Girl power

Media overhyped teenage American Coco Gauff as the future of women’s tennis in the mold of Serena Williams. Or at least her big sister. This after the then 15-year old stunned Venus Williams in the first round of Wimbledon. Fluke maybe, but Coco did it again down under. Since then she advanced to respectable rounds at the slams. Respectable, but not Williams capable.

Then out of nowhere, two virtually unknown teenagers barged into the final of the US Open championship and served notice. They are here, ready to conquer. With steely nerves, Emma Raducanu and Leylah Fernandez reprised the Serena Williams-Martina Hingis teenage final before the turn of the century, with Serena winning her first of 23 slams.

That many. Serena had no permanent rival, her tangle for tennis supremacy with Hingis was cut short early after the Swiss Miss realized her mental game is no match to the powerful sister act. She retired scared at her peak but called it foot injury, leaving Serena on her own, winning one major after another. Until arguably the greatest found her new rival, her ageing self, beaten by different women about half her age in the last 4 major finals she appeared in.

Emma and Leylah should resurrect the aborted rivalry sorely missing today. Fresh but tough, thin but powerful, young but mature, both reignited women’s tennis in a fortnight and thrilled us with a final match more contentious than the 6-4, 6-3 score line that took them almost two hours to settle.

In the second set, Fernandez had a couple of break points to reverse the inevitable but lost both. The first because her momentum was doused when the British stunner sought medical timeout after she wounded her knee chasing the ball, recurring the issue of timing and propriety of timeouts at make or break. But her bleeding knee justified the begging. She couldn’t have faked the oozing.

Both unseeded, they played way beyond their age to reach the final by surprise. Emma the qualifier did not lose a set the entire tournament. The higher-ranked Leylah flirted with defeat but escaped unscathed. Until the final reckoning at the center court where both handled immense pressure of the occasion with strong resolve to die for a dying ball. But their wisdom spoke louder, especially Leylah who paid tribute to the strength and resilience of the host country twenty years after 9/11. Both chose appropriate, coherent words over millennial rambling that muddles clarity to irreverence. Maturity in full display at the awarding ceremony.

Girls around the world should listen and look up to them. These are women of discipline and substance they should emulate, not those siblings who do nothing but promote lifestyle of vanity and luxury in a scripted reality TV, none of which substantiate nor validate their responsibility to empower their kind and better the world. Their indiscriminate images onscreen objectify women, even as they create illusion of perfection, sanitizing ugly reality of poverty and injustice women should unite to fight against.