Laura breaks free from the pain at last
Robson back on track after learning how to loosen up
LAURA ROBSON may go down as the happiest person ever to have had an idyllic Italian holiday rudely abandoned after only a few hours. Back in a Grand Slam draw on merit after coming through three qualifying rounds at the US Open, the former British No1 barely had time for a walk up Vesuvius before being summoned to New York.
Believing it unlikely that she would get the wild card into qualifying she needed (a measure of how low her ranking had dropped), Robson had headed to Italy with friends after winning a $25,000 event in Landisville, Pennsylvania, during the Olympics.
Her brief vacation began a week last Monday, before hearing almost immediately that she was being offered a place in the qualifying event. ‘I landed in Italy at 9am, went up Vesuvius and did it a bit of Pompeii and went straight back to the airport,’ said Robson in the wake of a 7-6, 6-1 win over recent top 100 player Tatjana Maria of Germany.
‘I dropped my friends off at the villa, which was amazing, and then turned around and came back. I was there maybe seven hours.
‘I was panicking a little bit but my main priority was just to get back to London and then get on the first flight here. It was actually a shocker, though, because when I landed here, with all the travel I got conjunctivitis.
‘You’ve never seen an uglier eye. I couldn’t come in here one day because I was still contagious so they sent me to a specialist and it was swollen shut.’
All’s well that ends well, and not just because Robson is guaranteed a minimum £33,000 prize money for playing in the first round proper, where she will meet British No3 Naomi Broady.
Of wider significance is that the former world No27 — a ranking achieved at only 19 — finally looks ready to revive a career that has been under threat ever since she started to develop wrist problems late in 2013.
Her victory over Maria was her eighth in a row, the first time she has gained any sort of momentum since returning to action following wrist surgery in spring 2014.
The concern with Robson, a natural ballstriker with rare timing, has always been her struggles in the smaller tournaments away from the spotlight. For that reason she thought the title in obscure Landisville more important than qualifying at Flushing Meadows, where she reached the fourth round three years ago.
‘I think winning a tournament is probably a bit better,’ she said. ‘It’s just been a lot of matches in a row, so with every one I’m getting more confident and I’m feeling better closing matches out. Even when my ball toss on the serve is going haywire [an age old problem] I’m not panicking about it.’
It is still early days but Robson, now 22, believes that freeing herself from thinking how good she used to be is a key factor.
‘I’m not really looking at it that way any more. I maybe was at the start of the year but it’s a totally different vibe for me now. Now that I’m in the main draw I’m pumped about it, but I don’t really think about how I used to play because it’s so far down the line.
‘I put so much pressure on myself every time I entered a tournament with my protected ranking [a temporary privilege for those coming back from longterm injuries] to do well because you feel like you have to win to get your ranking back up quicker.
‘I don’t think it was a healthy way of thinking about it and I kind of let that all go after Wimbledon. I knew how hard I was working on the practice court and in the gym. I had a couple of horrendous tournaments but you just have to keep thinking it’s going to come together, and I knew that when it did I’d be ready for it because I’d put the work in, so I feel a lot freer.’
What seems to have been a turning point is spending more time in London, working under the close eye of British coaches Colin Beecher and Lucie Ahl.
They will know that little has been achieved yet of substance. After all, she is barely assured of being back in the top 200 after this.
Strange how wrist injuries have been the source of prominent storylines: Rafael Nadal, Juan Martin del Potro and Novak Djokovic. And now, perhaps, Robson may provide one more.