Carr’s drive for tennis excellence fuelled by GAA father, Tommy
With help from his father, Tommy, Simon Carr is busy planning an assault on the ATP rankings
‘UP CLOSE, YOU CAN SEE NADAL ISN’T DOING THINGS DIFFERENT TO YOU’
IF these were normal times, Rafael Nadal would be in the middle of his attempt to win a 13th French Open title. Simon Carr wouldn’t be in Roland Garros, though. It is far more likely that he would have spent the last week in Turkey or Tunisia and would be on his way to Egypt or Romania, all in the relentless search for ranking points.
Carr is 20 years old and the top-ranked Irish tennis player in the world. When sport ground to a halt in the middle of March, he sat 531st in the ATP list. He flew home from a tournament in South Africa and bunkered down in Mullingar, where he has been for the past 10 weeks.
‘It hasn’t been too bad,’ he insists. ‘This is the longest I have been at home since I was 15, because even before I turned professional, I was on the junior tour and travelling a lot. When you are away for 30 or 35 weeks a year, it is nice to get some time to spend with your family.’
There’s also an advantage in that he shares the house, where the garage is converted into a gym, with his physical trainer. His father Tommy is better known as the former Dublin football captain and manager but for the past few weeks, he has been putting his son through his paces as he aims to emerge from the lockdown, fitter and more athletic.
‘It’s great that I had my dad here to train me. I have been chatting to some of the other lads I’m on the tour with, and they have had to do sessions over Zoom or FaceTime, but I have my physical trainer here in the house with me. Obviously, we have our moments during training, that’s only natural, but it’s great when you wake up and everything is there on your doorstep for training – including the trainer.
‘Tennis players will never get an opportunity like this again, to work on things they need to. Our life has been frozen for more than two months, so this is a great chance to reset. And I wanted to get more athletic, get more speed into my arms and legs.’
His father’s background is in GAA but he has a strength and conditioning degree and has educated himself to the needs of a tennis player in recent years. ‘Some parts of the physical training are quite similar to Gaelic football. The short, sharp bursts and the change of direction at speed, but there’s a lot more long runs in Gaelic and footballers tend to pick the ball up at speed, whereas with tennis, you need to work on more lateral movement – side to side.’
Their house lies beside the Royal Canal, so Carr has been able to go there for runs. And, fortunately, Mullingar Tennis Club re-opened its doors a fortnight ago, allowing him to get back on the court. But he is still in the dark as to when the sport will resume.
‘It’s so difficult to tell. Nobody knows. The more you think about it, the more your head spins,’ Carr says of a possible resumption.
‘The best case scenario is the tour re-starting in September and October. The worst case scenario is that the Australian Open won’t happen and it carries into another year. That would be a massive blow for the sport.
‘I understand why the ATP aren’t going to cancel the entire season six months in advance. They are going to play the waiting game and see how this situation evolves. But if the year was scratched off, you could start making plans and I think everyone would sign up for a fresh start now in 2021, if they were being honest.’
A few weeks ago, Novak Djokovic suggested that tennis look at setting up a player relief fund for players ranked from 250 to 700, a call that was backed by Nadal and Roger Federer. The proposal would see around €10,000 given to players ranked in the lower reaches, although nothing has been confirmed as of yet.
‘There was a couple of emails from Djokovic but subsequently, I haven’t heard much. I think it is on ice, but it is a great idea and it shows that those guys do care. Djokovic obviously has a brother who was in the lower rankings, so he knows the experience and struggles there. It is good that those guys are thinking of the other guys.’
It remains Carr’s ambition to breathe the same rarefied air as the game’s big three. Having grown up idolising Nadal, he remembers the thrill of first sharing a locker room with him when competing in his first junior grand slam in Melbourne. He earned a wild card to play in the ATP Dubai back in February and practised on the same courts as Nadal and the other superstars. He realised their respective worlds weren’t so far apart.
‘When you get to see the likes of Nadal and Federer going about their business up close, on the same practise court or in the same locker room, you realise that in reality, they are not doing anything all that different to you,’ Carr points out.
‘People watch them on a television screen and think it is a different world. And I probably thought that when I was younger. But you see them up close and it’s the exact same. Everything is a lot nicer. They play in nicer stadiums, have nicer locker rooms. But they go through the same routines, they play their match and go back to their hotel. It’s the same, except maybe their hotel is more exclusive.’
However, that’s the level which Carr has set as a target. It is why he decided to leave school at 16 and follow his dream of professional tennis. It is not an easy life to choose, especially on the Futures Tour, where he can spend 35 weeks or more on the road every year. And often that travel is done on his own. It can be a lonely place when results aren’t going right.
‘To climb the ranking, you have to play a lot of tournaments. So, it means that you are playing 35 or 36 weeks a year. That’s really difficult and difficult to keep yourself motivated, especially when the results aren’t good. If you’re lucky enough to be travelling with someone, it can be okay, but when you’re travelling on your own, it can be tough, as you are alone with your thoughts.’
Carr made it up to 42 in the world rankings in his final year as a junior and reached the last 16 of the Junior US Open in Flushing Meadows. He also reached the final of the Junior Spanish Open that year, beating a couple of players that are now ranked in the top 200.
However, the transition from juniors to the Futures, the third tier of