When Mika Stojsavljevic dropped to her knees on Saturday afternoon, having just scored a straight-sets win over Japan’s Wakana Sonobe in the girls’ final, she completed British interest in this US Open in the most satisfying manner.
In an ideal world Jack Draper would have been out there playing Taylor Fritz in the men’s final on Sunday, and perhaps even lifting his maiden grand-slam title.
But in the real world we live in, this was still an excellent way to finish the grand-slam year. By reaching the semi-finals – where he lost to Jannik Sinner in a cauldron of New York humidity – Draper had delivered the best run by a British player at a major since Cameron Norrie went out at the same stage of Wimbledon in 2022.
Add in the junior performances, where Charlie Robertson and Mingge Xu both reached semi-finals of their own, and the whole tournament feels like a tonic. A much-needed one, after Andy Murray – the man who had carried the standard for the past two decades – retired just over a month ago amid emotional scenes in Paris.
Admittedly, Draper still has some issues to address, including his tendency to wilt in the heat. The term “sweating sickness” – which you might recognise as a mysterious affliction of Tudor England – could also apply to the nausea and dehydration which overcame him against Sinner.
But Draper has shown enough here to suggest that he can trouble anyone on his day. His application is not in doubt, and he will certainly do everything he can to overcome his physical challenges. When you look at his game, he has the arsenal of shots to be a regular presence in the second week of majors, which is not an impression that Norrie or Dan Evans have ever projected.
What of the British women? For all that Emma Raducanu continues to tease us with her intermittent presence at tour events, she remains clearly the most gifted member of the group, and she landed three thumping wins at Wimbledon before being undermined by a left-field opponent (Lulu Sun) and the ill-feeling surrounding her withdrawal from the mixed doubles.
Despite the disappointment of her Sun-burn, Raducanu has now reached the last 16 of three separate major tournaments. Neither Katie Boulter nor Harriet Dart has ever gone that far, and as they are both in their late 20s, they will need to perform a significant upgrade to do so.
On the women’s side, the best hope may lie in the three teenagers who entered the girls’ event here: not only Stojsavljevic and Xu but also Hannah Klugman, who last year became the first British girl to win the prestigious Orange Bowl.
When you’re looking to break onto the main tour, it helps to have company – even if not all the players from a particular peer group will go on to make it. Raducanu is a good example, as she came up with Holly Fischer and Kylie Bilchev: two talented juniors who raised standards for the whole group.
In the light of some of the droughts we’ve seen in the past – notably between Jo Durie’s heyday in the early 1980s and the arrival of Tim Henman more than a decade later – we cannot whinge too loudly about the state of British tennis. There are three players in the world’s top 50 at present, plus another two in the top 100: this would have once been considered riches.
As for the Lawn Tennis Association’s National Academy programme, it has certainly not become the envy of the world, as its founder Simon Timson predicted when he established it six years ago. But there have been glimpses of promise here: not only with regard to the girls mentioned above but also last year’s Wimbledon junior champion Henry Searle.
It should be said, however, that the other grand-slam nations have been upping their games sharply in recent months. Look at the ATP top 100 and you will count ten Australians, ten Frenchmen and nine Americans – all of which puts Draper’s emergence into perspective.
British tennis is all too ready to rely on a couple of marquee names – think Henman and Murray in the past, or Raducanu today – when a deeper field of contenders would represent true progress. The Academy programme may indeed have done valuable work with Stojsavljevic and Robertson, but the Stirling branch closed its doors for good in June. We have been left with only a dozen or so students in Loughborough: a small number of tickets with which to enter the tennis lottery.
Ultimately, if the scene is brightening at all, that comes down to the influence of Murray himself. He has demonstrated to everyone what can be achieved with unstinting effort. As Billie Jean King likes to say, “If you can see it, you can be it,” and everyone in the gym at the National Tennis Centre has had an up-close view of his famously punishing training sessions.
You could hear from Draper’s interviews, all the way through his breakthrough fortnight, that he is using Murray very consciously as his role model. As he said after his third-round win over Botic van der Zandschulp, “I’m full of respect and admiration for Andy. He’s gone on to achieve amazing things [and] I have it in mind that if I can just keep on going and keep on pushing myself, then I’m gonna be hopefully having the type of successes that he’s had.”
For the British game as a whole, that would certainly be the dream scenario.
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