GIVING UP A DREAM

QHow did you switch from a career on the court to a role helping players get through the grades?

AFor two years I was playing fulltime in Brisbane, playing a lot of tournaments and I hadn’t delved into the pro tour much and my trainer said to me I should go to Europe with a group of players. I told him I didn’t want to go just to make up numbers, I wanted to go over and give it a real crack, so I stayed home and trained and really honed my game and then I was going to give it a real good crack in the third year in 2011. A job popped up as a community tennis officer, or what other sports would call a development officer, based in Toowoomba. I used to do these exhibition tours with TQ at the time, where we’d go out to rural areas for a week and we’d get paid to go out and coach at the schools and play exhibition matches at night. I got a connection with one of the CTOs we had at the time and he said the position had opened up and I should have a serious think about giving it a crack. I saw all these guys in their 20s and 30s with uni degrees and I said: ‘I haven’t even got a uni degree’ and he said: ‘Well, you’ve got a degree in tennis and you love the sport and help promote the sport and we need people like you involved.’ I remember I was at a tournament in Lismore when the person who ended up being my manager called me and said I’d been successful in the application. I had to think: ‘Do you want to give up your dream of being a professional tennis player?’ I sat down and had a chat to Mum and Dad and felt it was the best option.