By JARROD POTTER
SOARING up the state and national rankings, Longwarry’s Darcy Nicholls has shown you don’t have to be a metropolitan tennis player to succeed.
Nicholls, 11, has only played the sport for four years but in that time he’s risen up the Australian rankings to 33rd in the country for boys born in 2003 and in Victoria he is ranked inside the top 20.
It comes on the back of the young ace starting to serve up his best results yet.
Nicholls won the Tennis Victoria 2013 Junior Pennant Player of the Year in Mixed 10A – for the player who had the most impressive set results in pennant – as well as winning his first tournament from the number-one seed at the North West JT Championships in Caroline Springs earlier this month.
“I guess about four years – I was just going down to the courts – the ones at Bunyip – and saw some coaching and thought I’d like to try that,” Nicholls said.
“I really like going around to different places across the state and meeting new people with tennis.”
The baseline dynamo’s first tournament win stands out as his best highlight and booked him a place in the Victorian Hardcourt Championships and Nicholls is thrilled to get stuck into the summer season.
“Most of them (tennis highlights) probably only came a couple of weeks ago – winning my first ranking tournament and qualifying for the Victorian Hardcourt Championships was good too.”
Nicholls’ coach – Ace Active Tennis coach Chris Milidonis – said the work ethic and motivation to learn from his young prodigy was rare in local tennis.
“I haven’t come across a kid who’s willing to work as hard as he is and at a young age it’s pretty impressive to see,” Milidonis said.
“When we first started doing privates together, there’s something that stood out with him – he wanted to learn, asked question after question and an eight-year-old having a discussion that 16-year-olds are usually having, you knew there was something good here.”
Nicholls wanted to thank his parents Andrew and Michelle and coach Milidonis for their support.
