Once the sport of teenagers, Tennis grows older and stronger

Arthur Ashe Stadium loomed as a giant and seductive backdrop to a packed Court 11, where the American teenager Alicia Black lost a third-set tiebreaker to Ana Konjuh of Croatia on Sunday in the junior girls' final of the U.S. Open. Symbolically, the big stage was more of a distant star twinkling in the sky above the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.

It was a place to wish upon a main draw championship match for some day, over a rainbow.

Later, inside Ashe, the baseline-slugging Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka reminded us of why professional tennis at its highest level is strictly for those who have reached full-blown young adulthood. On Monday, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic will reiterate the message - teenagers keep out! - in their highly anticipated men's final.

It was only a generation ago, in a less-evolved state of the sport, that a high school student could finish sophomore year and write her summer essay, "How I Won a Grand Slam Tournament."

Monica Seles took New York at 17 in 1991 after winning the French Open the previous year. Martina Hingis was a slender sweet 16 in 1997 when she won three majors, including America's.

Serena Williams was 17 when she beat her older sister Venus to the finish line of their home country slam. After the elegant Seles was inducted into the tournament's Court of Champions late Sunday afternoon, Williams won it for the fifth time, turning back Azarenka, 24, in a replay of last year's final, 7-5, 6-7 (6), 6-1, for her 17th Grand Slam victory.

Eighteen days before Williams' 32d birthday, her career arc helps to define a sport transformed. Nothing against teenagers, but the contemporary pro tennis player has, by and large, freed the sport from too many spectacles of adolescence colliding head-on with prominence.

"It's very different from when someone like Hingis played and you maybe had a few really athletic players," Alicia Black's father, Sylvester, said by telephone after his daughter finally succumbed in an 8-6 third-set tiebreaker after a grueling 2 hours 48 minutes. "Now they are older and stronger. That's the direction of the sport. It's a longer process now and she knows that if she's going to do something like win a slam, it probably won't happen until she's 22 or 23."

It's still never too early to begin dreaming, apparently. Black, 15, turned pro last year. She has a colorful nickname - Tornado - that was given to her by her parents when she was 2. Her father promised that she will have plenty of time to live up to it.

"She showed that she's one of the top juniors in the world," Sylvester Black said after his daughter came close to winning the title as an unseeded wild card. "She's on her way."

We'll find out, eventually. For now, her match with Konjuh, also 15, was a fascinating contextual preliminary to the Williams-Azarenka main event. For one thing, it was a showcase for yet another young American player of color, as Black is the daughter of a Jamaican-born father and an American mother. For another, the Tornado is the older of two tennis-playing sisters - her sister actually has the given name of Tyra Hurricane Black (and goes by Hurricane Tyra Black on the court).

Stretching the Williams connection, one of the lineswomen working the match happened to be Shino Tsurubuchi, who had the misfortune of calling a foot fault on Williams near the end of her losing 2009 final on Ashe against Kim Clijsters. In a 27-going-on-17 moment, Williams showed Tsurubuchi a ball and profanely told her that she might soon be having an unpleasant dining experience.

Black had no such outbursts, but she hobbled around with a wrap on her left thigh and took out her frustrations on herself. She shouted at the heavens. She slapped her leg. She hit herself with her racket.

"Um, I mean, it was hurting a lot," she said of her leg, not the pain she inflicted upon herself."

Tennis is a lonely, nerve-jangling game at any age, but it was always harder to watch the teenagers - even the successful ones - deal with their angst in front of millions. The overbearing-to-abusive parents made it much, much worse.

Not to confuse the more quirky than scary Richard Williams with any of them - and what he did to develop Venus and Serena was nothing short of amazing - but it's probably better that he hasn't shown up in a while. His daughters are too old and have too much to say for themselves to have reporters chasing after their father with the hope he will say something outrageous.

Serena's mother, Oracene Price, was in her box Sunday, sitting next to Venus. She has always been the model sports parent - thoughtful, reserved and supportive.

One of the best tennis parent stories happened in 1990 when Pete Sampras won the first of his 14 Grand Slam events in New York. His folks went to a mall in Southern California because they were too nervous to watch their 19-year-old son play for a title.

If young adulthood is the new rule, there can always be an exception. Nadal, now 27, was 19 when he won the French Open for the first time eight years ago. But he didn't become an all-court and historical threat to Roger Federer until he diversified his game and developed what is now a dominant serve.

Djokovic, 26, once had the well-earned reputation of a player who wilted under tough conditions. Now he's an exemplar of fitness, another example of why the sport is bigger, stronger, older. It has become too much for the developing tennis mind and body, and it is better off for it.

© 2013 New York Times News Service