We are in the middle of our first week of Easter Camps and yes we are having our first rain since February half term – the last time we had a big group! We cannot complain as the sun is nearly always shining and our tennis has not been affected, just a few stressful hours with re-organising – all part of the job!
March has been another exciting month for all at STA. Valeria Savinykh has come within a whisker of being our first ever Top 100 player in the world. She has the same points as the girl who is 100, but is 101! This will change in the coming weeks and it is down to her continued hard work and dedication with recent success in the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami where she had wins over 2 top 100 players to qualify and win her first round before US Open winner Sam Stosur stopped her progress.
Joshua Ward-Hibbert has continued his doubles world junior dominance by winning his 3rd Grade A event in a row out in Brazil- this moves him up to Junior World Junior 14! Perhaps the biggest landmark achievement came from Andrew Fitzpatrick who has defied all the odds and financial strains of being a young professional tennis player to win his first Professional event out in Israel. When we started working together 18 months ago Andrew was 100 in the world and a big goal was to reach top 600 in the world- he achieved this through his victory at the Futures in Israel. It goes to show what can be achieved with a clear vision and focus, mixed with hard work and dedication.
I apologise this is a short blog this month (it may be a relief to some of you!), but with us having higher ‘camper’ numbers than ever before here at STA, the work is relentless these couple of weeks, so back to the planning for tomorrow..
Play to Win
Dan Kiernan
Director, SotoTennis Academy
Inspiring Excellence | Tennis Academy Spain