Career crossroads offers clarity in pursuit of targets – O’Brien

I WAS tempted to quit tennis after Wimbledon last year such was my disillusionment with the game, but I talked myself out of it after a week.

Last year was a rough one for me, even though I reached a career-high world ranking of 84 in February.

I devoted so much of my time to tennis and worked my socks off in order to reach my long-term ambition of cracking the world’s top 100.

Because I’m not the most gifted of tennis players – nor particularly a natural athlete – I had to work extra hard.

When I finally did it in September ‘09, rather than giving myself a pat on the back and setting myself further ranking goals, I was quite frankly burned out.

From winning a whole load of matches on the challenger circuit, I was having to deal with losing more matches than I was winning as I stepped up a level to the WTA Tour.

I lost a lot of confidence, and for almost a year I was going through the motions and wanted to be anywhere else other than on a tennis court.

It was a bizarre feeling because I should have been relishing the new challenges.

That was when my career came to that crossroads after a first-round exit at Wimbledon.

Deep down, I’m passionate about tennis and I want to make sure my love for the sport is rekindled before I hang up my racket.

So I’m making a real effort to enjoy my tennis again and I now appreciate what a fantastic life I’ve had through playing tennis.

When I stop playing, I want to feel like I did everything I could to make the most out of my tennis career.

I haven’t had the best of starts to the year, but I made the final of an ITF tournament in Australia last month.

Hopefully I can take the confidence from that into my upcoming tournaments, with the big ones, the French Open and Wimbledon, coming up in the summer. I’m not guaranteed to be in either, so have my work cut out, but hopefully I can make both.

Of course I would like to get back inside the top 100, being ranked 198 is not ideal.

I don’t want to pile unnecessary pressure on myself – I can be my own harshest critic as it is.

For now, I just want to try my best, take one match at a time and not look too far ahead.

It’s going to take a lot of hard work to get back to where I was in the rankings and beyond.

I know I’m still some way off the form that got me into the top 100, but knowing that I’ve done it once before gives me no reason to believe why I can’t get back to that level again.

I don’t want to be languishing for too long at my current ranking, playing second tier tournaments, because quite frankly I’d rather do something else.

So I’m going to do my utmost to get my ranking back up so I can compete with the best players at the biggest tournaments. That’s what I train for.

At present I’m working hard on my serve. I’m able to get a few more free points on my serve than I used to, but I still need to work on the consistency of my second serve.

Controlling my temperament is also a big priority for me. As placid as I may be off the court, I’m a self confessed hothead on it.

That’s because I’m a big fighter – though sometimes, I let my emotions get the better of me. Being calm under pressure often makes the difference between winning and losing, so it’s something I’m continually trying to manage.

I’m also trying to add a bit more variety to my game. I’m pretty short for a tennis player, so I’m never going to blast opponents off the court, that’s why the serve is so important.

I’ve been working hard recently at the Lawn Tennis Association’s National Tennis Centre in Roehampton, near where I live, and have lived, in London, since I was 18.

I would love to still be based in Yorkshire. I learned to play the game at Hull YPI where I stayed until I was 14. The facilities at Hull YPI were very basic, but I have a lot of fond memories from training there and I benefited from a great junior programme headed up by Richard Plews. Richard has a great track record of developing players from grass roots and I learned a lot from him.

I then moved to Leeds Metropolitan University for the next four years – but there just isn’t a wide enough pool of players to practise with for me to have stayed in Yorkshire.

After completing my A Levels, I was invited to be part of the LTA set-up, which at the time was at Queens Club, West Kensington. I now train at the LTA National Tennis Centre in Roehampton and count myself fortunate to have such a great facility at my disposal. In London I can guarantee getting good quality practice with a variety of players on a regular basis.

I’m also studying an Open University degree in Business Studies. I’m a third of the way through that and am also pursuing a course in freelance journalism (as you might have worked out with me doing this guest column).

Admittedly, all I want to do is chill out after a hard day’s training. The last thing I feel like doing is putting my head in a textbook. However, there’s normally a fair amount of dead time whilst on tour, so I try to fit in a bit of studying when I can. I enjoy having some mental stimulation and it’s a welcome distraction from thinking about tennis non-stop. I like to think I have more strings to my bow other than just being a tennis player.

Nevertheless, my passion is returning for the game and things are starting to fall into place.

And another thing...

WE may lack a figurehead at the top of British women’s tennis but the depth is growing.

Anne Keathovong, Elena Baltacha, Mel South and myself all broke into the top 100 at a similar time and this wasn’t a coincidence.

Having a bit of healthy competition amongst us makes us all work that much harder and we spurred each other on.

Laura Robson and Heather Watson, two of Britain’s brightest young prospects, are starting to make a name for themselves on the senior tour now as well.

When I was growing up, there weren’t really many British female players ranked high enough to look up to as role models, which contributed to a general lack of belief amongst the British players in our ability to compete on the world stage.

Now there are a few of us. Anne, a regular training partner of mine, was the first one of us to make a real breakthrough when she broke into the top 100 and then into the top 50.

I think many of the British girls then realised that it wasn’t such an unrealistic target to try to emulate Anne’s achievements.

Hard work, determination and application in the right way, on a daily basis, can take you a long way.