Rob describes his experiences in the Tennis Academy at Merchiston

I joined the School and the Tennis Academy in September 2008. At first, I found the Academy extremely hard work and the long sessions were very tough. It would be fair to say I did not particularly enjoy my first few months. I also found it very difficult to balance my work and tennis. When I was settling in, both of the coaches were very helpful. Marcel found that I did not enjoy the dorm that I was living in and immediately contacted my Housemaster at the time. After a while, I really started to enjoy the sessions and I was happy to see my game progress.

On an average day, I will play tennis for three hours but this does vary. In a three hour session, we will warm up for around twenty minutes then we will do some drills before finishing in match play. For the last hour we take part in a very intense fitness session. These sessions are normally fun with quite a lot of "banter". The Tennis Academy is often seen running around the School every Tuesday and Thursday. At the end of a session we always do a full stretch out of the whole body to ensure that we can be back at full fitness come tomorrow.

Every member of the Tennis Academy also gets at least one individual lesson per week. We normally work on technique and repetition during these lessons. This gives us a chance to work with a coach one on one which is influential into the development of your game. I enjoy my individual lessons as much as a squad as you can really pin-point a weakness before working on it during a squad session.

The Academy has been very successful so far and It has definitely helped my game develop. It has also given us a taste of victory in national success in schools' matches and tournaments. I am now more successfully balancing my time between tennis and work. Catching up on lessons, although dull, I realise has to be done. I also look forward to my tennis squads now and look forward to learning, playing and at the end of the day having good fun. The Tennis Academy also teaches you to win which is so important because if you do not know or understand how to succeed, you will not.  

Rob W