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Taylor Townsend is the best women's doubles player in the world right now. But back in 2012, at age 16, she was told that her body wasn't fit enough for professional tennis.

"It was an official from the USTA. (That's like being called to the principal's office.) They said, 'Taylor, you need to come to Florida — now . We're putting you on an eight-week block of fitness training,'" Townsend wrote in a 2021 essay from The Player's Tribune .

Eight weeks of intensive fitness training meant that she'd miss the US Open, despite being the No. 1 ranked junior in the world. Nothing about the feedback made sense to her. At the time, Townsend already felt like an outsider in the world of tennis, being a young, Black girl from the Sout

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