Too much too young? How prodigies fared
Won her first WTA title aged 15 years, three months and 23 days – but six years later had retired.
Was in the world’s top 10 by the time she was 14 before going off the rails. Came back to win three Grand Slams, before injuries took their toll.
A Grand Slam winner at 15, she retired from singles at 22 after being plagued by injury. (Naomi Osaka, Ashleigh Barty and Bianca Andreescu), it is hardly as if the tour lacks fresh blood.
Compare those three with the previous list of young women who had won WTA titles before the age of 16. Only avid tennis fans will remember the names of Vaidisova – who retired at 20 – or Tamira Paszek. Even Martina Hingis, who had such success as a teenager, retired from singles at 22.
Gauff and Osaka – who came face to face in a memorable meeting at the recent US Open – have much in common. Both grew up playing on the public courts of Delray Beach, where their intense training schedules replaced the school timetables that the average child followed. “We would get there around the same time, 8am or something,” Osaka recalled last month at Arthur Ashe Stadium, having just scored a 6-3, 6-0 victory and then praised Gauff ’s parents in a moving on-court interview. But she would train by herself, then she would train with other people.
That was the crazy part to me. She was, like, 10.” These sorts of tennisplaying families tend to focus on the golden child’s sporting development early, giving up much of what we would consider a normal upbringing in exchange. They pour every resource into the young athlete’s future, and there is often a price to be paid later on. To give an example, Osaka’s family won a court case against a coach from those Delray days who claimed he was entitled to 20 per cent of her profits. Gauff ’s father Corey has also been the target of a lawsuit from his mother, Deborah Wright, who claimed she was owed money on her investment in the family’s sports bar.
So far, Gauff has made professional tennis look deceptively simple, both through her athletic gamestyle and her unusual candour with the media. She also benefits from the experienced representation of Team8, Roger Federer’s management company. “I’ve told the WTA they should loosen up the rules,” said Federer during Wimbledon. “I loved seeing Hingis doing what she did at a young age.” But when a player goes viral in the way that Gauff and Osaka have, everyone in their inner circle has to adjust quickly. With so much happening, the WTA rule succeeds because it puts a handbrake on the runaway train, helping young stars find the time and space to develop incrementally. Doing away with it – even for one inspirational individual – would be a retrograde step.
Ready for the call: Andy Murray’s wife Kim is expecting their third child soon and I didn’t want to be in that position again.”
Murray will open his campaign tonight against a Belgian wild card, world No 158 Kimmer Coppejans. He has climbed to No 243 in the world himself, after picking up four wins in China recently, and is likely to call a halt to his season – with the exception of the Davis Cup in late November – after this tournament.
Meanwhile, Roger Federer has told the audience at an exhibition match in Japan that he intends to participate in next summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo. Technically, Federer is not eligible, as he has not appeared in the Davis Cup since 2015. But there is room for special dispensation.
Kyle Edmund’s slide down the rankings means that Dan Evans is the 13th man to be ranked as British No1. “I don’t look at myself [that way],” Evans told the BBC. “Andy is British No1, and then there’s me, Cameron [Norrie] and Kyle.”