11/30/2023 0 Comments Gigi fernandez golfIf you go on tour with a weakness, you'll get picked apart." "I was actually learning to hit topspin while I was already a pro, and that's impossible to do nowadays. I serve and volleyed and came in, and that was very natural to me and I was very good at doing that, but when I played someone with very good groundstrokes, I couldn't hand for four, five six groundstrokes to then get to the net. "I didn't have the groundstroke base, the solid groundstrokes that I needed to be able to sustain rallies with the better groundstrokers to give me enough time to get to the net. That's what I was supposed to do, so the fact that I went off and became a professional athlete was very unusual and very random. "It was really a race to get married and have kids. When I went to college, that's what I had, and when I turned pro, that's what I had. I learned to play with a slice forehand and a slice backhand. Coaches were not willing to teach girls topspin, because they thought that girls were too weak to hit topspin. "Puerto Rico in the 1960s was also a little bit behind the times. There was not another Hispanic, female, Puerto Rican athlete that I could say, 'She's a professional athlete and I could do what she did,' so I had to blaze my own trail," she said. "There was really no one that I could look up and say I want to be like them. Read more: #Set4Success: WTA collegians give seniors special send-offīorn in the capital of San Juan, Fernandez also discussed some of the adversity that she faced as a young female Puerto Rican athlete in a sport that, at the time, had little pedigree in the island territory at the time. "That's where I was discovered by a couple of college coaches who offered me a scholarship, and that's when my game really took off." "I was playing junior tennis in Puerto Rico, and because the Puerto Rican tennis association was part of the United States Tennis Association, I was lucky that I could travel to the United States and play in the junior circuit in the summer. I played my first match when I was 8, and I lost 6-0, 6-0 - so there's hope for everybody out there - if you don't have a good start, you can always have a better finish. "I kept asking for tennis lessons and finally when I was 7, I took my first tennis lesson. I would go to the club after school when they would take lessons, but I was too young, so all I could do was get a racquet and hit against the wall," she said. My big brothers were all playing tennis and I wanted to be like them. In the question-and-answer session with host Blair Henley, Fernandez opened up about her beginnings in tennis, which began when she followed in the footsteps of her older brothers as a toddler in Puerto Rico. Hall of Famer and WTA legend Gigi Fernandez opened up in an expansive online interview for the International Tennis Hall of Fame on Thursday, in which she discussed how she turned a non-traditional tennis upbringing in Puerto Rico into one of the most legendary careers on the doubles circuit.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |