American teenager Cori Gauff has taken the tennis world by storm with her performances on the Wimbledon grass and her sparkling personality.
But it will be three years before the 15-year-old, the youngest female qualifier in the Open era at Wimbledon, will be able to shine regularly on the women’s Tour.
That’s because of the so-called “Age Eligbility Rule” (AER), which was introduced by the women’s WTA Tour as part of its player development programme more than two decades ago to prevent budding tennis stars from crashing and burning.
With the emergence of Gauff, the youngest ever junior world No.1, there have been calls for the rule to be scrapped, most notably from her father, Corey Gauff, and her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou.
But what triggered the creation of the rule? And what has it achieved? Wimbledon.com takes a closer look.
The age rule, which was adopted in 1995, puts restrictions on the number of tournaments a junior tennis player is allowed to enter in a year.
The rule was introduced after a number of teenage tennis champions were unable to cope with the aftermath of sudden success and fame, and suffered from burnout.
The most famous example was Jennifer Capriati, who won Olympic tennis gold at the 1992 Barcelona Games at the age of 16, three years after she turned pro. Already a millionaire at 13, Capriati’s meteoric rise came to a crashing halt five years later, beset by off-court problems. Capriati came back to tennis in her mid-20s, and went on to win three Grand Slam singles titles.
Although Gauff was already phenomenally successful at 13, when she was a runner-up in the girls’ singles at the US Open, she wasn’t allowed to go the Capriati route.
The age rule prevents girls aged 13 or younger from competing in professional tournaments, the Olympics and the Fed Cup.
That’s because the women’s tour regards professional tennis as a “high-performance, high-stakes environment” unsuitable for young teenagers going through various stages of adolesence.
Capriati came back to tennis in her mid-20s, and went on to win three Grand Slam singles titles
"I think at the very core of the rule is that these are children competing in an adult work place, full stop," Ashley Keber, WTA vice president, member relations, told CNN Sport last year.
Under the age rule, 14-year-olds can enter as many as 18 junior events and eight professional tournaments per year. This number goes up with each birthday. On the day a player turns 18, she is allowed to enter as many tournaments as she wants.
The AER, which is reviewed each year by an advisory panel of experts in sports medicine, internal medicine, psychology, coaching and physical therapy, has evolved over the years.
In order to accommodate teenage phenomenons who outperform their peers, players can be rewarded with so-called “merited increases” based on performance.
As Gauff won the Roland-Garros junior title last year at the age of 14, and finished the season inside the top five of the junior rankings, she is allowed to play more events from the time of her 15th birthday until she turns 18.
Gauff can now enter up to 14 professional tournaments until she turns 16 on 13 March 2020, the WTA said. As Wimbledon is her seventh pro tournament, she is free to enter seven more events until that day.
The tournament restrictions are putting extra pressure on young players to perform, Gauff’s father told the New York Times this week. Instead, he would like to see a restriction on the number of matches a teenager can play.
“There are a lot of ways you can do it,” Corey Gauff told the newspaper. “Or you could say if you have a first-round loss, it doesn’t count against your tournament total.”
Mouratoglou, who has been guiding Gauff since she was 11, has been critical of the rule, saying tennis may be missing out on the emergence of some exciting teenage champions.
The last teenager to win a major women's singles title was Russia’s Svetlana Kuznetsova, who triumphed at the 2004 US Open when she was 19.
Tennis is about momentum, and if you break the momentum of the players, then maybe Martina Hingis would never have been No. 1 in the world
“Tennis is about momentum, and if you break the momentum of the players, then maybe Martina Hingis would never have been No. 1 in the world," Mouratoglou told CNN Sport last year.
Switzerland’s Hingis, who never competed under the age rule, won all of her five Grand Slam singles titles when she was a teenager, between 1997 and 1999.
Since the age rule came into effect in 1995, women’s tennis has become a healthier sport for young women. WTA careers now last two years longer on average. There are also fewer burnouts: the number of players who quit the sport before the age of 22 has dropped to two per cent, from seven per cent.
Gauff may not be allowed to reach her full potential just yet; foregoing millions of dollars in prize money, the age rule may in fact help her have a healthier and more successful career in the long run.