‘It’s been a long road, but I am OK standing on the island by myself’
Taylor Townsend has shaken off body shape comments and extra security checks to be a success, writes Simon Briggs
Taylor Townsend’s matterof-fact delivery makes her contribution to the Black Lives Matter movement all the more powerful.
Earlier this month, Townsend offered her thoughts on the subject of systemic racism. She spoke of how, on tour, she was routinely subjected to additional security measures, revealing that she is often mistaken for fellow African-american Coco Gauff, or for one of the Williams sisters, because people think “all of us look the same, all of us are built the same”.
“You walk through and nobody stops you,” she told the Tennis United project, jointly run by the men’s and women’s tours. “I’m walking through and somebody has to check my bag, my credential, my coach’s bag, my coach’s credential. It’s extra precautions that need to be taken to make sure that I belong.
“This is our reality. It happens all the time – week in, week out, every tournament that I play in the States, overseas, it doesn’t matter. Hopefully, this [the Black Lives Matter protests] just creates a safe space and an awareness for people to want to talk about it.”
In a post-match interview at January’s Australian Open,
Telegraph Women’s Sport sat with the 24-year-old to hear about some of the challenges she has endured in her short career.
Like all too many Africanamerican sportswomen, Townsend has been judged on her body shape. In 2012 she won the junior Australian Open and finished the season as the best 16-year-old in the world in the junior rankings. It should have been the start of a dizzying upward trajectory, but instead the United States Tennis Association told her to sit out the US Open junior tournament – denying her wild cards into the main event because of her shape. “Our concern is her longterm health … and her long-term development as a player,” said Patrick Mcenroe, then director of player development.
Publicly fat-shaming a young Africanamerican girl was a low point for the federation. “How would you feel if you were the best in the world, and they tell you you can’t do what you wanted to do?” Townsend’s mother, Sheila, said at the time.
Serena Williams tweeted: “Women athletes come in all different sizes and shapes and colours and everything.” Lindsay Davenport and Martina Navratilova both spoke of their outrage, describing how they also did not fit into this narrow body ideal when they were teenagers. “I would have been cut from the USTA programme,” added a “livid” Navratilova.
The USTA duly backed down, with Mcenroe blaming miscommunication. Unsurprisingly, the incident knocked Townsend off her stride. “When personal issues are publicised… that’s always attached to you,” she said, during a run to the fourth round of the US Open last year. “It’s been a long road, a lot of haters.”
Townsend insists that she bears “no ill-will or animosity” towards the USTA. “They have transformed in terms of being more inclusive.”
It is not the only gruelling episode she has been through. Aged 18, she discovered that her mother was not handling her tennis income as she would have hoped. “I was a minor, so you would never think that your mum would be doing something that maybe wasn’t ethical. But as I got older, and I started to want to be more involved in my business, I found out certain things.
“So I called her and I told her, ‘I forgive you for the things that happened.’ For my mental [health], I let it go and I moved on. Now, we don’t speak. I don’t like the way she conducts herself. But my dad’s great: he respects my boundaries.”
With so many off-court issues to process, Townsend’s results fluctuated. In the late summer of 2014, she faced Serena Williams on the biggest stage in tennis: the 24,000-seat Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York. Two years later, she had slumped so badly that she found herself in Pelham, Alabama, with a 69-year-old named Gail Falkenberg across the net.
But by last September, she had rediscovered her poise and self-belief. The evidence came at the US Open, where she toppled Simona Halep – the Wimbledon champion – on the way to the last 16. Afterwards, a bewildered Halep shook her head and admitted that she had never seen so many net-rushes in her life. Townsend smiled at the mention of that satisfying week. “I gained a lot of followers and people who admired,” she said. “It was just refreshing. I was playing the game that I knew I could play, but I had got away from that. So it’s nice people recognise that and honestly enjoy it.
“You have to enjoy the successes and the downs as well. I try to embrace the things that make me unique. I am OK with standing on the island by myself.”