Yet her ranking has now plummeted outside the world’s top 500 because of a long-term wrist injury that started creeping up on her that same summer.
Laura Robson reached the fourth round of Wimbledon in 2013 Photo: EPA
This season, Robson scheduled her long-awaited return for 21 Feb, at a low-level $25,000 tournament in the quirkily named town of Surprise, Arizona. She missed the date, perhaps unsurprisingly, and another three months went by before she finally showed up in Eastbourne. The comeback hardly got off to a flier when her first competitive match in 17 months delivered a 6-0, 6-1 defeat to Daria Gavrilova, but at least she was under way.
Or so we thought. In fact, Robson spent only four months on the circuit, using her protected ranking of No. 58 in the world to gain entry to the US Open and New Haven tournaments. Then she disappeared again, leaving little hint of what had happened. It took a month for her management company to confirm that her season was over.
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Then, earlier this month, Robson herself clarified that “I hurt my wrist a little bit again … There was just some leftover scar tissue that wasn't healing.”
Robson has suffered terribly with injuries
In the same interview, Robson claimed to be “very happy with the progress that’s been made”. Yet for all her apparent serenity, we cannot help but feel concern over a young woman (still only 21) who has spent so long out of the game. She has never been the kind of player who thrives away from the spotlight, yet the road back to the big time must necessarily pass through some obscure byways – the Surprise, Arizonas of this world. Will she have the appetite and the stamina to grind her way back up the tennis ladder?
In such circumstances, the 2016 season feels like a major deal for Robson. She has already said that she will not play the Australian Open, preferring to gain momentum at the smaller events while setting her sights on a strong run at the French Open in late May. It sounds a logical strategy, yet if Robson is to realise the early promise that saw her win junior Wimbledon at the age of 14, you feel that the graph needs to start turning upwards sooner rather than later.
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