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Every tennis player in Houston has a story. I hope you enjoy mine.
Tennis has been my favorite of games. When in school, getting to Florida and playing in college was a goal and my dream. Although I started relatively late, playing tournaments in the 14s division and ranking in the middle of the pack, I took my lumps and learned. My tournament success improved dramatically over the next few years. Fortunately, I was able to rank as a top 20 Georgia junior and decide my high school team's state championship with the win of my match.
At St. Leo College, I played every match, four years on scholarship. My last three, I played the number one singles spot against a very strong Division 2, Sunshine State Conference lineup. Every year we opened with Rollins, the several time National champs. I'm not ashamed to say that my win record was just over 50% (most wins were not against Rollins players!). This experience did give me the opportunity to compete on the court with many top-notch players from all over the world.
While playing, my interest in philosophy and psychology grew. Several of my professors liked tennis and requests to play somehow made academia seem more accessible.
Since then, I received my M.A. in Psychology from J.F.K.U. and went on to teach public school for six years.
Most recently, I accepted a position as Coach with St. Agnes Academy and teaching tennis on a more full-time basis.
Along the way, my love of tennis has offered me the opportunity to be coached by some greats, such as Don Taylor, my father; Joe Kelly of Northwoods Country Club; Allen Miller, UGA All-American NCAA National Doubles Champion and Tim Crosby, my college coach who coached former #1 player in the world, Jim Courier as a junior.
Please catch me anytime to exchange tennis stories. Some of my favorite memories are from ballboying many matches of players such as Noah, Agassi, MacEnroe (too controversial to mention), Conners and so many others. Most notably, I stood next to the court with Jennifer Capriati for several minutes and heard her respond to the question, "Does all the pressure ever get to you?" Another time Mecir accidently hit a ball off the edge of his frame way up, almost hitting the top of the Omni arena. Instead of letting the ball bounce, which was obviously going to go into the crowd, I caught it clean with one hand. Mecir walked over, turned his racket around and handed it to me, with a big smile.
I love the quirks of coaches as well. Carlos Goffi, MacEnroe's coach, taught a clinic of aerobics and recommened sniffing a tennis ball to get into the moment. That was much better than what I'd heard about from one of the Atlanta area coaches. He was known to line up players on the fence and smack balls at them as hard as he could as punishment. Thankfully, I never experienced that, but you may know who this person is if you're reading this and grew up playing tennis in Gwinnett county.
There is much more to tennis than just the tennis, if you ask me. Being somewhat of an individual sport, the game is more personal in a way and transfers even more into other aspects of life.
Thank you for sharing your time with me. I look forward to learning what you want to get out of the game and hearing your tennis story.
-Coach Taylor