Ballina New Year tennis tournament set for prizemoney boost
July 19, 2008
Ballina Tennis Club’s popular New Year tournament is set to become even more so.
The club is negotiating with sponsors in a bid to boost the prizemoney to a minimum of $12,000, lifting its rating to Tier 1.
At the moment the tournament is classed as Tier 3 (prizemoney of $6500 or below).
Club president John Whitty (pictured) believes that with a Tier 1 event offering minimum prizemoney of $12,000, the Ballina tournament would attract a whole new class of talented players.
It would be a fitting reward for John, whose 20-year involvement with the Ballina Tennis Club has been honoured with life membership.
John has been club president for 15 years and has been heavily involved in co-ordinating the Ballina New Year tournament for the past eight years.
John joined the club in 1988, moving to the coast after spending 10 years in Lismore.
He grew up in Corowa in the Riverina district – a ‘born-and-bred Aussie Rules player’ – and can remember playing ‘on real grass’ using old timber racquets with a head the size of a squash racquet.
When John joined the Ballina club there were five synthetic and six bitupave courts with very basic lighting.
Today the tennis courts are a major social and tourism asset for the town, with there now being 11 synthetic courts which are available for night play via a $300,000 lighting system.
An extra four courts could be in play soon, with the tennis club and Ballina Bowling Club in Cherry Street looking at utilising more of adjoining Hampton Park.
John’s involvement with Ballina tennis has been a family affair, with himself, wife Yvonne, son Nathan and daughters Kim and Shae playing the game.
Nathan is a talented tournament player with a number of titles under his belt, and he is now the coach at Ballina Tennis Club.
Kim represented at state level in NSW Primary Schools Sports Association and in Combined High Schools teams. Shae was a top junior, captaining the NSW Primary Schools Sports Association team and going on to become the top-ranked under-14 player at national level.
“Of course they (his children) got their talent off me,” John says with a hearty laugh.
He rates the great American player, Andre Agassi, as the best he has seen.
While not having the power of some of the bigger players, Agassi’s ability to ‘read the ball’ and his ‘unbelievable timing’ are what made him so good, John says.
John also has some firm views on why Australia no longer dominates tennis like it did 30 to 40 years ago. “Thirty to 40 years ago there were a lot less countries playing,” he said.
“The equipment was substandard compared with today, and with our grass surfaces, we had a distinct advantage.”
And in many European countries — John cites Russia as an example, where junior coaching has advanced greatly — tennis is ‘a way out’ of poverty, while here in the Lucky Country, tennis is still seen as a sport.
John also sees the ‘tyranny of distance’ as a hurdle for young Australians, when compared with the short distances between Northern Hemisphere countries, and his family knows about that first-hand.
John said that when Shae was the top-ranked 14-year-old, tennis authorities told the family that for her to advance to the professional ranks the family would have to move to Sydney to be closer to the best coaching and facilities.
But the family made a lifestyle choice and stayed in Ballina, much to the delight of the local tennis club.
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