WTA success, no child’s play

Arantxa Sanchez, the former No.1 and teen prodigy, says equipment, diet helping players peak late

“IT’S THE biggest win of my career, because I’d mostly played smaller tournaments. I won a 15K tournament and that was like a thousand dollars, so I definitely don’t know what I’ll do with the money I won here! My mom will have to help me out!”

Marketa Vondrousova was overawed by the $40,000 prize money she got after winning the inaugural Ladies Open Biel Bienne on Sunday. At 17, the Czech teen became the youngest WTA title winner in almost two years. Women’s tennis has seen a lot of prodigies, from 15-year-old Charlotte Dodd winning Wimbledon in 1887 to 16-year-old Martina Hingis’ triumph at the 1997 Australian Open.

But successes at a young age are now few and far between.

It has been 13 years since Svetlana Kuznetsova won the 2004 US Open title at the age of 19. The Russian’s win came soon after 17-year-old compatriot Maria Sharapova won at Wimbledon.

Lack of wonderkids doesn’t surprise Arantxa Sanchez. The former world No 1 - in Delhi to promote ‘Rendez-vous a Roland Garros’, a junior French Open wildcard event - says playing on the junior circuit alone isn’t enough for a breakthrough.

“In our generation, we turned professional at a much younger age. As a result, our champions were very younger,” said Arantxa, who turned pro at the age of 14 - much like the Williams sisters - and defeated Steffi Graf to win the 1989 French Open three years later. She pocketed four Majors in an era when her contemporaries included Mary Pierce, Gabriela Sabatini and Monica Seles. All of them had won a Grand Slam by the age of 20; Graf had completed a Golden Slam.

“You don’t see it very often anymore. Now the players have to go through the process of a junior,” said the Spaniard who also became world No. 1 in both singles and doubles in 1992. “To compete with the pros, they have to get the points and the ranking to qualify for tournaments and keep putting in consistent performances. When you play your age on the junior circuit, the results are better because you’re battling the same generation. But you gain a lot of experience playing older players.”

While Sanchez admits that coming through the ranks has been a challenge regardless of the era, the juniors today “have to make it click in the first year of turning pro” to put up a fight against the more physical top players.

The average age of the WTA top 10 is 27.4 - a result of the increasing longevity in the modern game and players peaking late. Current world No 1 Angelique Kerber won her only two Grand Slam titles - the Australian Open and the US Open - last year at the age of 28.

“Nowadays, because of the equipment, the diet, the recovery, top players are peaking late and are more mature and stronger both physically and mentally,” said Sanchez. “Then there’s the difference in the game itself. The surfaces are slower, the bounce is higher which means long rallies from the baseline.”

Forgiving racquets, synthetic strings and homogenised surfaces have amplified the rise of bigger, stronger players. The touch and variety once prevalent in the ladies’ game has been replaced by power. The kind of physical strength required to indulge in a baseline slugfest is a result of years of off-court training and building the body - something which is hard to do as a teenager. As a result, dominant juniors have often fallen on hard times once they have moved up. None of the junior world No. 1s from the last decade have gone on to top the senior charts or even win a Grand Slam. If they do manage to qualify for a pro tournament, they get muscled out by the big guns - a trend which has left the ITF considering a new tier to help junior players make a secured transition to the senior level.

Female players have it tougher thanks to the age-eligibility rule that prevents players from undertaking a full-time playing schedule till they turn 18. The oft-amended rule bars players younger than 15 from playing at tour level and limits them to a part-time schedule until 18.

However, Sanchez doesn’t want to deflate all hope. “When juniors ask for my advice, I just tell them to try their best and think positive because it’s a long-term sport. It’s a long journey and I wish young players achieve the same goals I dreamed of as a four-year-old with a racquet for a toy.”

For teens like Vondrousova - who won the title in Bern hours after 36-year-old Italian Francesca Schiavone picked up the other WTA title in Bogota - it might be just too long a journey.

Arantxa Sanchez won her first Grand Slam, the French Open, at 17.