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BY JOE HODGSON
The four players who have brought Britain close to the top of world tennis again have all ploughed different furrows – but it’s the ploughing itself that sets them apart, says John Inverdale
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MMA AND ANDY. CAM AND DAN . They could be pairs in Strictly or some Simon Cowell cobbledtogether band for a quick 18 months of fame. Instead they’re the quartet that, as 2021 nears its end, have suddenly made Britain a major tennis-playing nation again – two grand slam winners and two other ‘serious’ players in the men’s game. A year on from penning an article for another publication which began with the words, and I precis, “Oh well, it was fun while it lasted but let’s get used to a few years post-Murray of not much British interest in anything,” here we are pondering
what our Fab Four might or might not achieve in the coming months. And there’s something that links them all, which is probably where the England rugby coach Eddie Jones was coming from when he sounded that warning note about the pitfalls of fame that might confront Emma Raducanu in the future – a point incidentally backed up by Simona Halep a couple of days later. What our outstanding foursome have in common is a consummate work ethic, and an understanding that there’s no short cut to success. Emma may be 19, but she’s been playing tennis for 15 years – or more than three-
quarters of her life. Yes there’s been education and A-levels and other passing distractions along the way, but fundamentally she’s always been a tennis player, serving and volleying day and night for that moment, whenever it might come, when talent and hard work would collide, as they
While you were partying, Emma was serving. While you were half-cut drinking, she was half-volleying. She knows there’s no short cut.
did in an explosion of sporting pyrotechnics in New York. Dan Evans was going to be an ‘Emma’ once upon a time, heralded as the next big thing until he allowed off-court issues to discolour his talent, culminating in a yearlong ban for testing positive for cocaine in 2017. His solution on returning to the tour? To work so hard that he’s been on the cusp of the world’s top 20 – the kind of dogged competitor, with flashing Federer-esque ground strokes, that nobody wants in their half of the draw. And then there’s Cam Norrie, British men’s No. 1. Watch him play and ask →