The newest member of the WTA top 32 got there the hard way. Mihaela Buzarnescu, who achieved her latest career-high ranking with a run to the final of last week’s Prague event, where she lost a three-setter to Petra Kvitova, made her professional debut 14 years ago. Despite a dose of junior success, including a junior doubles title at the 2006 US Open, she didn’t crack the top 100 until last October.
This isn’t how tennis career trajectories are supposed to work. Yes, the game is getting older and stars are extending their careers, but Buzarnescu’s year-long winning spree, in which she has climbed from outside the top 400 to inside the top 40, began after her 29th birthday. The closer we look at what the Romanian has achieved, and the age at which she’s doing so, the more unusual it appears.
The oldest top 100 debuts
Since the beginning of the 1987 season, 630 women have debuted in the top 100. Their average age, on the Monday they reached the ranking threshold, is just under 20 years and 6 months. Only 29 of the 630–less than five percent–broke into the top 100 after their 26th birthday.
Only 14 players did so after turning 27:
Player Debut Age (Y) Age (D) Peak Rank Tzipi Obziler 20070219 33 306 75 A. Villagran Reami 19880801 31 359 99 Mihaela Buzarnescu 20171016 29 165 32 Julie Ditty 20071105 28 305 89 Eva Bes Ostariz 20010716 28 183 90 Mashona Washington 20040719 28 49 50 Maureen Drake 19990201 27 317 47 Tatjana Maria 20150406 27 241 46 Hana Sromova 20051107 27 211 87 Laura Siegemund 20150914 27 193 27 Flora Perfetti 19960708 27 160 54 Louise Allen 19890227 27 51 83 Kristina Barrois 20081020 27 20 57 Iryna Bremond 20111017 27 11 93
Buzarnescu doesn’t quite top this list, but she is certainly a more consequential force on tour than either of the women who debuted at a more advanced age. Tzipi Obziler fought her way through the lower levels of the game for just as long as Buzarnescu did, though she never cracked the top 70. Adriana Villagran Reami played a limited schedule; she may have had the skills to play top-100 tennis long before the ranking table made it official, but she was never a tour regular.
The most comparable player to Buzarnescu is Laura Siegemund, who reached a double-digit ranking a few years ago, and has since climbed as high as No. 27. Of the oldest top-100 debutants, though, very few have continued to ascend the rankings as far as Buzarnescu and Siegemund have.
Here are the oldest top-100 debuts of players who went on to crack the top 32:
Player Debut Age (Y) Age (D) Peak Mihaela Buzarnescu 20171016 29 165 32 Laura Siegemund 20150914 27 193 27 Sybille Bammer 20050822 25 117 19 Shinobu Asagoe 20000710 24 12 21 Manon Bollegraf 19880215 23 310 29 Johanna Konta 20140623 23 37 4 Anne Kremer 19981019 23 2 18 Lesia Tsurenko 20120528 22 364 29 Kveta Peschke 19980420 22 286 26 Petra Cetkovska 20071022 22 256 25 Tathiana Garbin 20000214 22 229 22 Li Na 20041004 22 221 2 Mara Santangelo 20040202 22 219 27 Ginger Helgeson Nielsen 19910325 22 192 29 Casey Dellacqua 20070806 22 176 26
Here’s an indication of just how young women’s tennis is: The 9th-oldest top-100 debutant on this list achieved her feat before her 23rd birthday. Put another way: Of the 107 women to break into the top 100 after their 23rd birthday, only eight went on to a ranking of No. 32 or better. By comparison, about one-third of all top-100 players peak at a ranking in the top 32. In this category, Buzarnescu is charting entirely new territory.
Making up for lost time
The last six months or so have been a whirlwind for the Romanian, as she has gone from a fringe tour player that no one had ever heard of, to a solid tour regular that … well, most fans still don’t know much about. Many players need some time to adjust to the higher level of competition and spend months, even years, stagnating in the rankings. Buzarnescu, on the other hand, has barely stopped to take a breath.
It took 203 days from her top-100 debut last October to her latest career-high at No. 32 on Monday. Siegmund, by comparison, needed 315 days; Sybille Bammer took 574 days; Roberta Vinci, who eventually cracked the top ten, required 2,520 days, or nearly seven years. The average player who reaches the top 32 needs two and a half years between her first appearance in the top 100 and clearing the higher bar.
Buzarnescu’s climb doesn’t fit the mold of older debuts. Her climb has more in common with those of teenage sensations. Again since 1987, here are the 20 quickest ascents:
Player Age (Y) Age (D) Peak Ascent Days Jennifer Capriati 14 11 1 0 Anke Huber 15 266 4 49 Agnes Szavay 18 164 13 77 Lindsay Davenport 16 238 1 112 Naoko Sawamatsu 17 31 14 119 Clarisa Fernandez 20 265 26 133 Maria Sharapova 16 58 1 133 Serena Williams 16 52 1 133 Miriam Oremans 20 145 25 140 Venus Williams 16 301 1 147 Sofia Arvidsson 21 223 29 154 Leila Meskhi 19 308 12 168 Tatiana Golovin 16 22 12 175 Eugenie Bouchard 19 42 5 189 Martina Hingis 14 31 1 189 Ana Ivanovic 16 361 1 196 Conchita Martinez 16 107 2 196 Mihaela Buzarnescu 29 165 32 203 Darya Kasatkina 18 137 11 203 Ashleigh Barty 20 316 16 210
The player Buzarnescu knocked out of the top 20: Kim Clijsters. She is the only woman on the list to have cracked the top 100 after her 22nd birthday, yet here she is, climbing from No. 101 to No. 32 in less time than 92% of her peers.
Common sense suggests that Buzarnescu can climb only so much higher: Most players don’t set new career highs in their 30s, especially those who have such a short track record of tour-level success. On the other hand, she has adapted quickly, recording her first top ten win, over Jelena Ostapenko, in February and taking a set from Kvitova in Saturday’s final.
What’s more, she’ll reap the benefits of seeds at many events, probably including Roland Garros and Wimbledon. Having proven that she can defeat top 50 players–she holds a 6-7 career record against them–her new status as a top-32 player means she’ll get plenty of opportunities to rack up points against a less-daunting brand of competition. After more a decade of fighting steeply uphill battles, she has finally–improbably–earned a place among the game’s elite. Now all she has to do is keep winning.