Most Meteoric Rise in Sport

[Yevrah]

Watching Raducanu winning the US Open without dropping a set and having to qualify for the main draw in the first place made me wonder what the most meteoric rise in sport is.

Well?

[Kikó]

Wayne Rooney.

[Lewis]

Isn't this sort of thing not uncommon in tennis? I don't even follow it and I know that Boris Becker and Martina Hingis were killing people as teenagers, so were they wonderkids or something and this one wasn't necessarily hyped up prior to this tournament?

[phonics]

I mean isn’t the whole thing with a meteoric rise that you can’t be more meteoric than another? Every overnight sensation is overnight.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Isn't this sort of thing not uncommon in tennis? I don't even follow it and I know that Boris Becker and Martina Hingis were killing people as teenagers, so were they wonderkids or something and this one wasn't necessarily hyped up prior to this tournament?

"Eight qualifiers—five men, three women—had reached Grand Slam semifinals before in the Open Era, but none of them ever went any further:

~ John McEnroe at 1977 Wimbledon (lost in semifinals)
~ Bob Giltinan at 1977 Australian Open [December] (lost in semifinals)
~ Christine Dorey at 1978 Australian Open (lost in semifinals)
~ Filip Dewulf at 1997 French Open (lost in semifinals)
~ Alexandra Stevenson at 1999 Wimbledon (lost in semifinals)
~ Vladimir Voltchkov at 2000 Wimbledon (lost in semifinals)
~ Nadia Podoroska at 2020 French Open (lost in semifinals)
~ Aslan Karatsev at 2021 Australian Open (lost in semifinals)"

She's the first to have gotten to a final as a qualifier let alone win the tournament.

[Spikey M]

I'm not sure if we're counting teams, but Leicester had decent relegation odds the year they won the league.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

She's also done it by not dropping a single set.

[Yevrah]

Isn't this sort of thing not uncommon in tennis? I don't even follow it and I know that Boris Becker and Martina Hingis were killing people as teenagers, so were they wonderkids or something and this one wasn't necessarily hyped up prior to this tournament?

It was only her second Grand Slam and she was doing her A-Levels 3 months ago, Shinners/Mahow did the work in the tennis thread and nothing has ever happened like this before. Those you mentioned took more tournaments to win one. She could realistically be a multiple Grand Slam winner by the time they won their first.

[Jimmy Floyd]

A qualifier winning a tennis major at 18 is unsurpassed I think.

If Justin Rose had won the 98 Open as an amateur it would have compared, but he came 4th.

[Lewis]

Whatever the intricacies of the qualifying (which surely can't be compared across eras), I knew who she was, so she isn't some mook winning the open golf tournament.

[Yevrah]

Whatever the intricacies of the qualifying (which surely can't be compared across eras), I knew who she was, so she isn't some mook winning the open golf tournament.

The qualifying bit is probably irrelevant, that it was only her second Grand Slam is the key bit, it took Becker five attempts and Hingis nine.

EDIT: Took Becker 7 attempts, not 5.

[Lewis]

Yeah maybe then. What was that resilience shit about? Like a cheap wrestling pop.

[Raoul Duke]

Didn't Pedro win pretty much everything in football by his early 20s? Came through in the Barca/Spain ascendency

[Shindig]

Kingsley Coman probably had the lot before he got out of his teens. I haven't seen anyone rise up the ranks as quick as Marquez in motorcycles.

[Yevrah]

Ranked in the 300s prior to Wimbledon and she's now 23rd in the World. :D

[Queenslander]

In my part of the world it has to be Sonny Bill Williams.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bill_Williams#2004%E2%80%9308:_Canterbury-Bankstown_Bulldogs

[Dquincy]

Has anyone mentioned Pele?

[-james-]

She did have a ridiculously easy draw. The odds for the rolling accumulator of each match win "only" work out to about 85/1. She is obviously ridiculously good though to be priced that short as a literal who.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Some old sporting cliches are actually still valid in the data age, and one of them is 'You can only beat what's put in front of you'.

[Baz]

Watching Raducanu winning the US Open without dropping a set and having to qualify for the main draw in the first place made me wonder what the most meteoric rise in sport is.

Well?She’s probably on the juice like the rest of ‘em.

[John Arne]

Lewis Hamilton's rookie season was pretty phenomenal. He would have won the championship if his gear box didn't spaz up in the final race.

[Shindig]

Earlier than that. China would've seen it all but sealed but nobody told him his tires were bald.