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By Giri Nathan
[vc_empty_space height="15px"]There are plenty of reasons to give up on tennis. Each of them is a crater, with a would-be prodigy curled up inside. Whether it’s the physical toll of a never-ending tour, some of the most diseased parental relationships in sporting history, or the pressures of an international hype complex, there are so many ways to burn out. And if the standard is “becoming one of the best ever to play,” as it so insistently seems to be, I’d bet on any given teenager to fail. Just count it as a victory if they’ve managed to hold on to any sense of self. I know, as a complicit party, that that hype machine is always stupid and often sad—which doesn’t mean that I’m too good to resist its rewards. Let’s go, Coco! How refreshing is it to see one teen begin to deliver on all these impossible expectations, just a couple weeks removed from her high school graduation, with an eerily evenhanded perspective on her career? Let her many successors bear the crushing weight of the comparisons; enjoy the show for now.