THE Brodie's Champions of Tennis tournament next month will feature greats of the past but spectators will also be able to catch a glimpse of the future of Scottish tennis.
From June 19-22 the likes of John McEnroe, Goran Ivanisevic, Henri Leconte and Tim Henman will draw spectators but an exhibition match between Scottish and South African schools may lead to some recalling the occasion for different reasons.
The man behind the match, Marcel du Coudray - the South African who runs the Merchiston Tennis Academy - will not be in attendance. He will be at Roehampton, London, working with another of his proteges, Anastasia Mikheeva, who is having a taste of the big time having been granted a wildcard for the Wimbledon warm-up event there.
He is keen, though, that the Scottish audience attending the most glamorous tennis event in Scotland this year, is shown that encouraging development work is being carried out in the domestic sport.
He naturally advocates caution when expressions like "the next Andy Murray" are bandied around when talking about his 13-year-old prospect Jacob Fearnley, or "the next Elena Baltacha" in regard to Mikheeva, given their shared East European background, but he also accepts it as inevitable.
"There's always going to be expectation when kids are young and do well," he said. "I tell them that it's not about trying to be somebody else."
In Fearnley's case he is currently facing inevitable difficulty in moving up into under-14 competition when he has just turned 13 and peers he had been beating are physically maturing. "It's a big challenge but he is a little fighter and is responding well," said his coach.
As for Mikheeva, the chance of a wildcard to Junior Wimbledon beckons if she performs well in the weeks ahead. "She is a little further down the pathway and she has that strong East European work ethic," Du Coudray observed.
"You can have all the talent in the world but without that work ethic it does not really matter."
Tickets are now onsale at www.championsoftennis.com
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article