9vicman wrote:

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I don't think Sonay will be too concerned about the lack of coverage. I don't think that Harriet got that much coverage when she was a similar ranking.

When you've had recent Grand Slam champions, it's understandable that there's not going to be too much excitement about a player winning their first 250, breaking the Top 100 etc. When that player is quite the introvert who doesn't let you see much of her character.

That's the problem with tennis coverage, particularly in this country. 95% of the coverage on 5% of the players. It didn't used to be like that. Before Tim Henman came along, the British players as a group got much more coverage, and then it became player centric, firstly Henman centric, then Murray, then Raducanu and now Jack. Although still not as much as Raducanu. I don't know what the solution is.

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We're only going to see more of this trend, given that so much of modern media coverage has pivoted towards what is likely to drive hits/paywall conversions (as a necessity to survive).

In some ways Sonay is at a distinct advantage compared to to Harriet/Jodie because she can be billed as 'Emma's junior rival' in headlines - which will get reads.

Emma gets vast amounts of coverage, even when she's not even playing, because she generates extraordinary traction among the public (which is also part of the reason, she's so coveted by brands and tournament directors), which newspapers then see in their data and so they find more ways to keeping writing about that. People are willing to click on (and even more importantly in today's landscape), use their wallets to pay to read articles about her. And all to a far greater extent than Jack, even though he's won significantly more matches than her in the past 2 years, which then feeds into the cycle of constant Emma coverage.

Now why she generates such extraordinary traction is the interesting question. There's obviously her status as a GS winner, her remarkable talent and potential, her photogenic looks, but I have a hunch that there's something else. If you looked at what really gets the hits/paywall conversions, I'd predict that it's disproportionately negative Emma articles.