Oli Golding

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

RE: Oli Golding

Priesty · Challenger level

Not just you CD I find it sad too, especially with Oli since he had been progressing quite promisingly up the rankings at the time of his retirement. George M on the other hand had struggled to make any headway since his 2011 Danderyd futures title so for me his departure was more understandable.

I guess at the end of it, they have bills to pay just like the rest of us and for any 20something to make their way in the jobs market these days isn't easy. Therefore if other routes have been attempted and not led anywhere and tennis is their specialism, and if they don't wish to play professionally any more, coaching is one of the few options left open to them.

Vandenburg · Futures level

I wish Andrew Castle had chosen this route, instead of the of the GMTV graduate scheme. That man is terrible.

wimdledont · Challenger level

Coup Droit wrote:
I take it from Josh Goodall's Pro-Star Training site that Oli Golding is now doing some coaching with him?

twitter.com/prostartraining

Maybe just me but I find it rather sad how many of our young promising players have become coaches so early (George Morgan etc.)

I sort of hoped/thought Oliver would pursue other pastures.

I think this is the crux of the problem with the British tennis industry. It seems very typical for any individual to play for 4 years, retire, and then coach for 40 years.

Oli Golding will be coaching for a very long time before he stumbles across a talent to compare with Golding, Oli.

Oakland2002 · All-time great

Well there cannot be many better qualified to teach juniors where the goal is to be a success on the junior tour. There is much more to learn to transition to the main tour where the margins are fine and a critical part of that margin played in the head and off the court. Good luck to him we all have to do what we have to do to make a crust, I just hope he enjoys it.

-- Edited by Oakland2002 on Monday 21st of March 2016 05:43:09 AM

GBJ · Club Coach

Is the college route still open to a player if they had turned pro then burn out and stop then decide they want to pursue things in a different way later?

As others have suggested - who are we to judge what it was like for him and whether it was right to stop when finances are so tight etc. It seems such a shame to see so much talent go to waste and hard not to keep thinking, "Did he try this...couldn't he have tried that..."

I know you cannot compare like this but each time I see his old doubles partner and Junior US Open final victim Jiri Vesely doing well I keep thinking about what might have been - and the same for Renzo Olivo - I'll never forget seeing the uncontainable delight burst out as Oli beat him in junior Wimbledon to make the semis aged 16.

On the subject of tight finances - this change to $25ks from $15s came out of the blue to me - does this mean that players of the level that Oli was at when he stopped get a bit more prize money now? Why up from $15k to $25k but not up $10ks?

-- Edited by GBJ on Monday 21st of March 2016 08:26:26 AM

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

wimdledont wrote:
Coup Droit wrote:
I take it from Josh Goodall's Pro-Star Training site that Oli Golding is now doing some coaching with him?

twitter.com/prostartraining

Maybe just me but I find it rather sad how many of our young promising players have become coaches so early (George Morgan etc.)

I sort of hoped/thought Oliver would pursue other pastures.

I think this is the crux of the problem with the British tennis industry. It seems very typical for any individual to play for 4 years, retire, and then coach for 40 years.

Oli Golding will be coaching for a very long time before he stumbles across a talent to compare with Golding, Oli.

That last sentence is a very apt remark, wimbeldont ------

I do wish Oli all the best, obviously, but I feel that the finances thing is very misleading - Oli was 100% funded up until about 3 months before he quit. I realise that the NTC closing and the funding changes hit him hard but I think it's disingenuous to others who struggled way more than him to think that it was financial when he'd only been going it alone for such a short period.

I hope he enjoys coaching, and is good at it. But I don;t think a truly promising youngster's parent would really choose someone like Oliver as a coach for their child. Marcus Willis, I feel, has the same problem. Two people who fundamentally - and spectacularly in Oli's case - failed to make the most of their talent, basically through lack of application (and I know it sounds very harsh, but top coaching is a tough world - there's an awful lot of supply out there, and very good Spanish supply in particular).

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

GBJ wrote:

On the subject of tight finances - this change to $25ks from $15s came out of the blue to me - does this mean that players of the level that Oli was at when he stopped get a bit more prize money now? Why up from $15k to $25k but not up $10ks?

-- Edited by GBJ on Monday 21st of March 2016 08:26:26 AM

If I am not mistaken, the 10ks are being upgraded next year.

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

I got the feeling with Oli that the travel and grind were more of a problem than the finances. I don't think he enjoyed "life on the road" and at the end of the day, you cannot avoid that if you are going to be a pro tennis player. I share everyone else's disappointment as Oli was clearly Top 100 potential, but nobody in any walk of life should do something they don't enjoy simply because other people want them to.

Perhaps Oli will "get the bug again" at some stage in the future as he is still playing competitive team tennis in the UK, but talking to some of the other players that know him, I don't hold out much hope.

I wish him (and Josh) good luck with their new venture.

GBJ · Club Coach

Ta Bob

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Yes, Bob, that was the feeling I got too, from speaking briefly to him, and others. And he certainly seemed to hate the doubles he entered sometime after he quit (at Surbiton? Sutton?), which confirmed his decision. Which is great, really. As it means he's happy he's done the right thing for him. As you say, it wasn't really a finances thing.

Josh may well be an eye-opener for him, certainly a very different set-up than his mother's. Josh, at least, does have a CV that lends some credibility to his staking out his pitch. (Although I'm not really a fan of Josh's coaching, from the courtside coaching that I've seen, although maybe I'm just feeling antsy and hard to please.... cry )

-- Edited by Coup Droit on Monday 21st of March 2016 09:05:25 AM

GBJ · Club Coach

So is this his first foray away from his mother's set up? If so I would think that could be a very good thing though I guess I am just selfishly hoping something stirs him to re-think and give it a really good go again. How many people in the world can say that they have the chance to experience being one of very few home players to make the top 100 or get a win at a tournament like Wimbledon (there is no tournament like Wimbledon) just by committing to work hard for a few years before trying something else?

Spectator · All-time great

Yes, I'm with you, GBJ - see the move to coach positively, though I know nothing whatsoever of Josh Goodall's qualifications to mentor and whether that's ultimately the best place for him. But I do hope he finds what it is he wants to do and learns to do it well: he has so many gifts that it would be a huge pity not to use them.

RJA · Hall of fame

Bob in Spain wrote:
I got the feeling with Oli that the travel and grind were more of a problem than the finances. I don't think he enjoyed "life on the road" and at the end of the day, you cannot avoid that if you are going to be a pro tennis player. I share everyone else's disappointment as Oli was clearly Top 100 potential, but nobody in any walk of life should do something they don't enjoy simply because other people want them to.

Perhaps Oli will "get the bug again" at some stage in the future as he is still playing competitive team tennis in the UK, but talking to some of the other players that know him, I don't hold out much hope.

I wish him (and Josh) good luck with their new venture.

I always got the feeling that after all the hype he got Oli genuinely expected to breakthrough fairly quickly and without too much difficulty. His comfortable upbringing and success as a youngster (acting and tennis) was a positive in that it led him to have great belief in his own ability but it seemingly didn't prepare him to deal with the inevitable difficult times that all players go through. I have heard some say that he felt entitled to success, now I don't think that is fair but I do think that he expected success and really struggled to come to terms with not getting the rewards that he expected for the work that he put in.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

RJA, you hit the nail on the head. I agree with Bob in that it was more the traveling and grind that was the issue, not the finances.

But if I were to be pointed, what I really think is that it was the losing and not being one of the best that he found very hard to come to terms with.

Which, as you say, is not saying that he felt entitled to it, just that - in perhaps a slightly 'young' way - it was simply what he was used to (and what his mother and others had lead him to believe would be the status quo) and that it was hard/very hard/impossible for him to get his head round the fact that it wasn't so.

It's partly my reservation for the coaching choice.

But people grow up and change, and often quite fundamentally too. And he's certainly young and fun and will be popular with the youngsters, I'd imagine.