63. BEING MUM

As I have said in many of my blogs, the tennis tour is brutal, especially at the ITF Tour level. Of course there are many good things about the tour (opportunities to travel the world, playing a sport you love, experiencing new cultures etc) and many bad things (poor hotels, hideous costs, relentless travel ….), but the reality is that day in day out life on tour is tough, especially if you are experiencing it alone.

I think it is fair to say that the majority of players on the ITF (as opposed to the WTA) Tour travel alone, or at best, with another player. Of course there are many who travel with coaches and a few with a parent, but the majority are alone adding to the brutality of this line of work.

On the WTA Tour, by the nature of the fact that more money is earned at that level, I would say that the opposite is true and many of the players are with some kind of coach or trainer but there are still many that are not. This may not be through choice – I am sure that pretty much all players would love to to travel with someone, given the chance, but circumstances just don’t allow it, especially if it is a parent. Most parents either don’t have the time or finances to travel with their player, or they have additional children to look after or other responsibilities at home, or they simply don’t like the stress of the tour. I guess I am one of the odd ones, as I love travelling with my player – sharing the ups and the downs, seeing the world as she does, experiencing new places on an almost weekly basis, and at the same time having precious mother and daughter time that many don’t have once their children have reached the end of their education and have left home. I know I am lucky and I certainly do not take this part of my life for granted. I am so thankful to my player that she genuinely likes me to come along.

I started travelling with my player when she was a junior. I was fortunate that my employer was a great tennis fan and saw the importance of a parent travelling with a young athlete, and allowed me to juggle my work commitments with the busy tournament schedule. As a result, this meant that my player rarely travelled without either myself or her coach and for this, we, as a team, are very grateful.

The principle reason for travelling with her back then was primarily maternal – to look after her if she needed help; to protect her should things go wrong in anyway; and to provide emotional support (at a key time – during those teenage years) whilst away from home – as well as the added bonus of being able to watch her train and compete at increasingly high levels.

Many years on (she is now about to turn 24), I still travel with her for several weeks of the year and whilst I am no longer there to ‘look after her’ so to speak, I am there more as a companion, a P.A. (laundry, travel bookings etc), a shoulder to cry on, and a stress reducer, and there is no doubt that having a parent on hand to share the experience can be a benefit, especially if the relationship between parent and child is good and healthy.

I am really fortunate in that my player treats me as an equal. Our mother-daughter relationship/bond is incredibly strong and we always work as a team. We very rarely, if ever, argue and are sympathetic to each other’s need for space and opinion. I do not attempt to coach her in anyway – her tennis is her realm and she seeks advice from coaches when she needs to – but I am there to bounce ideas off, to discuss the logistics of her schedule, and to make her laugh when things start getting too serious!

Interestingly I have found that many of the players on the womens tour come and talk to me at tournaments. They don’t exclude me – as I probably would have done at their age. Instead many of them embrace me and my presence – include me in on dinner outings, and often remark and question my player if I am not there for one week!

What has to be remembered is that some of these girls/women are away from home for weeks on end. They don’t see their homes or their parents for several months so to have someone around who is of a similar age to their parents can be reassuring for many. I have noticed this especially at the higher level tournaments where many players seem to spend an inordinate amount of time in with the physios. For sure many are getting injuries treated, but some are also just seeking some much needed TLC and someone to talk to (who isn’t another player or a coach).

I am sure the situation is different on the mens tour but women and girls definitely need some kind of support system, so please never under estimate the value of having a non coaching parent around and if you ever have the opportunity to travel with your player then do it!

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