A decade after being sidelined by the USTA, Taylor Townsend is moving on

MELBOURNE, Australia Taylor Townsend is getting very good to continue.

It’s happening more and more in tennis tournaments these days, including this year’s Australian Open, where Townsend destroyed Diane Parry, a promising 20-year-old from France, in every possible way in the first round. And she’s moved on from being body-shamed and benched by the US Tennis Association a decade ago, when she was just 16.

Townsend, a 26-year-old mother of a toddler, lost in the second set on Thursday 6-1, 2-6, 3-6 to 19th-ranked Yekaterina Alexandrova of Russia. But on Tuesday, he delivered a thorough and merciless thrashing of Parry in 67 minutes, 6-1, 6-1. His powerful serve topped 116 miles per hour, and his stringy backhand painted the lines; Parry never figured out how to handle Townsends forehand and couldn’t land accurate volleys. The win was her first Grand Slam singles main draw in three years and her first since Townsend, ranked 135th in the world, became a mother in March 2021.

And he hasn’t done in Australia; her women’s doubles tournament starts later this week.

Taylor is a top-20 player who is not currently in the top 20, John Williams, Townsends’ coach, said moments after he finished off Parry with his seventh ace. If you’re that kind of player, you should do top20 stuff like he did today.

Townsend has been the best of the best before, at the junior level. But then she and her still-developing teenage body became an early flashpoint in the debate about what elite athletes should look like and how much coaches should push their own definitions of fitness on young women.

In 2012, Townsend, the star of the USTA’s then four-year-old development program, was the No. 1 player in the world. In January, she won the girls’ singles at the Australian Open. In July 2012, she won the girls’ doubles title at Wimbledon with Canadian Eugenie Bouchard.

But just weeks later, like The Wall Street Journal revealed, after losing in the first round of qualifying at a lower-level pro event in Canada, USTA coaches decided the 16-year-old Townsend needed to work on his fitness. They asked her to withdraw from the girls’ national championships and sent her back to their training facility in Boca Raton, Fla.

They rejected her in August when she requested a wild-card spot in the US Open main draw, a spot she could have earned if she had won the girls’ national title. They refused to cover her expenses to play in the US Open girls tournament. He paid his own way, reaching the quarterfinals of the singles tournament and winning the doubles.

Flash forward a decade, to last September. Townsend stands at center court at Arthur Ashe Stadium at the US Open, accepting second prize in the women’s doubles tournament with her partner, American Caty McNally.

The master of the trophy ceremony is Patrick McEnroe. Ten years ago, he was the USTA’s director of player development, the guy who sent Townsend back to Boca Raton.

“I’ve put in the work, I’ve earned my way to be here, and I think everybody can see that,” Townsend said that day, wearing a bodysuit without a sponsor’s name that has become her go-to outfit. And I’m still going to put my head down and grind and this motivates me to go even harder. So watch out for 2023.

Townsend said Tuesday that until it was pointed out to him, he was unaware of the moment’s uneasiness, his steely stare at the podium and the apparent coldness between him and McEnroe. He said at that trophy presentation about making one thing clear to himself and anyone who would listen.

I’m coming, he said, sitting on a sofa in the lounge above a steamy Melbourne Park after his first-round win. Everything I’m working for, all the goals and everything I do is slowly aligning and I don’t know when it will happen but I’m coming and you know to be ready and alert because I know within myself what I can do and I know you don’t know the timing. I believe things will happen.

In a text message from Connecticut, where he works on ESPN’s Australian Open telecast, McEnroe said he had always wanted Townsend to succeed at the highest level. Asked if his views on fitness have changed, McEnroe replied:

I couldn’t be happier to see Taylor back on the court and continue to do well. I always have and always will wish him nothing but the best on and off the field. According to him, that has always been his view on the matter.

Every tennis trip is unique. The sport can seem like a conveyor belt of prodigies making their way through development programs and academies, followed by years of paying fees and learning in the hinterlands, and finally the promised land of Pro Tours and Grand Slams. Everyone has their own twists and turns, setbacks and hurts.

However, Townsends is as different as they come. Childhood in Chicago; the culmination of junior tennis and the birth of her professional career as a teenager in Florida despite body shaming; then several years of struggling to figure out what kind of player he was during the early part of his career; mother at 24; work as a television analyst during maternity leave; rise to the top of singles; and now a slow and steady return to singleplayer. Her goal, she said, is to be better than she was before she left the sport to have her children.

He’s getting closer. Last year, Townsend won two tournaments at the International Tennis Federation level, the sport’s third level. He also made the 16th in the Silicon Valley Classic.

Williams said Townsend has gotten clear about who he is on the field in the last year. He’s a full-court player with a big serve and a powerful forehand that can be especially dangerous as it comes off his left hand and punishes right-handed backhands when he fires it across the court.

The quality of his ball was difficult to control, Parry said on Tuesday.

As a top doubles player, she and American Asia Muhammad are ranked 12th in Melbourne. Townsend can also come out if needed. In every match, he wants to be the one who dictates the game.

He got away with it for a while, said Williams, who first worked with Townsend in 2009.

Townsend represented the United States at the Billie Jean King Cup last year, enjoying the full embrace of the USTA. The organization has provided him and Williams with every resource it can provide to aid his continued development.

Kathy Rinaldi, the USTA women’s national tennis coach, calls or texts Townsend after all of her matches. He has noticed the organization’s coaching director Ola Malmqvist watching the game. Townsend said he has no hard feelings. He wanted to control his narrative the way he tries to control matches, to make it mean what he wanted it to mean, and he did.

He said that people who look completely different than normal, in all fields, from athletics, sports, entertainment, acting, everything, are successful. To be able to be a part of it and live it and just be an example to people is the biggest thing for me.