Emma Raducanu and Leylah Fernandez, the teen stars of 2021 who are starting from scratch

There may come a time when Leylah Fernandez and Emma Raducanu enter the draw for a major tournament and one name does not immediately follow the other into the tennis consciousness.

Maybe, but not yet.

One of them is working her way up and down and up again on the ever-changing ladder of professional women's tennis.

The other struggled for a year and a half to string together wins, then called it a season and underwent three surgeries — on each wrist and one of her ankles — on a grim day last spring. It didn't take long for the other to realize that she also needed to press her own career restart button.

One is the daughter of financial managers, the product of a Chinese father and a Romanian mother, raised in Britain with many advantages and the chance to choose between the best universities if she had taken that path.

The other grew up in Canada and then on the hot hard courts of Florida, driven by desire and her father, a former Ecuadorian soccer player, to earn a living with a tennis racket.

Besides the fact that Emma Raducanu and Leylah Fernandez were born nine weeks apart in Canada, they don't have much in common. They are nothing more than professional acquaintances.

Inevitably, they will always be more than that and always connected because of that magical fortnight just over two years ago, when they were teenagers starring together in the most bizarre Grand Slam tennis tournament ever will ever happen. When almost three weeks of competition were over, Raducanu, a relative unknown outside Britain, had won ten straight matches, including the qualifying tournament, and twenty sets, beating Fernandez, the 73rd ranked player in the world but the second highest player in the world. unlikely finalist that day, for the championship.

Since then, there has been a lot of frustration for both of them. Hard losses and early exits, hard lessons about life in the spotlight and a series of injuries that sometimes felt like they would never end. Raducanu in particular has looked particularly miserable in every tournament and defeat, especially in the last few months when she played in constant pain.

But here they are in Melbourne this week, in the second round either side of the draw, busy with the next phase of their tennis lives at an age when most players are still trying to sink their teeth into the former.

For the 21-year-old Raducanu, that meant a first-round victory over American veteran Shelby Rogers on Tuesday night that was as solid as it needed to be. Rogers, 31, was looking for form after a six-month layoff due to injury, but for long stretches Raducanu displayed so much of the style that sent her to those lofty heights: the easy, deceptively quick movements, the low, whippy and curling power from the ground, even a feathered backhand drop shot and, most importantly, the ability not to beat himself with careless mistakes.

The final score was 6-3, 6-2 and it wasn't that close. More of that and Raducanu will soon be much higher than 296th in the world rankings.

“All aspects of my life have been calming down and calming down,” Raducanu said. “When you come back after eight months and have had three operations, you are just very grateful that you can move freely.”

Raducanu is fit again after three operations (James D Morgan/Getty Images)

This all happened a few days after Fernandez won one of the first matches of the tournament, a straight sets victory over Sara Bejlek of the Czech Republic. Sure, Bejlek was just a 17-year-old qualifier, but this was a different Fernandez who not only stayed in the points and chased balls into the corners like she always has, but also sprinted to the net to finish them like that she has rarely done it before.

“I can't always be a powerhouse or just a returner,” Fernandez said as she sat in a soft chair in the Melbourne Park hallway moments after her match. “Everyone on tour is a grinder. You see the top players, they run for every ball.”

For Fernandez, the restart came just after the French Open after her three-set loss in the second round, a winnable match against world number 127 Clara Tauson of Denmark. Even when Fernandez and Taylor Townsend reached the doubles final at Roland Garros, her father suggested they hold a formal meeting to discuss her future. Her singles ranking was about to drop to 95, her lowest since 2020.

He told her she could listen to 100 percent of what he was going to say and finish the season in the top 20, or less than 100 percent and maybe finish in the top 40.

“Of course I didn't listen to him 100 percent,” she said. “That comes with maturity and I own that.”

Fernandez is back on the rise (Kelly Defina/Getty Images)

But she listened a lot to what he told her and signed off on his plan to start all over again with a mini preseason in the weeks leading up to Wimbledon, occasionally leaving the rackets on the side of the court and concentrating on her condition. She had been one of the fastest players in the game, but had somehow become slower, or the game had become faster, with women advancing more or playing drop shots taking time away from her.

She needed to be faster for longer and the only way to do that was to build up endurance.

“You see Novak Djokovic every year, he tries to improve something,” said Fernandez, who faces American Alycia Parks in the second round. “He changed his whole diet. He started with yoga. It's very simple. The basics of an athlete's body. We wanted to see what we can improve in my fitness, because if my fitness is high and I am confident in it, then my game will follow.”

Her summer, which included a mini-preseason after Wimbledon, was up and down, including a first-round loss at the US Open. In September she played qualifying matches, but in October she won the Hong Kong Open and then reached the semifinals of the Jiangxi Open.

It's taken a while, but 21-year-old Fernandez is finally starting to experience all the attention and crowds that have followed her since the 2021 US Open as support rather than pressure.

“It just took time to understand what was happening,” she said, “to understand what I was feeling and work through that… just finding ways to get back to the little girl who would just want to get on the field and hit and to beat. and have fun and put on a show for everyone.

Raducanu wants to do that too. She said she was shocked to see thousands of fans packing the cozy 1573 Arena as she walked onto the field. She tried not to focus on a possible outcome, which could have gone either way in just three games of her comeback, and that will have to be her life for now.

“The difference between losing the first round and doing really well in a tournament is very small,” she said. “It's just in the way I move, in the way I do things physically. Not that drastic I would say, because I know it's not far off at all. The more I practice consistently, it will surface.”

She lingered long after the win, basking in the adulation, signing autographs and posing for selfies all around the stadium, as her restart was now officially underway. The next step for Raducanu is a second round against China's Yafan Wang.

“The time I was away made me very hungry,” Raducanu said. “I'm just happy to be healthy and pain-free again.”

GO DEEPER

Novak Djokovic is looking for his game, his mojo and a tissue

(Top photo: James D Morgan/Getty Images)