TENNIS stars from across the globe have been taking to the Swan Hill Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club courts this week for the $20,000-prizemoney Victorian Grasscourt Championships.
Starting on Monday and concluding Friday afternoon, the tournament has hosted 123 competitors, coming from as far as Switzerland.
An Australian Money Tournament, or AMT, it enables post-junior players to transition to semi-professional levels playing for prizemoney and Australian ranking points.
Speaking to The Guardian after his narrow quarter-final defeat to Blake Bayldon, Brisbane-based men’s fifth seed Thomas Braithwaite, 24, said the tournament “was just great”.
“This is my second time playing in Swan Hill, I was here for the same tournament early last year,” he said.
“Daniel (Gardner), who takes care of the courts here just does a fantastic job, and I’ve been sure to let him know that countless times.
“The courts here are fantastic, I haven’t had the opportunity to play on grass very often.
“But when you’re getting a true bounce 95 per cent of the time, that means you’re playing on pretty good courts.”
Braithwaite described the level of competition on display at the tournament as “just crazy”.
“For an AMT it’s a bit funny how high the standard is,” he said.
“I went down in three sets today, my opponent played well.
“He’s a lefty and he’s serving volleys on grass, which is always going to be tough.
“I played a good match though, I didn’t get broken until the third game of the third set.
“I think I got broken twice in the last two matches – I won two of them in three and lost one today in three. I couldn’t really do much more.”
Braithwaite said he and a group of fellow Brisbane-based players will be travelling north-west next week to play in the week-long Mildura International.
“I’m not too sure how it’s going to go getting there just yet, it really depends on how we go here,” he said.
“I’ve played in Mildura before, but not since 2019.
“After playing in Mildura that year, I played in Geelong and actually got my first point there, and then that’s when the tournament got cancelled due to COVID.”
Although living in Brisbane, Braithwaite said he spent his childhood growing up in Mt Isa, and Swan Hill’s small-town feeling gave him a sense of home.
“I’m from a small town as well and I understand how much fun this would be for the younger kids,” he said.
“Going down and watching tennis is something I used to do as a kid, and I really loved it.
“I will definitely be aiming to return next year, if I’m not elsewhere.
“I love coming up for it, Swan Hill is great.
“It’s really good for tennis and for everyone to see it back in full swing, there’s a really good atmosphere here, and great to see kids down here watching us.”
One competitor at the tournament had an incredible interaction with a group of primary school students who were in attendance on Wednesday.
Sydney-based player Joya Nicolas, 24, described the interaction that followed her quarter-final defeat to Bianca Compuesto that left her with “a really nice feeling”.
“I had just lost my match, my opponent had just played better than me,” she said.
“But after the match I was doing a bit of fitness work, in a bit of a hurry and a group of little girls came up to me.
“One of them led with ‘I love your dress’, and the other said she loves my hair.
“Then the third girl exclaimed ‘That’s why I want to play tennis!’ and I thought, even though I had lost, at least someone can express that they like something about me.
“I wasn’t playing tennis at that age, I got into tennis pretty late.
“It gives a little perspective in that you can still have an impact on someone without winning.”
