Quiz question: what does the former British Futures player Oliver Golding have in common with Andy Murray and the 2014 Wimbledon semi-finalist Grigor Dimitrov?
Answer: they all won the US Open junior tournament.
The statistic is a reminder that there are no guarantees in tennis. Film director Luca Guadagnino showed an appreciation for this point in his recent movie Challengers, in which the fortunes of a pair of promising juniors diverge sharply as soon as they joined the main tour.
Guadagnino also acknowledged the relative value of instinctive talent and daily application by making his character Art – the dogged self-improver – into a major champion, while mercurial shot-maker Patrick finds himself sleeping in his car at a series of country-club mini-events.
All of which brings us to Charlie Robertson. The 17-year-old Scot, who has been mentored by the Murray family, went out on Friday to play his junior semi-final against Norway’s Nicolai Budkov Kjaer.
As a dress rehearsal for Jack Draper’s own grown-up semi-final later in the day, it was less than encouraging. Robertson’s diminutive stature – he claims to be 5ft 8in but looks smaller – put him at a clear disadvantage in his 6-3, 6-3 loss to the strapping 6ft 2in Scandinavian.
Can early success be detrimental to aspiring players?
Yet the benefit of winning these showpiece junior events is questionable. On the upside, they might help gather a few extra kit sponsorships for a promising teen, and bring the big agencies – IMG, say, or Octagon – to the table for a possible management deal.
But there is also the danger that they heap too much expectation onto young shoulders, while simultaneously planting a giant target on your back.
Take Laura Robson: an example of a player who came to prominence extraordinarily early, after her unprecedented feat of winning the Wimbledon girls’ event at 14.
It’s not as if Robson’s senior career was a wash-out: she reached a high point of No 27 in the world, and reached the second week of both Wimbledon and the US Open. But she might have been better off without all the scrutiny and hoopla that followed her every move.
Emma Raducanu, whose victory in the main US Open tournament came only nine months after she ceased to be eligible for the juniors, now finds herself in a similar position – only to an exaggerated degree.
Stojsavljevic storms into girls’ final
It’s not only Robertson who carried the British flag into the last four here at Flushing Meadows. On the girls’ side, we lost Hannah Klugman – the reigning Orange Bowl champion who is our most hotly-tipped teen – in the second round. But her sparring partners Mingge Xu and Mika Stojsavljevic have battled through the draw, evicting the No 2 and No 1 seeds respectively on their way to the semi-finals.
On Friday, Stojsavljevic went one better as she became the first British girl to reach the junior final since Heather Watson, who won the title here in 2009. Standing 6ft tall, with size 10 shoes, Stojsavljevic has a stature that Robertson would surely envy, and she uses it to bully the ball.
She came away from her semi-final against third seed Iva Jovic with nine aces and 36 clean winners, while the overpowered Jovic managed just six winners. It was only a brief brain-freeze in the second set, when Stojsavljevic hit three successive double-faults to give up a break, that extended proceedings to three sets in this 6-0, 3-6, 6-3 win.
The predictive value of the girls’ grand slams is a little higher. You rarely look back through the list of former champions and ask “Who?”, as you might do with Zsombir Piros (boys’ champion, 2017 Australian Open) or Geoffrey Blancaneaux (2016 French Open).
Admittedly, not all the winning girls go on to be serial champions, but almost all of them do at least manage to have a crack at the WTA Tour proper, rather than the second-tier Futures and Challengers events.
This is easy enough to explain. Females reach physical maturity earlier, so the power gap between girls’ and women’s events is far less noticeable. Klugman, for example, has been serving at close to 115mph for some time – a speed that would place her in the top half of the main draw.
Among the boys, however, there is a big style gap between the different age categories. It’s much easier to make a career out of speed, agility and defensive skills at junior level, where sheer consistency is the most valuable commodity. On the main tour, however, you need to be able to scare opponents. With the exception of the odd unicorn like 5ft 7in Diego Schwartzman, nobody makes the top 20 without having point-ending power.
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