Originally posted by Janik
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Players who fell off the face of the earth
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A couple of Swedish players from men's tennis:
Magnus Norman got to world number 2 in his early 20s, then dropped off the face of the earth.
Joachim Johansson reached the top 10 in the ATP rankings in his early 20s, and made the US Open semis, then seemed to completely disappear.
Injuries in both cases, I suspect.
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Originally posted by Kevin S View PostAfter winning the world driver's championship, Damon Hill won 1 of his final 48 Grands Prix.
I would nominate Carlos Roa, who was unpassable in goal for Argentina in the 1998 world cup group phase (only to succumb to Dennis Bergkamp's finest moment in the quarter final), and then at the end of the 1998/99 season decided that The End Was Nigh. A wonderful career smothered by religious zeal.
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Timmy Smith of the Washington Redskins set a Superbowl rushing record at Superbowl XXII. I am not sure if the record stands but he was used as a surprise package in the game and hardly played another game after that.
When Andy Murray won Wimbledon in 2013 most people forget that he defeated Jerzy Janowicz in a keenly contested semi-final. At the time Janowicz looked to be a force to be reckoned with but he now resides outside the top 100 in the rankings.
Sticking with tennis, Eugenie Bouchard may end up in this category.
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Very good call w/ Timmy Smith. He's from Hobbs, NM and it was depressing to hear years ago on the local news that he was going to spend time in prison for drug distribution.
Looking at his stats, he gained 602 career yards in the regular season, but 342 yards in just three 1987 playoff games. His 204 yards is still the Super Bowl record.
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A Tennis one (I mean, I had to have one of these) which was only eventually injury-related - Melanie Oudin. Spectacular back-to-back Grand Slams I making R4 of Wimbledon and the QFs of the US Open as a teenager and not with easy draws either, beating Jankovic in SW19 and in New York taking down a bevy of quality Russians headlined by the ultimate scalp in Sharapova. She was immediately hailed as the saviour of US Tennis, the Woman to replace the Williams' sisters as the standard bearer when they had departed the scene (this was 2009, they were already around 30, no-one went on much longer than that back then). And then... nothing much more, which was an all too familiar tale with the 'saviours of US Tennis' Men and Women at the time.
Oudin just four more Slam singles matches in her career, all in separate tournaments. She dropped outside the top 100 just under two years after the 'breakthrough', and apart from a single, brief, completely unexpected blip when, whilst ranked outside the top 200, she came through qualifying all the way to winning the Edgbaston Priory WTA event (before it became a Premier admittedly, but still an immense shock, cf. this run of champions: Li Na, Sabine Lisicki, Melanie Oudin, Daniela Hantuchova, Ana Ivanovic, Angie Kerber, Madison Keys, Petra Kvitova). But that was not a resurgence, but more a glimmer of what could have been. Then the injuries and health scares started, which culminated in Oudin retiring from the sport last autumn, still in her mid-20s.
As multipleman suggests, I see echoes of Oudin in Genie Bouchard's trajectory. Though former Best Friend Forever Laura Robson feels a bit closer to Melanie, albeit injury was the catalyst for precipitous decline in Laura's case.
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Oh, somebody should make a film about Ian Baker Finch. He was the classic "out of nowhere" nobody kids who could have won the Open at St Andrews in 1984 - but understandably fell away in the last round, shot an 81 or something I think as the two greatest players of that generation, Watson and Ballesteros, battled it out alongside him in one of the best Opens ever. Came back seven years later and won the thing at Birkdale. And yes, then totally went to pieces. To the extent that he was turning up to the Open as a former champion on his lifetime exemption and shooting 84 in the first round.
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