Source: www.guardian.co.tt

Story by: Nicholas Clarke

Yohansey Williams.BGT&T Tranquility Open tennis champion Yohansey Williams will begin a new phase in his career this month when he travels to South America to compete on the ITF Professional Tour Men’s Circuit. He will first stop in Chile to enter three tournaments before heading to Venezuela for three more. A multiple national champion, much of the 22-year-old’s future will depend on the willingness of the Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs to cover his training and travelling expenses, which he reckons should cost a minimum of $300,000 a year. Given his current circumstances though, he said he will have to be content to work with the resources available.

“At this point I’ll take anything I get,” he said recently. “The reason the government doesn’t put more into tennis is because we have not really had a major international success story. The way they work is: You do something, get a result, and you’ll get money, but in tennis you need to really get money to get out there to get a result. “It takes a lot of investment to reap the rewards and it’s a process that takes years. I think our government doesn’t really understand what it takes to make a professional tennis player. So that’s a problem we face that hinders the assistance process.” Williams international profile received a boost in October when he was accepted to the world famous IMG Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida, USA, joining an elite group of players including Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Boris Becker and Bjorn Borg.

“It was a life changing experience,” he said of his two-month stint. “I was able to train with the best coaches in the world and they told me that I have the tools to compete and beat against the best in the world. “As an athlete coming from this part of the world, it showed me that the improvement I have to do to get to that level is not an impossible task.” Looking ahead, Williams said he would like to pave the way for the next generation of local players, helping to ease their transition from amateur to professional tennis. “I want to raise the level of tennis in T&T, which is very achievable. I would like to inspire the youths to understand and believe that it’s not impossible to do anything. “I mean, if you look at the tasks, they seem impossible, but I’m showing them that nothing is.”