Diary of a Canuck: Edition I

Senior men’s tennis captain Philip Nemec, a native of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, is spending his summer as an intern at the Evert Tennis Academy in Boca Raton, Fla. The top singles player on the Elon squad will keep Phoenix fans updated throughout the summer as he works with superstar tennis players, enjoys Wimbledon and eventually makes a trip back to his home in Canada. Below is Edition I of “Diary of a Canuck.”

After four weeks in lovely south Florida, I finally have some time to sit down write a little about my experience here.

I am doing my Leisure and Sports Management Internship here at the Evert Tennis Academy in Boca Raton, Florida. I am a summer coach in the mornings and work in the main office building in the afternoons. It has been a smooth, fun transition into work here as I have a personal history with the place.

When I was 15, my parents shipped me off to the Evert Tennis Academy to further advance my tennis career. I spent the next three years here before I came to Elon. Now I am back as an intern, looking to learn the ropes of a tennis academy from the inside out, so that maybe I can be involved in the business of running one myself.

Like I mentioned before, I work outside on the court for most of the mornings, and in the office building for the afternoons. I am a summer staff coach, helping with the summer camps. It is not fun to get roasted in 100+ degree weather for five straight hours every day. I am also a hitting partner for head honcho John Evert and the top protégés of the academy. I have been hitting a lot with one in particular, Madison Keys, who is 15 years old and the best 15-year old in the world. She is being compared to Venus Williams and has already beaten Serena Williams in the World Team Tennis League. Afternoons consist of working the front desk in the front office building.

If you are wondering, Chris Evert does make it to the academy whenever she can. She still remembers me! I was one of her favorites. However I am everyone’s favorite — who does not like the seal-bashing, puck-crazy, fur-trading, dog-sledding Canadian that I am!

A couple weeks ago I was asked by the Academy Director to attend a photo shoot for a future book about the anatomy of tennis. I became a model for a day, and I enjoyed it, especially doing workout exercises in tights, red ones! I might just take up modeling after my pictures get out to the world. The book will not actually have our pictures but rather sketches of us that will also consist of showing the specific muscles that are used for each exercise and every stroke in the tennis arsenal. I will be on the cover of the book (not Nadal), crushing a one-handed backhand, shirtless and ripped!

Okay, enough of that. The World Cup has been officially banned from being played on the TV during tennis hours as the coaches are too distracted by it. Out of almost 20 coaches, less than half are American. That’s a lot of distracted staff, and I am part of that group I must say.

But more importantly, the buzz that is constant around here and the globe is the marathon tennis match at Wimbledon between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut. 70-68 in the fifth set!!!!!!!!! That is absurd. Total playing time was 11:05!!!!! I watched as much of the fifth set as I could, waiting for one player to either win it, or one to lose it, but neither would back down. For those that do not know much about tennis, there are some crazy stats to know. Both players combined for 215 aces, each broke the ace record for a single match record, which was 78. Isner had 112. The match was just over 11 hours, shattering the old record of 6:33. The fifth set alone broke the old match record.

Now consider this. Nicolas Mahut had to serve down a game to tie it back up for about seven hours before he got broken at 68-69. That is incredible! I have been trying to find the right analogy for it but I really cannot. It just would not give enough justice to the players. That calmness and poise to ignore the fact that you are four points away from losing the match, and the clutch ability to hit four huge serves on Isner’s previous match points, two of them aces, is a testament to the great mental strength of Mahut, who had to be the one to lose the match.

An unbelievable three-day event of tennis that showed the passion, the will, the refusal to lose, and brought the two combatants together as sportsmen and friends rather than enemies, as they had a long embrace at the net after match point. That is the way sports should be, and that is exactly what we saw in an epic battle in only the first round of this year’s Wimbledon. Maybe we will have a few more surprises before the tournament is over.

Okay that’s about all you will get out of me now, time to go spend the rest of my day at the pool, or the beach, or go fishing, or boating, or…

Philip Nemec, Senior Men’s Tennis Player

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