NEW YORK _ The way Taylor Townsend has stormed through the first week of the U.S. Open is not just surprising but downright medieval. She rushes the net! She pressures and intimidates, stirring up the potent old alchemy that was a forerunner to modern tennis chemistry.
Hers is a strategy that hasn't been seen for years. Decades. Eschewing the now-standard baseline game, Townsend suddenly, at 23 and after a long spell of relative invisibility, is waking some echoes of 2012, when she was the world's top-ranked junior.
And one result, she said, is: "I didn't know so many people had my phone number."
