There will come a time when intermarriage of diverse races will produce a child that nobody can look at and dislike. That time is now, and that child has arrived. On the thirteenth of November of 2002 a baby girl was born in Toronto, Canada to a father from Bucharest, Romania, and a mother from Shenyang, China. Her parents moved her to London when she was two and placed a tennis racket in her hands when she turned five. However, already excelling in karting and motocross, her tennis would be on hold for another year. By seven she was good at tennis but not great. Her will to win was boosted somewhat by her parents promise of a new tennis outfit if she won, and win she did.
Turning pro at sixteen, Emma started playing in front of as many as a hundred fans, and started earning enough money to buy her own tennis outfits, $13,000 in 2018. Though she still wasn’t great, she did get great grades in high school math, where she was a wizard. A gifted talker in Romanian, she also spoke English with a British accent, and Mandarin with a northeastern accent.
During the pandemic of 2020, Emma, like most of us, took a hit and her earnings dropped to $2,500. Then along came 2021 and the U.S. Open. She would have to win three qualifying matches to get into the tournament, but she did, and she did it without losing a single set. If you are only as good as your second serve, well, Emma’s second is 93 miles an hour and it can usually be found in a difficult place to return. Fact is, she can take you to places on the tennis court that you have never been before, and leave you standing there wondering what just happened.
Emma booked her plane ticket home to coincide with her failing to qualify for the tournament, a flight she would not need. Emma would go on to win her next seven U.S. Open matches without losing a set, a thing never done before, to win the Women’s Championship, along with a beautiful trophy with her name engraved upon it, and oh, two and a half million dollars in prize money. Not a bad take for a teenage math wiz. Just wait ‘til you see her next tennis outfit.
Putting a bump in the road at Indian Wells behind her, Emma’s next competition will begin Monday, October 25th at the Transylvania Open in Romania, where there’s no truth to the rumor that Dracula will be an honorary chair umpire.
In a world where most countries are still stuck in archaic ethnocentric politics, here comes Geo-Woman, a geocentric woman nobody can figure how to dislike.
Let us welcome to the world stage the winner of this year’s U.S. Open Tennis Championships, and portrait of our humanity going forward, a math wiz with the world’s greatest smile, eighteen year old, Emma Raducanu. Please join me in our applause…
About the Author McAvoy Layne
For thirty-four years now, in four thousand performances from
Piper’s Opera House to Leningrad University in Russia,
McAvoy has been preeminent in preserving the wit & wisdom of
The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope, Mark Twain.
McAvoy is a winner of the Nevada Award for Excellence in School and Library Service.
He plays the ghost of Mark Twain in the Discovery Channel’s Cronkite Award winning documentary, 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.'
Says McAvoy, “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher,
whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American.”