Tennis Academy

In hindsight, it looks really sort of intense and maybe... almost aggressive and, uh, you know, quite exaggerated, but actually that was my day to day.

And it remains the day to day of lots of people who remain at that Academy or in that type of environment.

Um, and I think a lot, and we haven't really mentioned this massively yet, but the idea around that being described as bad coaching or Gareth, when I was telling him about these experiences, not in the words that you can read, but you know, in my, um, in those interviews that we were having as a critical friend um Gareth raised his eyebrows and was like what are you talking about this is you know I don't know if he used the term abusive but he might as well have done um and that that was kind of where a lot of this synthesis came from it's like well no guys not necessarily this is just a different version of coaching that we don't know here that we yes we don't agree with it but it you know it produced results um lots of fantastic players as as we know have come from that environment um if you've if you've watched the rafa nadal documentary people people weren't allowed to drink for the first hour of training neither were we uh you're running around if you miss a ball in the net so were we you know all of these punishment reward type type versions of coaching well rafa did it and he was one of if not the best tennis player of all time so Yeah, I take issue with people defining coaching as good or bad based on what they have experienced themselves.

Only since writing this paper, by the way, have I come to that sort of yeah understanding but yeah I mean the story in itself is quite emotional for me I actually really enjoyed my time I don't know if it comes across in that particular story I loved that academy I loved almost every minute I was there yes I was terrified of the coach but we were meant to be um And I have a lot of love and admiration for that sort of time in my life.

Was

it the Plantation Park where they had all those tennis tournaments like Saviano Academy and stuff like that?

Yeah.

Because I know, you know, Will Howes, Jeannie Bouchard, a lot of them trained at that tennis academy there.

Oh, no, no.

It wasn't Academy.

It was more like a park.

Public park? Public park.

Right.

And sometimes I could speed up the process, but I think some people forget that in the process where it's like, I show up, I can just, you know, go to the Academy and all of a sudden I'm going to be playing in these tournaments when in reality, maybe that, that lady shouldn't have played for a whole year, you know, and they just work with the coaches and get to a place where maybe they can actually start to focus on strategy and matches.

And, how to handle yourself on the court and all of these other things that can come with it.

Cause it's, there's a lot more that goes into it than just, you know, what meets the eye.