According to the Guinness Book of World Records, in a US Open second-round qualifier in 1983, Barbara Bramblett was trailing 0-6, 0-5 and facing three match points against her at love-40 when serving in game six of the second set against her opponent, Ann Hulbert. Incredibly, Bramblett went on to win the match 0-6, 7-5, 6-3, saving eighteen match points in the process. All credit to Bramblett and what an inspiration to any young sportsperson. The comeback was astonishing; her bouncebackability was of the highest order. She avoided the dreaded double bagel! And how!

But here is a thought that we may perhaps have overlooked: what must it have felt like for Ann Hulbert? She was so near to qualifying for one of the four Majors – so near yet so far. All her hopes and dreams were about to be fulfilled and then they were gone. She never made it any further. Novak Djokovic, however, although he has had considerably more success than Hulbert, faced extreme yet understandable disappointment when he lost in the Wimbledon semi-final against his much younger opponent, Jannik Sinner, when the elusive record-breaking twenty-fifth Major victory was within his sights, causing another former Grand Slam winner, Andre Agassi, to state during his commentary of the match that “In this sport, as in life, hope is fragile but hard to kill.”

Of course, Andre Agassi himself knew what he was talking about, having experienced the feeling of coming back from an almost impossible situation when he beat Andrei Medvedev in the 1999 French Open Final, having dropped the first two sets before staging a brilliant recovery against the Ukrainian to win 1-6, 2-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4, thus completing his career Grand Slam. It epitomised his comeback from slipping to a world ranking of 141, on account of “severe wrist injuries, personal problems, and a lack of motivation”, to regaining the World No. 1 ranking, which in turn led to three further Australian Open championships. Hope surely faded during those dark days but never deserted him.

When Mani Dieseruvwe headed in what he believed would be the winning goal in the dying seconds of added time of the final match of last season’s National League match between the two top teams, he (and the hundreds of fans who stormed the pitch in celebration) thought he had won promotion for his club Rochdale, only for York City to score an equaliser once play started again. Hope at that moment, for both teams, in fact, had become very fragile. However, a few weeks later Rochdale did win the play-off final and so gain promotion, after all – hope did indeed prove hard to kill. Hope remained alive – and well – just.

Hope is fragile; it can be snatched away and broken suddenly and unexpectedly. A bad or unexpected bounce can turn an excellent-looking shot into a disastrous result. A youngster breaking into a team could so easily be injured by an innocuous tackle or an accidental collision and never recover fully. Being caught on the boundary one run short of a first-ever century when playing in our final match in a promising school career can tarnish all that preceded it. All of these can be so hard to experience and make us question why we do it all. Has hope failed?

Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, once said that “Hope in reality is the worst of all evils as it prolongs the torments of men”. Such a view may well lead many a youngster to doubt and quit after hard experiences of loss; they may well be tempted to think it is not worth going through that again. However, such a view does not take into consideration the biblical claim that “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope”. The apparent very fragility of hope being torn cruelly from our grasp through tough experiences is in fact what leads to greater and stronger hope. Hope is hard to kill; we get stronger through having it ripped from us, not least as we do not wish to experience the feeling again.

Hulbert may never have gone further than the second qualifying round for any Major tournament, but her collegiate career was capped perhaps by receiving something more meaningful, when she received the Arthur Ashe Award for Leadership and Sportsmanship from the Intercollegiate Tennis Association. Now that is no mean achievement! Hope may well be fragile, so we need to handle it with enormous care. But, remember this, bagels can still taste delicious! The taste of hope lingers.