Archive for: tennis australia
Tennis Australia has today advertised for a new coach for the Optus Australian Davis Cup team.
The position has been vacant since Darren Cahill resigned earlier this year.
Former national coach Wally Masur returned to his old job temporarily to help the team out for the Australian victory against Thailand in March.
The traditional responsibilities of the role have been expanded to make it a full time position overseeing the improvement and development of every member of the Optus Davis Cup squad as well as other leading athletes.
“The job is pivotal to the development of tennis in Australia,” said Tennis Australia Director of Tennis Craig Tiley.
“We are looking for a major commitment from a world-class coach,” he explained. “It will involve travel on the tour and on-court work with our very best players and coaches. The successful applicant will undoubtedly be one of the leaders in the sport in this country.”
The successful applicant will work closely with program coaches (including AIS and National Academy coaches) and have strong input into the technical and coaching direction for the tennis training and competition pathway.
Some of the key skills required for the job include:
• A proven ability to develop and implement successful, high performance tennis programs for evolving elite tennis athletes
• Successful and extensive experience coaching tennis at an elite national and international level with a proven ability to influence and motivate athletes
• Past playing experience at the elite international level
Applications close at the end of the month.
Australian tennis is not currently at its strongest, but with the return of Dokic this week, things are looking up. As well as Dokic doing well the Australian boys are also growing every single year. An Australian boy has won the singles title at the Australian Open for the last two years and they still have a chance to make it three in a row. The boys singles draw is currently into the round of 16 and there are still three Australian boys who have an opportunity to win the title. Keep a watch out over the next few days to see if one these boys can take the title. Australian tennis is going to be very strong in 5 years time if the juniors is anything to look by.
As every year at the end of January the tennis world focuses on Down Under, where the year’s first out of four Grand Slam is taking place. But what to expect of this year’s Australian Open?
A surprise and a close battle for the title! As every year, at least one of the finalists will be a newcomer, as in recent years Marcos Baghdatis or last year’s finalist Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. One of those “newcomers” might this year be the British Andy Murray, who from last year’s second half of the season gradually improved his game and was rewarded with a US Open Final and a Masters Cup Semi Final. As if it were not enough he also defeated the Swiss Roger Federer in their last three confrontations. Lucky for Federer Express that number 4 seated Murray finds himself at this year’s Aussie Open in the upper part of the draw which means Nadal will have to deal with him. Murray with his recent victory in Doha is ready to rumble, but what about the other Top Ten players?
Nadal after a forced break of two months due to his knee problems seems too lack some preparation and practice, but still appears to be confident as he says: “My type of game needs rhythm. But I feel good, I trained hard. I just need some match practice to know where exactly I stand.” After the first week of the tournament he is most likely to be on top of his game again.
Djokovic arrives with two weights: His two defeats in a row at the beginning of this season and of course he needs to defend his title at the Australian Open in order to not lose any points. The fact he changed his racket might also cause him some adaptation problems, but with his self-confidence he should be able to overcome those difficulties and show us a few hours of beautiful tennis during the next two weeks.
Federer, still trying to beat Sampras’ all time record of 14 Grand Slam titles, lost gradually his feeling of invincibility during the last season. Nadal is now not his only opponent anymore, which was recently proven by Andy Murray, but Federer lost from what he benefited so much before: the fear and respect the other players had when it came to play him. He became Human again, but his talent remains and he is still capable of becoming untouchable if he has one of his magic days. On the Australian Open’s pre-tournament press conference on Sunday a cool and fit Federer said: “I want to do well, not only this year but [in] many more years to come. So I don’t feel this is my last chance …”. He also warned to not rule him out of winning this year’s Australian Open.
Let’s also not underestimate Gilles Simon who preferred to delay the start of his season in order to work on his game. With a good second half year he surprised at last year’s Masters Cup with victories against Federer and Stepanek after which he lost in the Semi Final in three sets against Djokovic, who went on to win the tourney. Same counts for recently injured Tsonga who just declared that he will be able to defend his points in Melbourne this year. He declared the day before Melbourne Park opened its doors for two weeks of world class tennis that he felt better and that he was impatient to start. Tsonga enjoys huge popularity in Down Under which is probably why he was helped by tournament’s organizers who moved his opening match to Tuesday evening so as to give him one extra day of preparation. Tsonga’s reaction to this favor: “They gave me the opportunity to play as late as possible and I am very thankful. I hope I will be able to honor this favor.”
Anyways, great two weeks of tennis can be expected and a tournament where the battle for the title hasn’t been that close for a few years…
As you might know there have been arguments about the tight schedule of the tennis player between the player representatives and the ATP for many years. One of the recent years’ complaints was for instance that the season lasts longer and longer, now until late November with the Masters Cup followed by the Davis Cup. This leaves the players not enough time to recover from a long season and of course cuts short the preparation time for the next season.
The latest complaint concerns the Australian Open: players like Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal wouldn’t mind if the Australian Open was moved to February. Rafa argued: “Why play one of the most important tournaments one week after the beginning of the season?”
Andy Murray agreed with his rival Nadal and added another wish thinking of Wimbledon: according to him there is not enough time between the French Open and Wimbledon which makes it difficult to switch from clay court to lawn.
Let’s wait for the reaction of the ATP where recently some changes took place and Adam Helfant became new chairman and president…
Health and beauty brand Garnier, associate sponsor of the Australian Open, this week broadened its support of tennis to a rising star of the game, signing Bernard Tomic as a brand ambassador.
The two-year deal will see Tomic appear in both print and TV advertising for Garnier and make personal appearances at the hugely popular Garnier World during the Australian Open.
I have seen Tomic grow up as a player when he was training back at school on the Gold Coast. He used to get coached by the same academy as myself. Bernard has grown up as a player and a person a huge amount in the last 3 or so years, and this new sponsorship is a great stepping stone for him to reach his goals on the ATP Tour. Plus it helps to have IMG on your side!
In 2008, Tomic became the youngest player in the Open era to win the Australian Open Junior Championships, and reached the finals of the Wimbledon boys’ doubles.
In 2007, Tomic led the Optus Australian Junior Davis Cup team to victory at the world final and hoisted his third Orange Bowl trophy. In 2006, at just fourteen, he announced his presence on the international scene by winning four International Junior Tennis Federation (ITF) 18/u titles in just two months, and was recognised with the Garnier Rising Star Award, a $10,000 tennis scholarship in January 2007.
Announcing the signing, General Manager of Garnier, Mark O’Keefe said, “Garnier is excited to announce a partnership with Bernard Tomic. We believe Bernard reflects perfectly the youthful energy and passion that lies at the heart of the Garnier brand.
The Blayney Chronicle wrote a very interesting article about Tennis Australia and how they are keeping the board and presidency re-election in October very quiet.
Tennis Australia has been under a lot of pressure over the last 3 years or so for the lack of results within the organisation. Thus, Tennis Australia president Geoff Pollard, chief executive Steve Wood and Australian Open director/player development manager Craig Tiley, are all under the microscope and are expected to be under a lot of fire at the re-election.
Currently, Australia has four players in the top 100, coupled with rising dissent about player development – debate is set to rage about whether change is needed at the helm.
Lots of people have been talking about Paul McNamee to step back into some sort of role with Tennis Australia, because McNamee was the man who really pushed the development of the Australian Open when he was in charge. McNamee is currently in the market for a new position after being sacked recently from the Melbourne AFL club. McNamee was a huge loss the Tennis Australia, but it would really be great to see him rejoin the fold.
Since I am from Australia and I have been playing tennis all over the country since I was about 14, I have spent a lot of time on the Tennis Australia Website. Im currently doing a lot of work in the technology and new media industry and I find it really funny how professional organisations with a lot of money to spend on getting their websites right, always seem to get it wrong.
For some reason Tennis Australia has had a dysfunctional website that takes an eternity to load. This considering I have high speed broadband which is not normally found in Australia and also im using Firefox (the fastest browser in the world). I just thought I would write and mention this, and I hope someone from Tennis Australia reads this article because it really needs fixing. If I had a dollar for every time I have loaded a Tennis Australia page and then closed it because I got sick of waiting for the article!
Australian tennis has been going through a very hard patch lately with only Lleyton Hewitt in the top 50 in the world a lot of people have been asking major questions about Australian tennis. Currently, Hewitt is still some how in the top 30 even though he now concetrates a lot more on his personal life. Australias second best player Chris Guccione is sitting at about 70 in the world. A huge difference from what Australian tennis used to be like.
Tennis Australia have long been criticised for doing not much for the development of tennis in Australia and this seems to still continue. This year in the Wimbledon boys singles however there are 3 Australian players already in the Quarterfinals. Is this because of the effort Tennis Australia is putting in, I doubt it!
Im going to say that tennis in Australia is again on the rise and it will be back to its former glory in 2012. Players such as 15 year old Bernard Tomic, Brydan Klein, Dane Propoggia, Andrew Thomas, Jared Easton, Nick Lindahl and Andrew Coehlo. I really do believe that 2 of these players will be in the top 20 in the world when 2012 comes around.
