'REALITY'

Apart from the first tournament not far from Paris where I lost a tight three setter I struggled to match it with players who were basically 'tournament tough'.  The ranking I received was one that could give me a bye through to round two depending on tournament numbers. The guys in the first round were beatable but once you got to the second round the intensity level lifted ten fold, it was a whole new tennis world then.

If I could describe the playing standard of the Europeans at those tournaments it would be 'outrageously talented', a smorgasbord of tennis ability that I had never seen before. I played against guys who I swear did not make an unforced error.  How do you beat that ? Some of those guys would completely psyche you out before the match started such was their ability to have a 5 minute warm up and not miss a ball. "It's ok he can't keep this up, surely".......

That was the issue with playing on clay, there were guys who had the stuff on their toast for breakfast, they were dirt ball dynamos with no weaknesses who you had to beat with something other than your shots. You required a brain, not just any sort of brain but a tennis brain. They didn't hand them out back at Roland Garros when I received my papers.
The reality of playing tennis over the other side of the World in a brutally tough environment was that it was just one of many grades with many more ahead of it.
The Money Tournament series was just a stepping stone, one below the Challenger Circuit that accepts no mediocrity. I found tennis in Europe to be an experience that I would not hand back for any amount of local wins handed to me. Brett Pete and myself played a circuit that gave budding tennis players a realistic look at the game, not a Walt Disney one.
If someone was to give me a crystal ball back then and say 'ok Thommo you are going to receive some beatings in Europe that you may have trouble dealing with. You can however bypass them, stay at home and pocket as many local or regional Championships as you like.  What's is going to be ' ? (Sort of like a Genie in a bottle giving you two options or wishes )




To be honest I would take the beatings any day because it put my game in a classement ( excuse the French terminology) that gave me a brutal self assessment. That's the way I looked at tennis after Europe but it wasn't the way I looked at it before so for that I am forever grateful.

Playing tournament tennis in Europe was bloody tough and as I have said many times since that trip a player should do themselves a favour by putting their ability into perspective. By playing the best players that you possibly can it will always keep you level headed because in a sport such as tennis it is an impossibility to keep winning. Playing the best players will always keep your head from being filled with egotistical thoughts.
Tennis is all about lessons learned and if those lessons required losses then so be it, there's no point in owning a false sense of security in a sport such as tennis. It's like a boxer fighting out of his weight class, he's not going to jump in the ring without the required skills to save himself from getting hammered. Simple really.  

Tennis can hand you a false sense of security or it can give you a reality check, I would take the latter any day of the week.