Tennis and All That

For me, the third Grand Slam of the year was about Barbora Strycova, a Czech player who mostly goes under the radar. Our focus is often distracted by Pliskova and Kvitova and we often fail to acknowledge other excellent Czech players. Vondrousova is another example of this. Journalists merely report that Barty ran over Vondrousova to win the French Open title. Instead, they should have been impressed that Vondrousova was the first teenager in a decade to reach a grand slam final (Wozniacki 2009 US Open) and the first teenager in 12 years to make it to the French Open final (RG) (Ivanovic 2007). It is also an impressive leap to go from having only 1 WTA title to her name in 2017 pre-injury comeback, to being a grand slam runner-up. Vondrousova is an amazing player to look out for in tournaments and is still only just 20 years old so should have plenty of years ahead of her on the tour. What 19 year old male tennis player has managed this in recent years? When the women’s game had a ...

Most of us, I should imagine, think athletes receive visas quickly so they can travel around the world competing in their chosen sport. So, it was a great surprise to me to discover that Russian tennis player Svetlana Kuznetsova was left waiting for her visa for the US Open Series leading up to the US Open. This visa failed to materialise, so forcing her to withdraw from the Citi Open, Washington DC, to avoid being penalized for an unintentional no-show. She has been travelling as a pro tennis player for 19 years or so. So why now? Not only is she a famous, two time, grand slam singles winner (US Open; RG) but an incredible athlete. One only has to look at her Instagram videos to see her off-court and on-court training to appreciate this. It is, I believe, the most impressive training regime I’ve ever seen on social media. Indeed, if it were not for social media we would not be aware of Kuznetsova’s plight. Had she not posted her visa problems on Instagram, albeit a little too late...