I've been a tennis player and fan from age 3, when I started swinging a little plastic racquet. It wasn't until age 5 that I realized I was left-handed, so I play tennis with my right. Through the years, tennis has taken me throughout the Atlantic provinces, to Ontario, and to the 1985 Canada Games.
From ages 14-18, I was ranked #1 or #2 in Newfoundland in my age group. I was part of the first group of Newfoundland juniors to receive sponsorships from tennis companies -- in my case, some free racquets from Donnay. Now Newfoundland juniors have moved up to college scholarships and national junior rankings.
My best Newfoundland senior year-end ranking was #6. When Tennis Canada started publishing national rankings, I was in the top couple of hundred in Canada (until they ironed out the bugs :-).
After moving to Toronto I didn't play for a few years, but am now playing regularly. If you are a competitive player in the Toronto area who's interested in a game, drop me a line. I live near Don Mills / Eglinton, right at the border between East York, North York, and Scarborough.
Many years ago, I completed the first half of the Tennis Canada level 1 coaching certification, but didn't do the "theory" part. Later, the system changed and even my partial certification expired. What I know, I got from the school of hard knocks and from living in a Tennis Family. (Both my parents are in the Newfoundland Tennis Hall of Fame -- my father as a player, my mother as a builder.)
My contribution to tennis fans on the Web is The Virtual Tennis Coach, a set of lessons on strategy and tactics. It requires a frames-compatible browser.
Now that I'm playing some tournaments again and intercounty (i.e. interclub) matches, I've started recording a tennis diary on the web. More to chart my own progress than any inklings of posterity!
