I won junior Wimbledon but retired at 28 and now have ‘cool’ job

Laura Robson may only be 30, but she’s already packed a lot into her career both on and off the tennis court.

When she won the Girl’s Singles title at Wimbledon in 2008 at just 14, she was tipped for greatness.

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Four years later she was named as the WTA Newcomer of the Year after advancing into the fourth round of the US Open.

She beat multiple Grand Slam champions Kim Clijsters and Li Na along the way, while also claiming an Olympic silver medal at the London 2012 games aged just 18.

Robson and mixed doubles partner Andy Murray advanced through to the final, with the British pair coming up short against Belarusian duo Victoria Azarenka and Max Mirnyi.

The following year, Robson reached the fourth round at Wimbledon, but the Australian-born star then began to be crippled by injuries.

Ultimately they were what wrecked her career and forced her to retire back in 2022.

After requiring wrist surgery, the former British no.1 was also forced to undergo three hip operations.

She missed the entire 2020 and 2021 seasons due to injury and Robson announced her immediate retirement from tennis at the age of 28.

That did not mean she quit the sport for good, however, as she has plenty of other successful jobs.

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She is a regular pundit for Eurosport on their Grand Slam coverage and also for the BBC at Wimbledon.

In 2023, she was also named tournament director at the Rothesay Open in Nottingham.

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She has landed herself a job at Wimbledon, where she is on the international player relations team.

Her role has seen her rub shoulders with Kate Middleton, with Robson spotted sitting alongside the Princess of Wales at the All England Club.

The role has one main focus – keeping the players happy at Wimbledon.

But despite the pressure of working in tennis administration, Robson has told talkSPORT she is loving her new career.

Discussing her role as a tournament director on the Hawksbee and Jacobs show, Robson told talkSPORT in 2023: “I think there are different ways at being a tournament director, but I really wanted to be involved in the behind-the-scenes aspect of it.

“For me, I wanted to learn from the people that have run the events over the last few years, so we started back in January putting everything together.

“And kind of checking in quite regularly to see what we needed to update and what could be better for the players.

“But the week of [the tournament], you’re just trying to make the experience out on court the best as you can.

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“And I’m also on the player relations team here at Wimbledon, which is very similar in a lot of ways because we take in all the feedback that we get over the course of the event and seeing if hopefully we can see some improvements for next year already.

“But it’s a year-long thing that you just have to keep thinking about basically, it’s been very, very cool.”

And Robson has been in that role for more than a year now and is loving every minute of it where she saw British success in Katie Boulter winning a first WTA trophy.

“I’d done a few events before, but this was definitely a big step up with it being a combined WTA and ATP Challenger event,” she said.

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“I think last year went really well and we were pretty much sold out throughout the week.

“I know a lot of that was to do with Andy (Murray) playing but it meant we had a lot of people come who might not have ever been to the tournament before and hopefully they want to come back again because they really enjoyed themselves.”

Robson is also a regular on television around major tennis events and has offered her insights for Eurosport at the French Open and has worked for Sky Sports.

She is at Wimbledon this week and was tasked with showing The Office star Steve Carell around the grounds and will continue to be at the grounds to watch Brits hopefully march on, including Katie Boulter, Jack Draper, Harriet Dart and Emma Raducanu.

She wrote on social media: “Steve and his wife Nancy told me they love watching Ostapenko. We love them.”