Laurie's Tennis articles

We have reached the end of 2019 and entered a brand new decade. A good opportunity to take our annual look at the WTA players who will be key protagonists in 2020. Unlike in the men’s game, the transition to the new generation has already taken place. In 2019 three of the four major championships were won by players under the age of twenty four,   Naomi Osaka already has two major titles to her credit, whilst Ashleigh Barty finished the year as world number 1, French Open and WTA champion. Therefore, it is fair to say the WTA tour is in good hands going into the 2020s. Ashleigh Barty There is no better place to start our preview than with the current world number 1. Ashleigh (or Ash as she prefers to be called) had a superb 2019, initially reaching the final of Sydney international and the quarterfinal of the Australian Open in January. Ash followed that up with a big win at the Miami Open, then her major title at the French Open defeating Markéta Vondroušová in the...

This week we continue our Flashback series on grass and take a look at the 2006 Wimbledon final between Amelie Mauresmo and Justine Henin. 2006 saw an interesting championship which culminated with a popular winner in Amelie Mauresmo; a player who had been through a lot in her young life at that point, overcoming a number of adversities to triumph on the big stage. Strangely enough, her opponent Justine Henin also experienced many adversities as well whilst ascending to the top. This is a reminder of what it takes for many of the world stars to get to the top of their profession. In Amelie’s case, there was a lot of talk about her after coming out as gay as a 19 year old in January 1999. Amelie was not on speaking terms with her father but it was reported she was able to come to peace with him shortly before his death in 2004. Not to make things any easier, the press often gave Amelie a difficult time over a number of years for her physical appearance and perceived lack of ...

We are in the middle of Wimbledon 2019 so as always a good time to focus on our flashback series, looking at grass court tennis. Today we take a look at a match that is largely forgotten, the 1999 Wimbledon semifinal between Pete Sampras and Tim Henman. I say forgotten as the final between Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi is widely seen as Sampras’ greatest performance and there are a large number of videos on YouTube of that particular final. However, the semifinal against Henman was quite a struggle mentally and emotionally for both participants, and perhaps as it turned out, a hard training session for Sampras, honing his skills for the final. The 1999 championships had been wrecked by rain in the second week; this caused a backlog of matches, which during this period of history was quite normal. Back in 1999 and as recently as three years ago, the championships took place in the last week of June and the first week of July. I always found this a bit strange, as once Wimbled...