Anyone who watches kids sport will recognise the characters in women’s tennis. It is as if we have never left the junior playing fields. The same pushy parents; the same mix of politics and gamesmanship. You know the way the manager’s son is often either the best player in the team, or the worst? The dad either desperately competitive to make sure his talented offspring gets on the fast track, or frantically scheming to ensure he picks the starting line-up so junior is selected for a team he would never make without the leg-up of nepotism. Well, women’s tennis remains a lot like that.
At the French Open recently I watched a quarter-final screaming match between Dinara Safina, the Russian number one seed, and Victoria Azarenka of Belarus. Both players emitting noises similar to poking woodland creatures of various sizes unexpectedly with a stick.
What was most noticeable, however, was the large man in the family section of court Philippe Chatrier, who rose to his feet every time Safina hit a good shot and stayed there, clapping, several seconds after the crowd’s appreciation had subsided, the noise of his hands echoing around the otherwise silent arena. Slowly, he would then sit down. He may have been her father, uncle, coach, even a passing stalker, but there was something bizarre in his actions, a sentinel presence that cannot be found in other sports.
It is fortunate that these young girls eventually find their own path in the sport, surrounded by sensible advisors and officials with a history of nurturing and protecting professional athletes. Meanwhile, Laura Robson, 15 years and five months and the brightest prospect in British women’s tennis for years, has been given a wild card by the All England Club to play at Wimbledon this week. Hey ho.
Last year, Robson became the first Briton since Annabel Croft in 1984 to win the Wimbledon girls’ event. It would seem she could benefit from development at her own pace. The All England Club think differently, however, and now she will be the youngest player at the tournament since Martina Hingis in 1994 (when women’s tennis was less of a power game). Martina Navratilova supported Robson’s inclusion, saying she is ready and would have been upset otherwise, but counselled that if she lost in the first round it would not be a catastrophe.
And therein lies the problem: because, at Wimbledon, everything connected with British defeat is painted as catastrophe and the pressure on any player considered to have promise is enormous, as there are so few.
Andy Murray will undergo the same trial next week, saddled with the phenomenon known as Murraymania and the forlorn optimism of a nation. He found it hard to handle as a twentysomething, let alone a teenager.
Robson, like Murray, could win Wimbledon one day; yet think of Amelie Mauresmo, crushed by expectation each year at the French Open. It is said that Robson does not have stereotypical pushy parents: the All-England Club may live to regret filling that void.
Martin Samuel is the chief sports writer of the Daily Mail, where his column appears on Monday and Wednesday