2015 Sydney International

[Hudu Gurusingha]

Just still amazing that given the weather, the resources, the pedigree of tennis players we have produced we are so bad. Where are we going wrong? I reckon its the style of coaching.

All our current players are brought up with a massive sense of entitlement, given every chance to succeed. Laver was brought up in a country town hitting balls on a makeshift court.

 

[Bumpswithagrin]

Just still amazing that given the weather, the resources, the pedigree of tennis players we have produced we are so bad. Where are we going wrong? I reckon its the style of coaching.

All our current players are brought up with a massive sense of entitlement, given every chance to succeed. Laver was brought up in a country town hitting balls on a makeshift court.

It's not that we are so bad, it's just that the rest of the world has caught up and then overtaken us. Back in the day when no country spared many resources to develop tennis players we had an advantage given our weather, space and relative high standard of living. I remember visiting Italy in the 80s and an Italian friend of the family telling me how excited she was as she was learning tennis (as an adult) as it was considered a kind of luxury to her. Meanwhile I, like most Aussies, played tennis as a matter of course growing up and never gave it a second thought.

I would love to see our players have more success but I really would not like to have successful tennis players at the expense of them being well balanced, well rounded individuals. If starting at an extremely young age, excluding all other activities and having John Tomic/Damir Dokic type parents as coaches is the only path to success give me a bunch of mediocre Aussie tennis players any day.

 

[Hamingja]

It's not that we are so bad, it's just that the rest of the world has caught up and then overtaken us. Back in the day when no country spared many resources to develop tennis players we had an advantage given our weather, space and relative high standard of living. I remember visiting Italy in the 80s and an Italian friend of the family telling me how excited she was as she was learning tennis (as an adult) as it was considered a kind of luxury to her. Meanwhile I, like most Aussies, played tennis as a matter of course growing up and never gave it a second thought.

Soon enough it will be an elite sport once again in Melbourne and Sydney. There are no (or very few free public courts) for kids to play on like I did when I was younger. Moving to Adelaide that is something I've noticed, they still have lots of courts around the place.

 

[Hudu Gurusingha]

It's not that we are so bad, it's just that the rest of the world has caught up and then overtaken us. Back in the day when no country spared many resources to develop tennis players we had an advantage given our weather, space and relative high standard of living. I remember visiting Italy in the 80s and an Italian friend of the family telling me how excited she was as she was learning tennis (as an adult) as it was considered a kind of luxury to her. Meanwhile I, like most Aussies, played tennis as a matter of course growing up and never gave it a second thought.

I would love to see our players have more success but I really would not like to have successful tennis players at the expense of them being well balanced, well rounded individuals. If starting at an extremely young age, excluding all other activities and having John Tomic/Damir Dokic type parents as coaches is the only path to success give me a bunch of mediocre Aussie tennis players any day.

Successful Australian tennis players or well-rounded Virgin Mary's who suck at the game?

I'll have the former

 

[Hudu Gurusingha]

Soon enough it will be an elite sport once again in Melbourne and Sydney. There are no (or very few free public courts) for kids to play on like I did when I was younger. Moving to Adelaide that is something I've noticed, they still have lots of courts around the place.

From my experience Melbourne has way more courts than Adelaide where I couldnt find anywhere to play. Perth is ridiculous though. Courts everywhere. Nearly all clubs have grass courts too.

The club scene isn't that strong though. Most are focused towards old biddies who marshall everything way too tightly and make it hard for youngsters to come down and hire courts and generate a social scene, which is frowned upon. Exceptions are UWA tennis club, and Robertson Park who have a great social league.

Playing pennant, there are many clubs you rock up to on the weekend and there is no one there except the team youre playing against. And what is shit is that they allocate you two courts to play all your matches on, while they reserve most courts for social play for the old biddies, and most the courts remain vacant the whole day. Its crazy. Whats also bullshit is the amount of breaks playing pennant. 6 week break over Christmas because it lines up with the school holidays, no play over 34 degrees, byes, no play on weekends with public holidays, call a rubber off when theres a spit of rain - man playing footy and cricket you would never miss a weekend, and you needed to pull together 11 to 22 players to play, as opposed to 4 players for a pennant rubber. I havent played a competitive match since early December.

Need more of a 'lad' culture in tennis, like with footy, and less of a howty-towty cup-of-tea, sandwiches, no play-after-dark culture to get more youngsters to stick around playing the game.

 

[bato]

Troicki wins. Should be a cracking match vs. Vesely in round one.