‘ Globe- trotting’ life suits couple well
North Shore- based tennis pro Rik de Voest heads to Poland next for the Davis Cup
He’s played at stately Wimbledon, where fans take afternoon tea and sample the obligatory strawberries and Devon cream. He’s traded shots at Flushing Meadow, with the unmistakable smell of the food courts at the U. S. Open wafting through the air. And he’s lost to Rafael Nadal in the desert air at Indian Wells, in front of the blinged- up, well- heeled Hollywood crowd.
On the other hand, Rik de Voest can tell you about the countless nights spent at the Comfort Inns and Super 8s of this world, and the times he’s had to grab a slice of pizza to keep from overpaying for food and drink. Then there’s the manic schedule and the constant need to adhere to matters financial.
Welcome to the life of a middleclass touring tennis pro.
Join the ATP Tour, see the world?
It’s safe to say that de Voest has woken up many times, from a deep state of chronic dislocation and jet leg, and wondered where he was.
This week, it’s easy. He’s home for a rare few days in North Vancouver before flying out Saturday to Frankfurt, then connecting to Warsaw and a ride to Zielona Gora, a city in western Poland where South Africa will play Poland in the next round of their Davis Cup matches next weekend.
Meanwhile, the guy defeated by de Voest last Sunday in the final of the Rimouski, Que., Open — Vancouver’s Vasek Pospisil — will be practising at UBC’s Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre for the upcoming Davis Cup World Group tie against Italy, scheduled for April 5- 7.
The 22- year- old Pospisil rose to No. 85 in the world singles rankings last year and, mainly because of his heroic play for Team Canada in Davis Cup competition, is the best- known touring tennis pro from the Vancouver area.
de Voest? Who knew he lived here, too?
The 32- year- old South African and Olympian met his wife, Carolyn Devine, the club’s athletic director, at the 2005 Odlum Brown Vancouver Open, held annually at the Hollyburn Country Club in West Vancouver. They fell in love and got married two years later. Carolyn, a graduate of Handsworth secondary and McGill University, grew up in North Vancouver and has family here, and the couple make the North Shore their home.
Conveniently, North Van has shops that cater to the growing number of South African expatriates in the Lower Mainland ( an estimated 60,000) where Rik can satisfy a nostalgic craving for biltong — the dried, salted meat that is the Afrikaner version of jerky — whenever he’s in town to pick up his mail and do laundry.
“For me, personally, I’m not here long enough to be able to establish a network with other South Africans,” de Voest admitted.
He turned pro in 1999 and has won a combined $ 1,278,509 in singles and doubles since that time. Nothing to sneeze at, certainly. As well, Babolat supplies de Voest with rackets, Lacoste supplies clothing and Oakley sun glasses. But he isn’t paid a fee to wear their products.
Thus, by dint of circumstance and ranking, de Voest’s career is a self- financed, play- for- pay deal.
“A guy like Milos ( Raonic) is getting paid to play in New Balance clothing ( the deal is worth $ 1 million per season over a five- year term for Canada’s top player),” de Voest said. “You have to be able to be marketable to demand appearance money. That doesn’t work for me. Being from South Africa, I don’t have marketability for South African companies overseas either. I’m never there.”
His win over Pospisil last Sunday in the final of the Rimouski Open, a Challenger event, the next rung below the main ATP Tour, was worth $ 5,000. But pricey airfares, being the biggest expense of most tennis pros not named Djokovic, Nadal, Federer or Raonic, must be avoided. To get around the cost of a $ 1,400 one- way return fare from the Rimouski to Vancouver this week, de Voest hitched a ride with Pospisil and his coach, Guillaume Marx, to Montreal, and flew on from there. The two players talked tennis for a while on the five- and- a- half hour drive, then put on their headphones and fell asleep.
Rimouski — where Sidney Crosby played his junior hockey — is the less glamorous reality. Then again, there are London, New York, Melbourne and Montreal, a kaleidoscopic range of stops on which Carolyn has been able to accompany her husband, some of the time. She runs her own personal empowerment business — Better Your Best — and is able to work remotely in some of the world’s great cities. Carolyn said she caught up with Rik “about 60 per cent of the time last year.” She prefers the term “globe- trotting” over “jetsetting” to describe the tennis couple from North Vancouver.
“I sort of associate jet- setting with a little bit of glamour, business class and personal drivers,” Carolyn said. “But I’m lucky for the amount of travel I’ve been allowed to do. We create relationships in these cities. My sister ( Alison) lives in London, and we get to see her once a year. But we could be anywhere, given the time of the year.”
de Voest will pick up more frequentflyer miles this weekend on his trip to Poland. After his second singles match in three days next Sunday, if South Africa can hang with the Poles, he’ll leave for Oklahoma City soon after for a $ 15,000 IFT Futures tournament in search of cash and rankings points.
He once played a Davis Cup match in South Africa on a Sunday afternoon, then was on the court at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden in California for the opening round of an ATP event just two days later. Yet for 11 years, he’s mostly answered his country’s call for Davis Cup duty, no matter the distance and the inconvenience, and considered it a privilege.
“If I wasn’t playing in the Davis Cup, I’d be playing in ( an) event here, on the same continent, in the same time zone,” he explained. “I think, in my whole career, since 2002, I’ve missed two matches, one where I was injured. Other players may focus on their individual careers and make choices based on that. But I enjoying playing Davis Cup and representing my country. It’s an honour.”