Hibino enjoys eating local foods and sightseeing at famous places while travelling on tour.

[5] The following March, she made her debut at the Grade 1 Japan Open in Nagoya, reaching the second round in both the singles and doubles events.

[5][6] Three weeks later, she won her first junior singles title at the Grade-4 Gallipoli Youth Tennis Cup in Queensland after defeating Ashleigh Barty in the final.

[5][6] At her next tournament, the Grade-1 Chang LTAT ITF Junior Championships in Nonthaburi, Hibino achieved her most significant result to date in singles, getting to the semifinals.

[5] However, her doubles performance continued to lead to good results as she reached the semifinals of the Canadian Open and Osaka Mayor's Cup.

[13] After not having such impressive results during the first four months of 2013, she reached her first bigger ITF final at the $50k Kangaroo Cup in Gifu, in the doubles event.

[13] During the season of 2014, Hibino advanced to a couple of quarterfinals and semifinals on the ITF Circuit and reached one final in both singles and doubles, at the $25k Fergana Challenger.

[10][11] However, she made some progress, making her WTA Tour main-draw debut at the Japan Women's Open in the doubles event where she partnered with Riko Sawayanagi.

[10] She failed to win the title against Kristýna Plíšková but then the following week, she won the $50k Kurume Cup beating Eri Hozumi in the final.

She entered the main draw as a wildcard player and also won her first WTA match, after defeating her compatriot Hiroko Kuwata.

This helped her to enter qualifying of the Premier-level Pan Pacific Open but she was stopped again by Bondarenko in the final stage of qualification.

[18] By the end of the year, she advanced to the semifinal of the WTA 125 Hua Hin Championships,[15] followed up with the final of the $100k Tokyo Open[10] that made her move to No.

[13] Having made it to relatively few WTA main draws in previous years, Hibino mostly played tour-level events in 2016 as a result of being in the top 100.

In early August, she advanced to another WTA quarterfinal, this time at the Brasil Tennis Cup in Florianópolis but lost to Irina-Camelia Begu.

She followed this performance by playing for Japan at the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, where this time she was able to defeat Begu but then lost to Muguruza.

After first-round losses at the French Open and Wimbledon, she managed to win three matches in a row in singles for the first time since March.

[15] At the US Open, she recorded her first singles Grand Slam win after defeating CiCi Bellis in a three-set match in the first round.

[15] Despite not reaching any at least a quarterfinal in any tour-level events since the beginning of the season, Hibino then made significant progress at the Japan Women's Open in Hiroshima.

[15] On her road to the semifinal, she defeated three top-100 players, including two former Grand Slam champions: Sloane Stephens[33] and Jeļena Ostapenko.

[37] Hibino started year with a Grand Slam match win over wildcard player Astra Sharma at the Australian Open.

Together with her compatriot Makoto Ninomiya, she lost to the Russian–Belgian combination of Veronika Kudermetova and Elise Mertens in straight sets.

At the Olympics, she also played in doubles alongside Ninomiya but the lost in the first round to the Australian team of Ashleigh Barty and Storm Sanders.

[41] Gaining entry as a lucky loser, Hibino won her third career title at the Prague Open, defeating fourth seed Linda Nosková in the final.

[42][43] Partnering Oksana Kalashnikova, she also won the doubles title at the same tournament with a win over Quinn Gleason and Elixane Lechemia in the championship match.

[42][43] She defeated top seed Beatriz Haddad Maia[44] at the Jiangxi Open in Nanchang, China, and reached the quarterfinals by winning her next match against Kimberly Birrell.

[46] At the Indian Wells Open, Hibino qualified and recorded her first win at this tournament defeating Venus Williams in three sets,[47] before losing to 17th seed Veronika Kudermetova in the second round.

[49] Alongside Makoto Ninomiya, she was runner-up in the doubles at the Hong Kong 125 Open in October, losing to Monica Niculescu and Elena-Gabriela Ruse in the final.

Hibino had a disappointing start to her match against Luksika Kumkhum, losing the first set 6–0 but then managed to make a comeback.

[60] Following a win and loss for Japan, Hibino had her chance to secure her team a spot in the World Group play-offs.

[67] Only main-draw results in WTA Tour, Grand Slam tournaments, Fed Cup/Billie Jean King Cup, and Olympic Games are included in win–loss records.