Gareth Keating, the Head Coach at the Shaw Park Tennis Centre and Clayfield College, travelled with two professional doubles players: Eric Butorac world number 28 and Jean Julien Rojer world number 32 for four weeks during January with some fantastic results
Each year in January the best players in the world come to compete in the Australian Open Summer Circuit. These include a serious of warm up tournaments in Perth, Brisbane, Auckland and Sydney. Professional players use these tournaments to prepare for the Australian Open, one of the worlds four Grand Slams. Gareth was asked by Eric and Jean Julien to coach them during the month on January as they prepared for the Australian Open.
“I had travelled a lot through Europe, Wimbledon and the French Open with Eric in the past and he invited me to come and work with him and his new partner while he was in Australia”. “It was great to work with Eric again”. They arrived in Brisbane 5 days early for a short training camp to kick start their 2011 campaign.
Brisbane International:
When asked about their debut match in Australia, Gareth replies “It was a tough draw, playing against last years Wimbledon finalists, and such a heartbreaker to lose after having 2 match points”.
Rd 1 – Butorac/Rojer lost to Lindstedt/Tecau. 7-6, 6-7 5-10
Auckland:
The first round draw saw them paired against Australian Open Semi-Finalist David Ferrer. Gareth’s commented about their New Zealand tournament “The boys did really well in the first two rounds, beating some of the top singles guys”. Those singles guys are such great shot makers, you cant give them any time at all. The semi-final was disappointing after having been up a break in the first set. The positive was, it ended up being such a motivator, we were able to go into Melbourne training hard”
Rd 1 – Butorac/Rojer defeated Ferrer/Montanes 7-5 6-3
Rd 2 – Butorac/Rojer defeated Marrero/Gimeno-Travers 6-4 6-4
Semi Finals – Butorac/Rojer lost to Brunstrom/Huss 6-7 3-6
Australian Open: After coming out and fighting well to survive a tough first round, the doubles team cruised through their following 3 rounds defeating the number 5 doubles team in the world. “Each match got better and better, the guys were playing with such great self belief”.
Butorac/Rojer defeated Golubev/Istomin 6-7 6-4 6-0
Butorac/Rojer defeated Knowles/Mertinak 7-6 6-0
Butorac/Rojer defeated Marrero/Ramirez-Hildago 6-3 6-4
Butorac/Rojer defeated Kubot/Marach 6-3 6-4
Butorac/Rojer lost to Bryan/Bryan 3-6 2-6
