From Juniors to the Prose, With Claire Liu
As she writes herself into the third round of Wimbledon, Liu has found her voice.
WIMBLEDON, England — Bounces wasn’t the first Substack about tennis, but it has grown into the biggest by a few metrics in its first 21 months of existence. I’m very grateful for the loyal readership I’ve built here at Bounces and how it continues growing—thanks often to you fine folks telling new people to check it out.
I’m also happy to see how this new category of media is meaningfully gaining traction. One cool marker of the progress: for the first time this year on the U.S. Open media application, “Substack” was listed on the dropdown menu of media categories, alongside considerably more established types like “Radio” and “Newspaper.”
There are a few other Substackers here in the Wimbledon press room, including Carole Bouchard, Chris Clarey, Jessica Schiffer of Hard Court (where Bounces readers can still get a discount for a few more days), and Simon Cambers, the newest on the block.
But more than the numbers in the press room, this Wimbledon has brought a different sort of milestone for Substack’s tennis footprint: for the first time, there’s an active tennis Substacker playing in the third round of a major: Claire Liu, whose Finding Claire-ity launched in 2023, predating Bounces by more than a year.
Because I knew I wanted to write about Liu as a player-writer at Bounces some time this year, I went to her court during the first round of Wimbledon qualifying last week to snap a few photos of her.
As inevitably happens at qualifying—where there were only some single-digit number of people watching her match—Liu quickly spotted me on the side of the court. After she dropped her opening service game, I decided to leave, conscious of potentially distracting her.
When we caught up later in the media tent she joked that when she saw me she was worried I was going to want to interview her after she lost, which she would’ve been in no mood for.
As most media requests at qualifying are, my ask for Liu was win-only. And happily, she won swiftly after I left: 6-2, 6-1 over Despina Papamichail.
To me, it wasn’t hugely surprising to see Liu rolling on the grass: she’d been a junior champion at Wimbledon, after all, winning the title here nine years ago. When Liu won in 2017—beating Ann Li in a historic all-Asian-American final on No. 1 Court—she was the first American to win the Wimbledon girls’ singles title since Chanda Rubin in 1992.1
Surely the grass must still give her confidence, I suggested?
”I feel like a lot of people have said that to me, and I just don’t feel it at all,” Liu said after that opening qualifying win. “Yeah, it’s been three years since I played here; I haven’t really felt that comfortable, honestly. So I was a little worried going into this, just because I haven’t gotten many matches in general.”
But the 146th-ranked Liu has kept winning on the lawns since we spoke, reeling off two more wins to qualify and then another two wins in the main draw of Wimbledon to reach the third round of women’s singles at a major for the first time.
For Liu, who turned 26 in May, that milestone coming so relatively late in her pro career hasn’t been easy. Junior success, as I’ve written about before at Bounces, is hardly any guarantee of a world-beating professional career.
For Liu, whose career-best WTA ranking so far was 52nd in early 2023, having her name on the wall at Wimbledon—where it is currently somewhat hidden behind an Evian counter—has sometimes led to mixed feelings that she’s trying to distill into something more positive.
“I’m learning to have more gratitude for it,” Liu said of her junior triumph. “It’s not that like I’ve looked on it like with a sour taste, but I’ve wished that my professional career could match, you know, what I did in the juniors.
“But it’s been helpful having people around me being like, ‘No, you can look back on it with something to be proud of. And even though maybe you aren’t content with the way things are going, it’s not something that’s to compare to.’ Because I think I do that a lot. I also look back on, ‘Oh, when I was top-100…’—and it’s not helpful.”
Self-doubt is part of being a tennis player, and it’s also part of being a writer. Liu’s current joint pursuits have her doing double duty on doubts. When I told her I enjoyed her writing, she expressed immediate disbelief.
“Oh gosh, really?” Liu said.
For Liu, writing was the outlet she landed on when seeking intellectual stimulation during the often monotonous life of a tennis player.
“When I first started, I remember I just felt like I needed to do something,” she said. “I know a lot of people get their degree and stuff, but I just really don’t want to do any more school. I journal a lot, and I liked the idea of writing and putting something out, so I decided to bite the bullet and do it. I didn’t know how it was going to be, but it’s been good. It’s been hard to consistently put out stuff like I’ve seen you and Andrea [Petkovic] do.”
Petkovic is indeed a machine on Substack, with a deeply Germanic strict regimen of putting out a new post on Finite Jest every Friday.
“It’s so impressive, and she writes so well,” Liu said of Petkovic. “And I’m putting out one like every six months.”
Liu usually isn’t quite that sporadic; she averages slightly more than a post every two months. But as I told her—and meant: “But when I see one from you come in, I know it’s because you have something to say: quality over quantity.”
“I definitely don’t have a lack of ideas,” Liu replied. “I think it’s just a good challenge for me. I mean, even this week I’ve had three or four ideas, but it’s a lot harder making it into something.”
Liu’s most recent post, which came out the week before Wimbledon qualifying, was one she’d been working on since February, inspired by watching Ilia Malinin during the Milan-Cortina Olympics.
“I wrote, like, 10 full pages worth of things,” Liu said, annoyed with herself. “It’s word vomiting, and so when I write I’m trying to whittle things down into something more coherent. Hopefully the more I do it, the more fine-tuned I can get in a process.”
But when she finished the piece, she stuck the landings better than Malinin did on that fateful day.
“As I learn more about myself I’ve recognized that not only am I looking for a sense of accomplishment, I’m searching for a sense of belonging,” Liu wrote. “That maybe the more I win, the more I’ll feel accepted. But it’s actually in the losses that we see connection and humanity. When you see yourself in others’ heartbreak and devastation, and can relate to the emotion and turmoil someone else may be feeling…So when I say I like seeing other people’s failures, I guess I just mean I like feeling a little less alone.”
Like her tennis when it’s at its best, Liu’s writing is often brave and bracing. Most searingly, she wrote a post in June 2025 called “Asian Invasion” about her history of experiencing discrimination in tennis.
There were times I didn’t want to be Asian.
That sounds harsh, I know. But what I mean is—there have been times when being Asian has made things noticeably harder. And in those moments, I’ve caught myself wishing I wasn’t. Not because I’m ashamed, but because I knew that what I was going through was unfair.
Like every time I’ve been mistaken for Ann Li or Carol Zhao or Danielle Lao or any other Asian tennis player. Or when I went to the ITF World Junior Tennis Finals to represent the U.S. and someone called us the “Oriental team” because two out of three of us were Asian. Or when a tennis player started calling me “Sai Sai,” because there was another Chinese tennis player with that name and I guess we’re all the same. Or more recently, when the tournament staff couldn’t find my check-in folder, kept pointing to a different Asian name and joking, “Pretty close though, huh?”—only to find out it was mine, just mislabeled.
Earlier last year, Liu wrote a post called “I hate grand slams,” where she wrote about how there’s an “ongoing battle in my head” about whether believing in her chances of making her dreams come true is delusional or not:
My track record at grand slams hasn’t been something to write home about. I’ve been fortunate to play main draw and win a round in every one. But after years of that being all I have to show for, it’s safe to say that my grand slam performances have been subpar. Which is why I find it mind boggling that every time I play a slam I still manage to think, “this is my chance to win one”. It doesn’t matter whether I’m 50 in the world or the last person in qualifying, in my head there’s always a path to the end of the rainbow.
This time, the path has taken her to the third round, further along the rainbow than she’s ever been. And for the first time since winning that girls’ final in 2017, it’s taken Liu back to Wimbledon’s No. 1 Court, where she will face another junior champion—whose creative online outlet, we recently learned, is making anime supercuts: Coco Gauff.
You can subscribe to Claire Liu’s Substack here:
For more on Liu, this was a nice piece on her in The Los Angeles Times by Doug Robson, whom it’s been fun seeing back on the tennis beat a bit this year.
Wimbledon Day 5 Matches to Watch
In addition to Claire Liu vs. Coco Gauff, which is third after 1 p.m. on No. 1 Court, here are my picks for the best matches to watch on Friday at Wimbledon as the third round gets underway.
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