A Decade After U.S.T.A. Sidelined Her, Taylor Townsend Is Moving On

MELBOURNE, Australia — Taylor Townsend is getting very good at moving on.

It is happening more and more these days in tennis tournaments, including this year’s Australian Open, where she will play her second-round match Thursday after destroying Diane Parry, a promising French 20-year-old, in every possible way Tuesday. And she has moved on from the body-shaming and benching by the United States Tennis Association a decade ago, when she was just 16 years old.

Townsend, a 26-year-old mother of a toddler, delivered a thorough and merciless beating to Parry during a 67-minute, 6-1, 6-1 rout. Her powerful serve topped out at 116 miles per hour, and her lacing backhand painted the lines; Parry never figured out how to handle Townsend’s whipping forehand and could not reach the precise volleys. The win was her first in the main singles draw of a Grand Slam tournament in three years, and the first since Townsend, ranked 135th in the world, became a mother in March 2021.

“Taylor is a top-20 player who right now is not in the top 20,” John Williams, Townsend’s coach, said moments after she finished off Parry with her seventh ace. “If you’re that kind of player, you should do top-20 things, like she did today.”

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

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/18/sports/tennis/taylor-townsend-australian-open.html