Tennis youngsters’ eyes opened
New Zealand tennis coach Sebastian Lavie is looking to give the best young players in the country a taste of what it takes to get to the top.
Lavie, who in January won Tennis NZ’s award for performance coach of the year and spends most of his time on the road coaching on the men’s professional circuit, is making a couple of trips back to New Zealand over the next few months and will run intense twoday camps in Auckland with some of the country’s best juniors.
He will be looking to give these young players the experience of what it’s like in the top European tennis academies, where the players live and breathe tennis all day, every day.
‘‘I spend most of my playing seasons overseas, growing up in academies and really felt the benefit of a group environment and training together,’’ said Lavie, a former New Zealand Davis Cup player.
‘‘When you get the players you can put in a group, it really pushes everyone up.
‘‘I don’t spend that much time in New Zealand, but now I’m working alongside Sacha Jones and Finn Tearney and also a bit with GD Jones, we want to bring together all the kids we work with and any others are more than welcome, to create a really good environment for them to train in.
‘‘So we’re starting off with a one off camp and we’re looking to do it four to five times a year and create more of an environment, rather than change anything that the kids are doing, because we won’t be able to have that impact.’’
Generally, juniors in New Zealand work tennis around school hours, apart from the odd private school like St Kentigerns in Auckland, which has a strong tennis focus, along with high enrolment fees.
As a youngster, Lavie went to the Mouratoglou Tennis Academy in France, while other New Zealanders went to Spain for part of the year to mingle with the best young players in the world.
‘‘Myself, Sacha and Finn to and extent, we all trained overseas and we’ve all been in that professional environment,’’ Lavie said.
‘‘We all see the benefit. Kids in New Zealand do their best, but with the country being so far away from the rest of the world and the budget being so small that’s being put into tennis, it doesn’t give us the best opportunity to get professionalism involved. We want to create that professional environment that kids don’t experience very often.’’