Jo Wilfred Tsonga: the forgotten tennis prospect returns

While Andy Murray makes headline news without even playing at Wimbledon, Novak Djokovic wins new fans with every match he plays (especially those of a female persuasion) and Richard Gasquet continues to amaze with his sublime talents and frustrate with his lack of consistency, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga is the forgotten man of the new generation.

The tall 22-year-old Frenchman – who is the spitting image of a young Muhammad Ali – arrived on the professional scene with a bang, making his breakthrough alongside Gael Monfils at the Masters Series event in Paris in 2004. Given wild cards into the qualifying competition, both men earned their place in the main draw and both won a round, Tsonga beating Mario Ancic. With that win coming on the back of a victory over Carlos Moya at the Beijing tournament a couple of moths before, it was no wonder that France sat up and took notice – here were two young stars of the future.

But while Monfils built on that start and worked his way up the world pecking order, breaking into the top 30 last year, no more was heard of Tsonga. Pushed out of the spotlight in his home country by Monfils and Gasquet and completely overtaken by Murray, Djokovic, Marcos Baghdatis and Tomas Berdych, no one knew or cared where he was.

He was, in fact, at the doctors, asking for attention to a series of injuries that robbed him of the first three years of his career. It all began with a herniated disc in his back and was followed up with shoulder and knee problems. When the medics finally cleared him to get back to work, Tsonga was still restricted to playing just eight tournaments a year in 2005 and 2006. When he was able to play, he tended to win, but he was not able to play enough to break out of the challenger circuit.

As it turned out, those two years were the making of Tsonga. As a junior, he was regarded as a man of immense talent but very little brain. He had the game to get to the top but appeared to have low fighting spirit . In 2003, he was one match away from finishing the year as the junior world champion but when the day of the match came he was well beaten and could not bear to watch as Baghdatis overtook him in the rankings and was lauded as the great hope of the future. It was the sort of collapse Tsonga could not imagine happening now.

Focused, dedicated and determined, Tsonga knows that he has been given a second chance and he refuses to waste it. He also knows that he is good – and gradually the rest of the boys in the locker room are beginning to realise it, too.

At the start of this year, he got a wild card in the Australian Open as part of a reciprocal arrangement between the French and Australian tennis federations. Although he did not win his opening match against Andy Roddick, he gave the American a fright. Here was a man who could serve as hard as Roddick, who could hit the ball as hard as Roddick and who believed that he had as much right to be in the second round as Roddick. Suddenly the world began to remember this Tsonga.

Part of the maturing process is knowing your own limitations and where the younger, more immature Tsonga would have jumped at the chance to play at his home grand slam, Tsonga turned down the wild card offered to him this year by the French Tennis Federation. He had just won four challenger titles in five attempts and he was tired. After all his injury problems, he was not sure that his body could withstand best of five set matches on clay at Roland Garros, so he politely refused.

Instead, he came to Britain, won the Surbiton challenger while, at the same time, qualifying for Queen’s and now has arrived in a blaze of glory at Wimbledon.

Now he plays Gasquet for a place in the quarter finals. In fact, Tsonga can barely wait for the match to start. After every win, he points to an imaginary number on his back, as if he were wearing a football shirt. It is to show everyone that he is still part of the team, he is still part of the new generation of potential world beaters.

(via scotsman, photo: getty images)