowest figure since she was a dynamic 18-year-old. This has left her unable to earn direct entry to most WTA events. But as a two-time slam champion – who won Wimbledon in 2017 and the French Open the previous year – she could surely have asked for wild cards (tennis jargon for discretional invitations) if she had wanted to play.

Muguruza and Barty have earned very similar sums in prizemoney – around £20 million and £19 million respectively – and they both cashed in at the WTA Finals, with Barty landing a world-record £3.5 million payday in Shenzhen in 2019.

Increasingly, it seems as if the ever-increasing pay-packets available on the WTA Tour – which will soon be further boosted by the involvement of CVC – are equating to shorter careers rather than longer ones.

Anecdotally, women are said to find professional tennis a lonelier lifestyle than men. This argument was first advanced in John Feinstein’s seminal book 1991 Hard Courts, in which Martina Navratilova’s coach Mike Estep said “When I played, we all tried like hell to beat one another but then went out for dinner or a beer at night. That doesn’t happen on the women’s tour. They’re all friendly to one another in the locker-room, but once they leave the locker-room, they almost always stick to themselves.”

This diagnosis has changed little over the past 30 years. Several ways of making tennis more congenial for female players have been discussed, including more women in support staffs and more team events. But the WTA tour – which echoes the ATP model that evolved piecemeal in the 1960s and 70s – shows little sign of changing.