This was published 8 months ago
‘Wicked’ and dizzyingly expensive: The guide to making an Australian tennis champion
By Marc McGowan
Roisin Gilheany is dreaming of a professional tennis career after being a top-100 junior.Credit: Eddie Jim
Roisin Gilheany is 18 years old and has barely lived in her Melbourne home since she was 15.
Gilheany wants to become a professional tennis player – and is among the rare individuals on the planet who has some chance of doing so.
She ended her junior career inside the world’s top 100; contested three of the four grand slams at girls’ level last year; and won Tennis Victoria’s female junior athlete of the year for the third time in a row in October, while being one of three nominees for the national equivalent.
Gilheany’s family is also in debt. Her mother, businesswoman Sinead, tells this masthead that she and her surgeon husband, Mark, have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars bankrolling their daughter’s tennis aspirations.
It is the harsh and costly reality of trying to create a tennis champion, particularly in Australia, which is far removed from the European and American heartbeat of the tour.
“We had to go into debt as a family for Roisin to realise her dream – and I don’t regret it at all,” said Sinead, who runs SRC Health, a maternity compression garment company.
“But we are fortunate we have our own businesses and that they are successful. If we were wage-earners, there’s no way she would have had the experience she’s had. You need to keep your purse open, and shouldn’t bother shutting it – it’s a wicked sport.”
That’s one reason Gilheany accepted a scholarship to attend the University of Oklahoma, where she arrived in the past week and plans to stay for at least two years before tackling the professional tour full-time.
Destanee Aiava is finding life tough on the professional tennis circuit.Credit: AP
The US college route is an increasingly popular option for players and one Tennis Australia (TA) endorses, given how few athletes will make a living out of the sport.
Not only do college scholarships ease the monetary drain for families, they give players the opportunity to gain a degree as a back-up in case tennis does not work out, something Gilheany acknowledges.
Destanee Aiava, once the world’s best 14-year-old girl and now 23 and ranked No.206, with four Australian Open singles main draw appearances on her resume, resorted to asking for money on an Australian tennis Facebook page last year: “Any sponsors in here looking to help out a broke tennis player?”
Another top junior, Charlie Camus, still 17, has switched allegiances from Australia to France, believing that the French Tennis Federation will give him a better chance at making the big time. The Camus camp told this masthead that the French program was “more comprehensive” than TA’s.
These are the types of make-or-break decisions young players and their families must make, often not knowing until many years later whether they were the right ones.
The challenges of the tennis world beyond these shores
Gilheany has consistently been one of the best players in her age group in Australia, but convinced her parents of her bona fides during a three-month trip to compete in Spain in 2019.
The logic was simple: being a good player on home soil is one thing, but proving yourself on the mean courts of Europe is a whole other achievement.
“I do think Australian players need to go overseas more because a lot of kids and parents are a bit naive here, and have no idea of the level beyond Australia,” Gilheany said.
“You can be the best kid in Australia, but as soon as you go overseas, it’s a different world. Obviously, some people do well over there straightaway, but I went on a trip with five or six [Australian] girls and quite a few of the girls on the trip were seeded in the tournaments, but barely any of us won a match.
Roisin Gilheany spent time training in Spain and the United States.Credit: Eddie Jim
“I’m so grateful my parents can afford for me to go over because a lot of families can’t do that.”
They were “all-in” at that point, and discovered the Soto Tennis Academy in Sotogrande, Spain, about 45 minutes’ drive from holiday hotspot Marbella. (More on that later.)
Gilheany, still 14 at the time, reached the quarter-finals at the 16-and-under national championships in December that same year and scored a berth in TA’s National Academy program, then based in Melbourne. Only the best prospects in the country get that opportunity.
For context, only 27 players were in last year’s program, from 14-year-old Emerson Jones – daughter of former champion triathlete Loretta Harrop – through to US college graduate Adam Walton, 23, who received a main draw singles wildcard into this month’s Australian Open.
Gilheany’s progress was swift in the following months before the COVID-19 pandemic turned everyone’s world upside down. Melbourne was locked down, and Gilheany did not pick up a racquet for about 10 months.
Not long after everything started opening again, TA shifted its National Academy operation to Brisbane – but Gilheany was not invited.
The family subsequently could not find a coach in Melbourne willing to commit to her at a level they wanted, which led them back to Sotogrande.
After their COVID-related permit to travel overseas was initially denied, they eventually received the green light – on the condition of not returning for nine months – and Gilheany and her mother moved into a Spanish apartment near the local tennis academy.
Gilheany’s father, Mark, stayed at home but would check in each morning on a FaceTime call.
Emerson Jones is one of Australia’s brightest prospects.Credit: Tennis Australia
Gilheany would use Sotogrande as a training base for three weeks to a month at a time, then travel to play tournaments in nearby countries, such as Germany and Austria. But in March last year, after about 2½ years at the Soto Tennis Academy, Gilheany was on the move again, to another country.
“It’s a great academy, a great place, and the coaches are amazing, but I didn’t have anyone to practise with any more,” she said. “All the good boys there left for college at once.”
Sinead contacted US-based IMG agents Colin and Lyn Price, who organised a partial scholarship for Gilheany to board, train and play against, and with, fellow top juniors at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida.
But even with the scholarship, the experience cost almost $30,000 for three months.
Why on-court success is so hard to predict
Adam Blicher, who specialises in psychology and talent development in tennis, took a deep dive into the sport in 2020 to try to understand the correlation between junior and senior success.
The study retrospectively and longitudinally examined how the top 300 professional players from the previous decade performed in ITF tournaments.
Blicher found that results before the age of 14 had a “poor relationship” with predicting success at senior level, and that 20 per cent of female players and 75 per cent of males had not achieved a top 500 ranking by 18.
Russian-born Daria Saville is one of Australia’s leading women’s players.Credit: Getty Images
He concluded he had a 60 per cent chance of accurately predicting which players, when analysing the 16 to 18 age bracket, would be higher or lower-ranked.
“However, for players who are ranked in between top 20 and top 200 [specifically], there is a lot of variation. You can really not predict them,” Blicher wrote.
Therein lies the dilemma for players, parents, coaches and even national federations that create criteria and milestones for juniors to meet and trigger funding.
Sam Stosur succeeded in doubles first.Credit: Getty Images
There is significant pride from federations when they produce great players who went through their pathway, but the inexact science of talent development means they also happily and unashamedly recruit readymade prospects from other countries.
Tennis Australia, for example, benefited from a conga line of naturalised women’s players, including but not limited to top-liners Jarmila Wolfe (nee Gajdosova), Daria Saville (nee Gavrilova) and Ajla Tomljanovic.
“Every tennis player has [contemplated quitting]. A lot of people say they haven’t because it’s the right thing to say, but everyone does.”
Roisin Gilheany
They helped cover some cracks at different times when home-grown talent struggled to make the transition, while even former world No.1 Ash Barty chose her own path and was not always part of the National Academy.
Sam Stosur, the 2011 US Open singles champion, made her professional breakthrough in doubles first – and eventually won five grand slams and became world No.1 in that form of the game. Gilheany is treading a similar path, making her first senior splash in doubles, going from unranked in October to No.423.
Stosur is Australia’s new Billie Jean King Cup captain and will play some part in TA’s bid to try and create the next Barty.
“You need lots of things to go right for you,” Stosur said. “There’s more to it than just hitting forehands and backhands, even the travelling, getting on a plane every week, being overseas, being away from your family, funding – all of that. It’s tough for young players.”
Gilheany, who completed different forms of distance education from year 9, has suffered through homesickness and self-doubt but would do it all again. She would also recommend chasing the professional tennis dream to parents of other children weighing up which sport to choose, albeit with a warning that not everyone is cut out for it.
“Every tennis player has [contemplated quitting]. A lot of people say they haven’t because it’s the right thing to say, but everyone does,” Gilheany said. “I feel like I could never live with myself [if I quit]. Tennis is my whole life, and I couldn’t imagine not playing. You have really hard weeks, and you want to go home, but that’s just sport.”
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