Little glamour in the lower ranks of tennis

IT’S 6.30am on a Monday morning and two vans and an SUV sit idle in the carpark outside the Mildura Lawn Tennis Club.

Towels cover the windows, blocking out the light as the sun starts to rise, its occupants trying to pinch some extra sleep as the day ahead beckons.

It’s a familiar sight at any lower-level tennis tournament.

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Players sleeping rough in their vehicles, watching every dollar they spend as they try to forge a career as a professional player.

This is a long way from the first-class travel and five-star hotels the world’s best players enjoy, but this is what young players are forced to do as they try to work their way through the ranks.

There’s nothing glamorous about tennis at this level, but it’s a fact of life.

For the lucky few who do eventually make it on to the main stage, it’s still a hard slog, always wondering where your next pay cheque is coming from.

The thing about tennis is you need to be winning to make money.

As harsh as it sounds, if you’re not in the top 100 in the world, then you’re probably struggling to pay your way.

Tennis is an expensive sport at any level but more so at the pointy end.

Travel, accommodation, food, coaches, physios – everything comes at a cost.

You only have to look at Luke Saville, runner-up in this year’s Australian Open doubles final, to see how tough it is to carve out a living as a professional player.

Saville is the No.2 seed in the men’s singles draw at this week’s Mildura Grand Tennis International but just over a month ago he was playing on Centre Court at Rod Laver Arena in a Grand Slam final.

You wouldn’t expect to see him slugging it out in an ITF Futures tournament in country Victoria, but that’s exactly what he’s been doing.

Saville’s story is a familiar one.

You only have to speak to local tennis coach Bill Madafferi to find out the other side of tennis: the less glamorous one.

Madafferi was one of Australia’s brightest young tennis talents back in the ’90s and, like the players of today, thought he was only one win away from launching his career.

For Madafferi, that win never came, despite his spending months on end travelling overseas in search of his dream.

In the end the financial burden, stress and loneliness forced his hand and he quit, returned home to Melbourne and became a tennis coach.

It’s story we hear far too often and you have to ask what tennis officials in this country are doing to address it.

Italy now has 12 players ranked inside the men’s top 100.

This hasn’t came about through good fortune; it’s because a lot more prizemoney is being funneled back into lower-level tournaments – a fact highlighted by former Australian Open singles champion Jim Courier during this year’s Oz Open.

It’s pretty simple: if we want our best young tennis talent to keep playing, then the prizemoney allocation for professional tournaments at all levels must be addressed.