Summer Report two months late

Over the summer, I had a really busy time. Usually, what people do over the summer is watch the cricket ( which I did but the one-dayers were getting boring!), have friends over or just relax and mooch around, but Ed (my brother) and I got the privilege to be something special for three weeks. We were  Australian Open Tennis Ballkids.

 

Starting all the way back in March last year, 2000 kids from all over Australia tried out at the first level. 750 including my brother Ed,my friend Zane and another friend Lucas and I were lucky enough to be selected for Level Two trials, which were harder then Level One. We were all fortunate were enough to get through this as well. This was followed by several training sessions over a few months focusing on making a Ballkid great. After all the training we put our skills in to practice at an event called the December Showdown at Melbourne Park. Then once the orientation day was complete the action started.

 

Some days Ed and I had sessions in the morning, but other days we had it in the afternoon. In the morning, we would get up at 6:30 and have breakfast, frantically gather stuff and leave at 7:30. We would usually get there at 8:30 for a 9:00 briefing. It did get tiring after a couple of days, but it was worth every lost hour of sleep.

 

I did get to Ballkid some very good Aussie and world players even though I didn’t go on Rod Laver, Hisense or Margaret Court Arena. I was on Show Court 3 at various matches with World Number 11 Nicolas Almargo, Jerzy Janowicz, Roberta Vinci (W/N16), Daniela Hantuchova, oh and I high-fived Roger Federer!

 

It was a great experience and I would do it again and again. I made great friends and all the Ballkids were really nice. Needless to say I have already put my application in for next year. So that’s what I did over the summer.

 

Max W