Slattery heading to the US on his Tennis odyssey
By Thomas Conway
There is hardly a person alive who hasn’t been transfixed by a game of top-level tennis. Anyone who has ever held a racquet will tell you that, as a sport, it has an ability to completely consume, to suck you into a two-person narrative which can twist and turn and stretch limitlessly on to infinity.
Tennis is a sport of individual stories, of characters which clash and create crazy spectacles, frenzied plotlines. It has its own lurid colours, its own enchanting imagery, its own rhythmic soundtrack - the zing of the ball on the Wimbledon grass, the spraying particles of clay as players slide across the surfaces of Roland Garros, the hollow echo and thump of the rallies in Flushing Meadow. Few sports are as beautiful. Who wouldn’t want to be part of it?
But to make it to those gladiatorial arenas, to make it to the very top of the professional game, it takes more than just talent. It is a long, arduous, almost impossible road. Nathan Slattery knows this. But it hasn’t stopped him from trying. The 18-year-old Nenagh man is long enough in the game to know the risks it poses, to know the commitment it demands. Scaling the ladder is fraught with danger. Make it to within reach of the top and the rewards could be glorious. Fall off and you could be entirely forgotten. However, Nathan has a plan. He has always had one.
Throughout his teenage years, the prospective college student has combined tennis and education in a careful balancing act. He first got his hands on a racquet at the age of four, and started his career in the humble two court arena in Puckane & District Tennis Club, before moving onto Nenagh Lawn Tennis Club. It was there that the people first began to notice his talent, his appetite for the game, his desire to improve.
From the age of ten inwards, he began to invest more heavily in the sport, dedicating much of his spare time to the court. That meant sacrifices. For the best part of three years, the primary school pupil followed a routine which entailed travelling to Castlebar in Mayo on several occasions each week, to train with the Connacht interprovincial squad. Why Castlebar, why Connacht? The Munster academy was located in Cork, meaning that the distance to travel was effectively the same. He made the decision to head west rather than south. It was that simple. But the process was demanding, both on him and his parents, Juliana and Kieran.
“When I think back on it, I owe a lot to my mother and father,” Nathan said.
“They were the ones driving me, bringing me up and back from Castlebar. I mean, I would leave school early on a Wednesday, and head up there for an evening session. I remember my teachers would have always been complaining that my graphs were full of squiggly lines. And I used to kind of say to them: well you can blame the Borrisokane road for that!
“But yeah, I would have trained for two hours on the Wednesday evening, then finished up at around 8.00pm and then spent two and a half hours driving home. Then I would have been doing Friday nights and Saturdays up there as well.”
Thriving network
Ireland has a thriving network of tennis clubs, and no shortage of enthusiastic players either. But if you want to cut it at the top level, if you want to contest and compete on the international stage, training abroad is almost a necessity. Hence the reason that Nathan’s teenage years were spent journeying back and forth from Spain, for intensive, all-encompassing training camps.
Exposure to that kind of environment, which is effectively a professional set-up, has enormous benefits. It allows players to hone and refine their game, to test themselves on different surfaces, to grow and develop as athletes. But most crucially, it allows them to learn and absorb. As a result of those training camps and academies, Nathan became a better player, but he also became a different player. In other words, he evolved.
“As a player I’ve probably changed throughout the years,” he noted.
“I can remember when I was younger, I was the type of guy who would just try to hit the ball as hard as they could, every time. But then obviously the more I trained, the more I kind of realised that it doesn’t matter how well or how hard you hit the ball if it’s only going in half the time. It’s about consistency, I really learnt that when I first went over to Spain. The training was very much repetition based, consistency focused. At the same time though, if you’re playing at the very top level, you can’t just push the ball and expect people to make mistakes, because they’re not going to miss if you don’t put pressure on them.”
Nathan adores tennis, but he also values his education. Initially, he began his second-level schooling in Nenagh CBS, before eventually shifting to an online model based on the American second-level system. It seems like a curious thing to do, to pivot away from the Irish curriculum and concentrate on the US template, but the move was designed to prepare him for the next step - university.
Come January, Nathan will up sticks and head stateside, to begin his third-level life in Rider University, New Jersey, where he will study biochemistry. In recent years, US college tennis has become increasingly competitive, attracting players from across Europe and the wider world. It offers a secure, competitive pathway for players who want to forge a professional career without forgoing their education.
Nathan is slightly nervous. He has spent vast amounts of time away from home in the past, but this time it’s different. College is different - independent living and all that. At the same time, the Puckane man is genuinely excited. The training will be top-class, the routine will be rigorous, but he’s ready to embrace it.
“Over the past few years more and more of the top players are going to play college tennis in America,” he says.
“There are players who are already ranked in the ATP Tour that are heading over. So, I’m looking forward to going over there, but it will be very much full on. I’ll have my classes Monday to Friday like any other student, but then every day I might have two hours of training and then a one-hour fitness session on top of that. And then Saturday and Sunday, I’ll either be playing matches in the university or travelling somewhere to play matches there. So, it’ll be like that from January to May: classes, tennis, matches.”
As a person, Nathan is open and affable. He’s a guy with a sense of humour, a Liverpool supporter who is honest enough to admit that this season has been somewhat of a disaster so far. As a player however, he is plucky and opportunistic. He tries to model himself on the likes of Djokovic or US Open champion Carlos Alcarez - two players who are known for their razor-sharp returns and all-round consistency. Defence isn’t his only form of attack, however. Anyone who has seen Nathan play will tell you that he can whip a cross-court forehand with venom or smash an ace out of nowhere.
INTELLECTUAL GAME
Tennis is an intellectual game. You can have all the shots in the world but if you can’t retain composure or exert control, then you can forget about featuring at the very highest level. Nathan is well aware of this. He knows that the difference in skill level between the best and the rest is often marginal. The separation is psychological, cerebral even.
“If you look at Federer or Djokovic or Nadal, they don’t hit the ball any more special than someone that might be ranked 200 in the world,” Nathan said.
“It’s the way they manage themselves in the game, the way they manage each point, the shots they choose and when they choose to hit them. And then how mentally strong they are. That’s the difference, and that’s kind of the difference between tennis here in Ireland and tennis abroad as well.”
Ireland is famed for punching above its weight in various sporting disciplines, but when it comes to elite level tennis, one could argue that the country has underachieved. We’ve had notable performers, players like Conor Niland, who reached the first round of both Wimbledon and the US Open and achieved a career high ranking of 129. In recent years, Westmeath man Simon Carr has inherited Niland’s mantle as Irish number one, and is currently plying his trade on the ATP Challenger circuit.
Nathan Slattery has featured at a slightly lower grade, on the ITF Futures Tour - essentially the lowest rung of the professional ladder. He has gained invaluable experience, but his focus now is firmly fixed on America, on shaking up the college system over there. The Nenagh man has big dreams, and he isn’t afraid to hide them. He wants to rally his way to the top, to scale the ladder and shoot for the stars. But he also has other aspirations, and his education is central to that.
“To play at the very top level, to play at Wimbledon, that’s always been my ambition,” he said.
“And over in the US I’m going to see how much training I can get in, how much I can improve. So, I’m going to pursue tennis as one of the primary things in my life, because that’s what I’ve always done. But education is another huge thing for me. I’m going to be majoring in biochemistry, and I do want to study medicine down the road. So, if, after my four years in the US, the tennis isn’t going my way, I do want to go to medical school. That’s my plan.”
If the tennis does go his way. If, in several years’ time, this young Nenagh man is rubbing shoulders with the elite in SW19, or dazzling crowds with his forehand in the Arthur Ashe, you get the sense that he won’t change a whole lot. He’ll still be the same Nathan. Fiercely determined, furiously competitive, but intrinsically humble. The way every great sports person should be.