There are two teenagers in the top 100 of the WTA rankings at the moment. Women’s tennis, in some ways, was built on the success of its child prodigies – Chris Evert, Monica Seles, Martina Hingis and the Williams sisters – who audaciously stormed towards the top in their youth, demanding attention.
Those days are long gone. Between the improved depth, physicality and professionalism at the lower levels, possibly a more sparse talent pool and the WTA’s age eligibility rules restricting the number of tournaments a child can contest, it is increasingly more difficult to flit up the rankings so early.
