Tennis known for eating its young
The future is bright, the future is Emma. That’s how everyone is feeling across the British game, including at the national headquarters in Roehampton, where the suits have been celebrating her meteor strike on Planet Tennis.
Emma Raducanu is the most exciting player to emerge from what might be termed the modern system of Talent ID and colour-coded balls. Her inspirational effect will surely be felt across our clubs and parks, which have already gained a new influx of players through the inactivity of lockdown.
But can we really be sure that Raducanu is a bankable success story to last the next decade? There are pitfalls that can present themselves, crevasses that can open.
A different kind of data analysis confirms that one swallow does not make a summer. Let us take the end of the Serena Williams era as our starting point. The French Open of 2017 was the first to be played after Williams took maternity leave, and it was won by Jelena Ostapenko — a fearless hitter who ambushed Simona Halep in the final. Ostapenko has won three WTA titles since then, but not gone beyond the semifinals of a major.
There have been 19 major champions since Williams’s hegemony ended, and eight of them have been one-hit wonders (at this stage, anyway). That is the way of modern tennis. The men’s game is a closed shop, with Novak Djokovic glowering over the counter at potential rivals. The women’s game is a free-for-all.
So how can Raducanu give herself the best chance of being a perennial challenger at these big events? The most obvious answer is by staying fit.
The greatest threat is always physical, in a sport where one bad step can change your entire career.
Raducanu has admitted that her endurance is still catching up with that of her contemporaries. This is understandable, given her youth and the fact that she barely played a match in 2020 or the first half of 2021.
The moment you’re not having fun is the moment you’re not going to have a long career, at least in my opinion. Tennis teen Coco Gauff
It is important, however, that Raducanu does not ride this wave of form for so long that her body packs up. In her junior days, she had a reputation for being injury prone, and it would be unfortunate to see that label return.
One recent cautionary tale is provided by a young Canadian. Not Leylah Fernandez, but Bianca Andreescu, who won the 2019 US Open in a blaze of creative strokeplay.
Andreescu was only 19 at the time, but has barely featured in the grandslam conversation since. Yes, Covid played its part in breaking her rhythm, but so did a serious knee injury.
Her 21st birthday arrived in June and found her weeping on her courtside chair in Berlin after a firstround loss. It was a reminder of how evanescent sporting success can be.
From a British perspective, we have already been burned once in the last decade. When Laura Robson reached the US Open’s fourth round as a 18-year-old in 2012, we assumed that she would go even further, and so deliver on the promise she had showed by winning junior Wimbledon in 2008.
But that was before she suffered chronic wrist trouble in both arms, followed by the same sort of arthritic hip issues that have sidelined Andy Murray for much of the past four years.
Even though Robson was much more feted as a junior than Raducanu, her world ranking peaked at No 27.
Some past champions — including
last year’s male US Open winner Dominic Thiem — have found it hard to reboot their mentality after a maiden title.
Others have become lost in commercial commitments or a highfalutin celebrity lifestyle. The Raducanu family seem well-adjusted and thus well-placed to avoid such obvious traps. But the margins in this sport are small and it does not take much to blunt a player’s cutting edge.
Coco Gauff, an even younger teenage prodigy, addressed the issue of longevity neatly at the weekend, after she and her 19-year-old American partner Caty Mcnally had reached the final of the women’s doubles in New York.
“For me, I just try to make sure that I’m having fun on the court,” said
Gauff. “The moment you’re not having fun is the moment you’re not going to have a long career, at least in my opinion.”
It was a topical point, coming only a week after defending champion Naomi Osaka had left the US Open in tears after her third-round defeat at the hands of Leylah Fernandez.
“When I win, I don’t feel happy,” Osaka told reporters afterwards. “And then when I lose, I feel very sad.”
One thing we know: Raducanu’s career will play out in a very public manner, for there has never been a breakthrough as sudden and spectacular as hers. We can only hope for a steady progression, as opposed to the personal turmoil that has engulfed so many former champions.