Akin to many relationships between big brothers and big sisters, Taylor Townsend could not help but needle her elder in public once more as she and Donald Young, the friend whose family had the biggest influence on her tennis career, met the press Tuesday after the umpteenth time the two shared a tennis court together.
He’ll never tell me how cool it really is.
Pain in my ass.
I’m fired. I’m good.
All of those salty-laden-yet-humorous interjections came immediately after heartfelt compliments Young made paying homage to his protégée. But the most meaningful compliment in the pair’s two-decade kinship to date was no laughing matter, and it again came from Townsend: Young asked her to be his partner in the event that would put an end to his professional tennis career, the 2024 US Open mixed doubles competition, and Townsend, who was coached by Young’s father after her family moved to Atlanta from Chicago when she was 8, gladly accepted.
On Thursday, the all-American duo will play for a Grand Slam title, as the wild card entry has reached the mixed doubles final at the US Open and will take on the Italian duo of Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori. No matter the result, it’s a fairy tale finish for Young, 35, that many athletes hope for but few see unfold.
"This is the decision and I'm happy with it. And if we go one more, it'd be really a dream come true and a kind of a story book ending for me,” Young said. “So, either way it goes, I'm really excited and happy, [and] again, I can share it with a person really close like family.”
Young was a tennis prodigy, a lefty who was tabbed as the next great American tennis player and contend for Grand Slam titles like the generation before him that included Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Jim Courier and Michael Chang. Expectations and reality don’t make for good dance partners most times, and 20 years after he turned pro back in 2004, Thursday’s final is the second (and last) Grand Slam championship that he will contest, along with making the men’s doubles final at Roland Garros in 2017. He has not won a match on tour since 2021 and, like some other former tour-level tennis players in the past couple of years, is making the switch to professional pickleball.
It’s a career arc that left many observers wanting more, but Young contends that he is more than satisfied with what he got out of the game of tennis.
“If you ask the 10, 12-year-old me about the career I've had, he would be super excited and pumped about it,” Young said. “So that's how I choose to see it and it's pretty exciting. He would take it any day of the week and that's kind of how it is and that's how I feel.”
That 12-year-old Young became the top junior tennis player in the world by the time he was 16, in 2005, right as Townsend was in the midst of being reared in the sport by Young’s dad, Donald Young, Sr., who is a close friend to Townsend’s mother as they grew up together on the South Side of Chicago. As Young racked up major titles at the junior level, Townsend needn’t look outside of the training center in Atlanta to find inspiration to launch her own ascent into tennis’ consciousness.
“He's the reason that I felt like it was possible I could do this,” Townsend said. “He'd come back after winning junior Wimbledon or junior Australian Open. I'm like, ‘Come, let me see your trophy. Oh, that's nice. Let me touch it.’ So to be able to just have that close to you or even to be able to see it, you don't know how powerful that is. And you don't know what doors that opens up for anybody.”
Townsend, like Young before her, won the Australian Open junior title, in 2012—along with winning three of the four majors in doubles that year—and also became the No. 1 junior in the world. Both are also naturally right-handed, but Young and his parents converted Townsend to southpaw. Townsend struggled to keep her balance while moving when she was playing with her right hand, and Ilona Young, Donald’s mom, made the call for Taylor to put the racket in her left hand. That embryonic stage of ambidexterity included having Townsend practice with kids at a lower age level for a time, which she was initially upset at.
“I guess something in my brain wasn't computing with my body that [playing right-handed] just wasn't working,” Townsend said. “So then we switched and it was kind of like a rule from that point. Don't switch back. You are not even allowed to put the racket in your right hand. So from that point, we started drilling everything on the left side and here we are.”
Two months ago, Townsend finally rose to tennis’ mountaintop. She partnered with Katerina Siniakova and won the women’s doubles championship on Centre Court, the first Grand Slam title in a career that’s seen a resurgence not long after she returned to the game after giving birth to her first child, a baby boy named Adyn, in March of 2021. Townsend has now reached at least one Grand Slam final in each of the past three years, and is back inside of the world’s Top 50 in singles.
Not too long after Townsend came back to the Atlanta area after her triumph in London, she and Young ran into each other at the club where they used to play, and seeing the number of young Black kids playing the sport and looking up to Townsend—like she once did to Young—was a full-circle moment.
“I got so inspired seeing the kids out there that all looked like me playing in a place that I played at when I was eight years old and coming back as a Grand Slam champion I got very emotional,” Townsend said. “It's amazing because it really shows we're trending in the right direction and for me personally, for my experience, seeing that and being able to have the visual representation to see someone that looked like me, that acted like me or that I could relate to in some way, shape or form, gave that little bit of hope that you could do it too.”
Thursday’s final is about the future tennis stars of tomorrow, many from neighborhoods and tennis clubs that reflect the diversity and inclusiveness needed for tennis to continue its growth in the grassroots and with marginalized communities, as much as writing the lines to the final chapter of Young’s pro tennis career—a conclusion co-authored by someone who’s been along with him for the ride for two decades.
“Kind of started hoping this would be the case and for it to actually be the case is pretty nice, Young said. “I'm just super excited to be doing it next to Taylor, which is really cool. Yeah, it is cooler than she knows.”
