Laura Robson on her 'lucky escape' at the Las Vegas shooting and how she plans to take 2018 by storm
The 23-year-old was with friends at a festival in Las Vegas when Stephen Paddock opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel last October
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Your support makes all the difference.Laura Robson has packed much into her 23 years, but the one event outside of tennis that will surely stick in her mind for ever will be last October’s mass shooting at a country music festival in Las Vegas.
Robson was with friends in the crowd as a lone gunman, Stephen Paddock, shooting from his 32nd-floor room in the Mandalay Bay Hotel, killed 58 people and injured another 500 in one of the most shocking mass murders in American history.
Although Robson said on Twitter at the time that she had been at the festival and had escaped unhurt, it was only here on Wednesday at the Australian Open that the former Wimbledon junior champion talked in public about her experience on that traumatic evening.
“It was a crazy, crazy thing to happen and I got really, really lucky,” Robson said. “My friends got really, really lucky. That's really all I can say. I don't really like to think about it.”
She added: “We were really, really lucky in that we were off to the side, so you hear everything and stuff like that. But we were on the way out anyway. So many people weren’t lucky. I just got a big hug from my mum when she picked me up from the airport the next day.”
Robson said that when the gunman started shooting she was not aware at first what was happening.
“I thought it was something on the stage,” she said. “My friend, one of the girls I was with, she is from North Carolina so she was the first one to be like: 'Hang on here, that is definitely bullets.’ At that point a guy who used to work for IMG and was running the event, he was the hero that day.”
Having originally intended to go home the following day, Robson then spent “five days in the house without really leaving”. She added: “When I got home my dogs could sense that I was a bit off so they just sat on me for five days. After that you have to get back to real life and back on the court.”
Playing tennis might have seemed unimportant after that experience, but Robson is feeling good about her game at the moment. The world No 227 just missed out on a place in the singles qualifying tournament here but played in the doubles alongside Coco Vandeweghe, though the Briton and the American were beaten 7-6, 6-4 in the first round today by the No 14 seeds, Chan Hao-ching and Katarina Srebotnik.
The last four years have not been easy for Robson, who reached a career-high position of No 27 in the world rankings in 2013 but subsequently struggled with serious wrist problems which required surgery.
Asked if she had ever thought of retiring, Robson said: “The option has always been there for me. I haven’t ever had my parents or family members saying: ‘This is your role.’
“Unfortunately some other players maybe do. It has always been up to me whether to stop or keep going and you definitely have some dark thoughts when you lose in China for the third week in a row, but it’s always there and I don’t feel that way any more.”
Robson recently reunited with Martijn Bok, the Dutch coach who guided her to so much success as a junior. “I feel very happy on court for the first time in a long time,” Robson said. “I’m happy to be back with Martijn. We’re putting in some good work on the practice court. I feel very happy and super-motivated.”
She said her wrist had not been a problem for a good while – “I do handstands, push-ups,” Robson said with a smile – and said that she now felt 100 per cent confident in it. “I put in a good off-season this year,” she added. “I felt ready coming into my first event in Adelaide.
“When I first came back [following wrist surgery], I felt good because I was just so happy to be back. More recently, for the last year or so, it’s been tough. I haven’t had the results I wanted. I could feel myself not improving.
“The motivation to get on the court was just not there because it was like: ‘Here we go again, another practice where I’m going to come off feeling terrible about myself.’ I had to just change my mindset from last year and put in a couple of really good weeks of training. New year, new me and all that.”
Robson, who has British and Australian passports, was born here and is spending much of the European winter Down Under. She attended her sister’s wedding here and has been back in the city since Boxing Day. She will be playing four Challenger tournaments after the Australian Open.
Explaining how she got back together with Bok, Robson said: “We stayed in touch the whole time that we were apart. It sounds weirdly romantic, but it’s not! So he would always text me: ‘How are you doing?’ He started emailing me and my family again and he was quite upset about my results and everything like that and how it hadn’t started coming together.
“He talked to his wife and his kids and they allowed him to travel a little bit again. He’s not full-time. At the moment it’s 22 to 24 weeks [a year]. But it’s a significant amount of time and I’m happy to do my training weeks in Amsterdam.”
Robson said she was happier with her tennis now than she had been for a long time. “I felt like I was stuck in this spot where I wasn’t getting any better,” she said. “I couldn’t pinpoint what I was doing wrong and why I felt so bad on court, why I was so unhappy in practice and in matches. It was getting a bit overwhelming.
“To change my whole scenery and get Martijn back and spend a bit more time with my family at the end of the year, it just made a difference. From whenever I got here, I’ve felt a lot lighter on court and a lot happier.”
Robson said she expected her game to continue to be based around her big hitting, but added: “I think the way that the game is changing, and everyone is moving better, and tactically, I have to read things more, I have to vary it a little bit more.
“That's something that I used to do without even realising it, just because I've played so many matches. So it's just opening up the court a bit more, angles, the works, and not getting into too much of a monotone rhythm.”
Robson has targeted a return to the world’s top 100 by the end of this year but added: “Really for me, I want to feel the best possible version of myself again on court. That's something that's just not been there the last few years.
“If I win or lose, [I need to] execute that to the best of my ability every time and come off feeling, like, maybe I didn't win but I did everything that we'd been working on and vary the pace a bit more so it's not so bash-bash tennis.”
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