Melanie Oudin is headed back to the US Open with added weight on her shoulders and a warning: Don’t expect a replay of last year’s surprising run to the quarter-finals, no matter what her sneakers say.
A 17-year-old ranked 70th last year, Oudin now is 44th on the WTA Tour. She will be the second-highest ranked US woman in the field behind No. 4 Venus Williams when the season’s final Grand Slam tournament opens in New York on Monday.
The rise has meant higher-ranked opponents and more pressure for the teenager from Marietta, Georgia, who has only won one singles match in a major since her success last year helped produce three new sponsorship deals estimated to be worth more than US$1 million.
PHOTO: AFP
“Almost every person in the United States expects me to win every single match I play, so, I mean, that’s kind of a little bit of pressure,” Oudin said at a news conference this month in Cincinnati. “Last year I was like the new kid in town, and you really don’t have any pressure when that happens.”
Oudin spoke after losing on Aug. 10 to Elena Vesnina of Russia 6-2, 6-3 in the first round of the Western & Southern Financial Group Women’s Open. She lost again in the first round at the Pilot Pen Tennis at Yale tournament in New Haven, Connecticut, on Aug. 23 as her season record dropped to 17-19.
Quite a change from last year’s Open, where Oudin knocked out seeded Russians Elena Dementieva, Nadia Petrova and 2006 champion Maria Sharapova and became the youngest US woman to reach the tournament’s quarter-finals since Serena Williams in 1999. Her run was ended by eventual runner-up Caroline Wozniacki.
“I saw my draw before the tournament, and my coach looked at me and goes, ‘To win the US Open, you have to beat like six Russians and a Williams sister,’” Oudin said. “It was like a joke. Playing Dementieva and then Sharapova, people I looked up to for so long, and being able to beat them was amazing, because I had no pressure on me, and I just went for it.”
Serena Williams, ranked No. 1 by the WTA, said last week that she was skipping the US Open following surgery on her right foot. Venus Williams is ranked fourth, and the only other US women in the top 100 are No. 74 Vania King and No. 83 Bethanie Mattek-Sands. Oudin said the emergence of another young American such as 18-year-old Christina McHale, the world No. 113, would help relieve the pressure.
“They can take some of the night matches from me,” Oudin said.
Mary Joe Fernandez, a former pro player and Oudin’s coach on the US Fed Cup team, said players often have trouble after an initial breakthrough.
“She can have another run, but it’s going to be harder, the second year is always tougher after players learn your game and learn how you compete,” Fernandez said in an interview.
Oudin said that, while her higher ranking meant she no longer had to play in qualifying tournaments, it also meant that “now I’m playing top 50 all the time.”
There are also more demands from outside tennis, “extra stuff that I didn’t have last year.”
Returning to the National Tennis Center may mean that just increases, Oudin said.
“I’m hoping it won’t be that bad, but I have a feeling that it’s going to be,” she said. “Because of last year, I think people are going to hope or expect that I can do it again. The thing for me is this year I’m just going to try to go into it like I did last year, and that’s how I did so well.”
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