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Give me your tennis heart

2K views 12 replies 5 participants last post by  Voo de Mar 
#1 ·
I thought it would be fun to hear about the MTF'ers own tennis careers, when your tennis interest started, where you're from, if you've played or trained with some famous players, and so on.

Here's my story:

I was born 1979 and got a wooden racket of my father at my sixth birthday (got to thank him again). I started play at my street and soon began to practice at our tennis club Vaxjo TS (Wilander, Bjorkman, Gunnarsson etc)

It was such a great time to be a tennis player in the late 80s. Sweden then had insanely good tennis players. I got used to see ten to fifteen swedes in every GS tourney and more often than not someone made SF or better.

I was no star myself, but a pretty decent tennis player. Was ranked around 20 in Sweden at 15 years old. At 17 I lost motivation and started playing music and partying instead of practising tennis every day. The last couple of years I had Fredrik Rosengren (Norman, Bjorkman, Ancic) as a coach.

I still live in Vaxjo and work as a journalist (writing about music and film instead of tennis. but I would really like to report from Wimbledon or Paris some day ;)
I play tennis mostly in the summertime. Sometimes Stefan Edberg is at the next court. Vinci lived and played here before and Ancic practised here when he still had Rosengren as a coach.

I'm so spoiled as a swedish tennis fan – and this time around is the worst time ever! Our best player is a headcase (Toad) and I'm still hoping for Pim-Pim and rooting for Vinci in challengers.
There's really no promising juniors either. :sad:

There has been tons of articles and analysis written about Sweden's decline in the tennis world. (Three of our last great players, Norman, Pim-Pim and Vinci, got their careers spoiled by injuries – that didn't help.)
I think alot of young swedish athletes choose other sports – like icehockey and football – instead of tennis. There is still so hard to become a top 100 player in tennis. Mattias Weinhandl, for instance (anyone know the swedish hockey player?) was a very talented tennis player, bot chose hockey.
Also, our tennis federation has absolutely no money. We have no challengers and practically no future tournaments in Sweden. That means the young swedes doesn't get any international practise. We also loose our best coaches to the international market.

But maybe all this is bull****. I think we have to be honest with ourselfs, there's 9 million people living in Sweden. We can't produce players like Borg, Edberg and Wilander all the time.

The crazy thing is how the heck we could have so many good to decent players from, say 1985, 'til 2000! Players like Tillstrom, Holm, Bergstrom, Pernfors, Sundstrom, Jarryd, Nystrom ... well it never ends. :eek:

Now we have practically nothing.

I still love tennis very much. My present favourite players include Federer, Gonzalez, Nalbandian and Safin (all of them are mentally gone most of the time :rolleyes:). I didn't like Nadal at first, but I now have the fully respect for the spaniard – I couldn't see him winning AO and Wimby a couple of years ago, but he proves me wrong all the time. I tend to start rooting for Murray as well.

Well, this was alot of yada yada. Sorry folks.

Anyway, tell me about yourself and your own tennis careers and tennis interests!

:wavey:
 
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#8 ·
More like it. How does it belong to the non-tennis section Voo?
 
#7 ·
Okay. I used to hate tennis as a kid. I found it hard and Brazil pretty much sucked (to me Oncins was a loser, but he was a top100, I was really a gloryhunter). Then at 97 Guga won RG. I thought about trying to play tennis, in such a bandwagon and hype that started on Brazil. I was 10 years old.
I couldn´t say I was talented,for one year I took free lessons, butwhen I turned 11 I started training hard, finishing 1999 ranking as top100 of the state, having reached one final.
But then came 2000/2001 and with the prospect off studying hard to get into a public Uni I left training just as I made 13/14. Now I´m 22 and I play only amateur matches but I try to play at least two times per month.

Just as you see, Brazil had a lot of young kids trying to play tennis after Guga´s victories, but it doesn´t seem it really had a great effect on the countries prospects. I was a bit old (late 86 generation) when I started, but the 1988-1991 generation which was little kids when Guga was on his peak has not showed yet a very good prospect just like Villas made an impact on Argentina or Borg on Sweden. By the way, I hope Sweden gets better, because tennis there can get a lot unpopular without a Borg or an Edberg or Wilanders in the circuit. :(
 
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