Continuing the tennis theme, today I watched the semi finals of the Mount Gambier women’s international tournament. It was 31 degrees and windy today, sunburn weather.
The matches were a little disappointing with both finalists (Melanie South and Natalie Grandin) winning easily.
I have never reported tennis before in my life. As a country journalist you expect to cover sport, but my actual reporting has been confined to football and some netball.
It was an early dream of mine to be a cricket reporter, travelling the world watching the Australian test team.
But as a country journalist you have to be versatile, and I enjoyed the challenge of reporting tennis.
I didn’t really have to be there. Our paper doesn’t publish again until Tuesday and the final will be our lead story in sport.
However, I wanted to get the quarter final and semi final results online.
Melanie’s mum told me by email the quarter final report was picked up by some international tennis websites, so that’s reward in itself.
The small crowd today was disappointing given the standard of tennis. These girls are on the cusp of qualifying automatically for major tournaments. Melanie and Natalie are world-class players.
I’m sure there is more interest overseas than there is in Mount Gambier, so tomorrow for the final I’m going to tweet the scores after each game. I just hope my phone battery doesn’t die.
I spoke to Natalie after her semi-final win and she was very easy to talk to. Unfortunately I didn’t have much time, as some children lined up for her autograph.
Natalie is trying to make her mark in singles after some success as a doubles specialist. She’s from Durban in South Africa.
I really enjoyed writing about the tennis. It’s certainly no chore to watch the ladies!
