Young ace Fletcher proving a smash hit on the court
ANINE-YEAR-OLD boy who is taking the tennis world by storm has been selected to represent Great Britain next month – and is one of the youngest players ever chosen.
Fletcher Davies, from Neath, started accompanying his mum, who is a tennis coach, to her lessons when he was just two months old.
By the age of two he could get a rally over the net, recalled his proud mum, Melissa, and he began competing at a local club level when he was five. He started playing at major events when he was six and has since risen meteorically through the ranks.
“Too strong” for his own age group, he plays at the level above – sometimes against children who are “two foot taller than him” – and is now ranked second in GB, said his dad, Leighton. A passion for tennis runs in the family’s blood, but Fletcher’s parents said his “determination and gutsiness makes him a bit different”.
Both Leighton, 50, and Melissa, 47, have played tennis since they were young, with Melissa turning to it fulltime, while Leighton became an accountant. In the three decades Melissa has been a coach, for 10 of those years she’s been the head coach at Whitchurch Tennis Club, in Cardiff.
Fletcher came onto the club’s courts with her when he was just a baby. “He would come to my lessons in his pram... As soon as he could sit up, I used to roll the ball to him and he stopped it with a racket,” said Melissa.
It wasn’t long before he could stand up and swing a racket himself. “I think I started playing when I just started walking,” he said. His precocious success in tennis is not the first time the family have been recognised for their involvement in the sport, however.
Fletcher’s brother, Sebastian, made headlines during lockdown after he went viral on TikTok for posting videos of tennis challenges. Then aged 13, Sebastian had created more than 100 daily challenge videos with the help of Fletcher, who was five at the time – and their videos even caught the attention of Wimbledon.
Since he was six years old Fletcher has played more than 320 matches and has won more than 250 of them. Today he trains for hours a day, fitting practice around school and splitting his time between Whitchurch Tennis Club, Swansea Tennis Centre – where Melissa also coaches – and other courts.
“It’s just finding balance... Tennis is quite unforgiving. You either commit to it [or you don’t]... it’s what Fletcher wants to do, it’s not something we’re driving,” said Leighton. The youngster’s commitment to tennis has seen him travel all over the country, and even internationally, to play in tournaments. A recent highlight was winning the LTA Lexus Junior National Tour under-10 event in Bolton at the start of April.
Before that, in January, he made his first international trip, accompanied by his mum and brother, to play at the Lemon Bowl in Italy, which was also his first time playing on clay. “It was a year above again – the top juniors in Europe, and some of the top Italians ranked in the world,” said Leighton.
The schoolboy ended up losing on just one point in the champions tie break – but when he did win elsewhere in the tournament, his celebrations were “something else”, laughed Leighton, who watched it online.
A self-professed “entertainer” on the court, Fletcher’s favourite thing is to “get the crowd going” – but he admitted he got “nervous” when he was playing one on one.
As for what’s next, in 2025 he will travel even further, to Croatia, and then Miami for the Junior World Championships. But before that he’s been picked to play for Great Britain in the under-11 age group against France in Nottingham in early May. He’ll spend three days there on his own with coaches in the GB camp. One of the youngest ever to be selected for such a feat, he said he was “extremely” excited.
His talent has also been recognised by sport equipment manufacturer Wilson, which has provided sponsorship. In March, Wilson also gifted Fletcher a racket, signed by Greek pro Stefanos Tsitsipas – one of Fletcher’s favourite players – with a personal message to the youngster wishing him good luck. The support is something the family are hugely grateful for.
“[Tennis] is a nice journey, but it is very expensive. It’s a very unfair playing field, too, in so much as how affluent a lot of people that play tennis are,” said Leighton. “We know people are paying sometimes £200,000 a year for the kids to be coached in America in IMG [Academy]. Credit to them – we’ve got no grudge. We just compete with them.” Fletcher has no doubt achieved far more than most children his age – and his drive is spurred on by an endearing confidence in his own ability. Asked about his future ambitions, the schoolboy laughed: “I reckon I’ll just play tennis all my life, really, and probably just go and win every Grand Slam then.”