So we’re almost into the 3rd round matches in Melbourne and usually by now the nation’s attention, by no fault of its own, would be well and truly fixed on Andy Murray and his attempt to navigate through the men’s draw, put us all out of our decades of misery and stop us crying over when we’ll have a Grand Slam win to cheer! But whilst our attention maybe mostly focused on that, it has been a somewhat unexpected pleasure to see a couple of British women making a few headlines and progressing nicely.
As a bit of critic of the women’s game in general over the past few years I’ve become a bit disenchanted with our female representatives on the tour. However with a huge effort from Nigel Sears and his team at the LTA, great determination from the current crop of players and an investment in talented youngsters getting the top world class coaching available,might it be time to say that women’s tennis in this country has now turned a corner?! The current Australian Open is the first time two British women, Elena Baltacha and Katie O’Brien, have made it through to the second round of a major, outside Wimbledon, since the French Open in 1992. A corner turned indeed I think.
Baltacha is perhaps the most shining example of this with a run of startling form. Most people who had suffered the kind of setbacks and problems that Baltacha has encountered over the last few years would probably have packed it in and stopped putting themselves through the pain, and who could really blame them? However, that’s not the mentality of an athlete and the perseverance that Baltacha has shown screams top class athleticism. After taking ten months off following back surgery in 2006 and a desperate struggle to find form once she returned to the sport, Elena was ready to retire after the 2008 US Open “I was probably a week away from quitting. I'd been travelling by myself, which was tough”, but after a decent showing during qualifying she felt she still had something to give “I got to the last round of qualifying. We got home and I thought to myself: 'Maybe there is something still there”.
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I was probably a week away from quitting. I'd been travelling by myself, which was tough
If the sports gods hadn’t thrown enough at her though, Elena also has had to contend with a liver condition that has hampered her health, not just as a professional tennis player but in everyday life. It’s a condition that now has to be managed with a complex mixture of ten pills a day, “I'm on medication to keep everything under control and I get monitored twice a year. The professor tells me to lead a normal life, though he always says that it's pretty unusual for someone to have this condition and still play sport at the level I'm at”. Despite these adversities Elena has now battled back and currently holds the British No. 1 position and is ranked 83rd in the world. Admittedly Baltacha may have been slightly fortuitous in claiming the British No.1 spot as the woman she overtook, Anne Keothavong, has herself had a run of injuries that have set back her career. However, abit of fortune for Baltacha is well over due and as it involved injury to a fellow professional I think it’s better to label it circumstantial rather than fortune.
It was perhaps Keothavong’s achievement of braking into the top fifty in early 2009 that first showed signs of the women’s professional game starting to improve. However, there had been earlier signs that there was real talent worth nurturing coming through when Laura Robson won the girl’s Junior title at Wimbledon aged just 14 and then, this year, when 17 year old Heather Watson was victorious at US Open Juniors; both girls will now be looking to step up into the professional game.
It would be stupid and premature of me to start expecting titles and glory en masse in the near future from our female tennis players. With the likes Henin and Clijsters returning from retirement and invigorating the women’s competition, a boost that was badly needed as the women’s game was slowly descending into an audition stage for America’s Next Top Model; it will now be harder now than it has been for a long time for an outsider to brake into that top bracket. It is a great achievement though for all those involved at the top of women’s tennis in this country to have a few more successes in early rounds of major tournaments and an optimistic outlook of what we can look forward to in the future. I, for one, will be making a much improved attempt to follow their careers and lend my support and applause during these tournaments. Starting with Baltacha's third round match against number 2 seed Danara Safina