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My Tennis Journey – from 2016 till Present
How it all started: My first Racket, my first Coach, my first Tournaments.
Hi, my name is Johnny – full name Jonathan Roth – and my journey started in Antalya, Turkey in 2015. In kindergarten we could choose between 5 different sports and the majority of my class took football or basketball and I was one of the few to pick tennis. Even though we were about 20 people on one court I was still having a lot of fun and enjoying. When I was having these classes for one hour twice a week, I saw a tennis racket in a supermarket that we always went to going for around 25USD and asked my parents if I could get it for Christmas. When I got the racket, I was so excited to finally try it out, and started playing against the wall in my room every day. In 2016 we moved to a small town in Germany where I took my first ever proper tennis lesson. It was a very small club very hidden with 4 beautiful courts if I remember right. I enjoyed my first lesson so much that I almost started crying tears of joy. I liked my coach a lot and I loved every lesson I took with him. The times when I wasn't training with him, I came in the late evening to play with my dad which was always the best time of the day. I remember how we parked our car in front of the court that we were playing on and used it as lights because the courts didn't have any. Sometimes my dad booked courts at a pricier tennis club, and I always loved playing there. A couple of months later we switched to a bigger and nicer academy in Frankfurt, Germany because my parents noticed that I want to train more serious. I had a female coach as my main coach and I liked her a lot too, but she was much stricter than my first coach. I remember taking a few lessons with my dad too which I always loved. I was still playing mostly U7 tournaments with the little net and very small field.
The Foundation: Tough Work at the Academy of Günter Bresnik.
A few months after I joined, we became German champions in U7. I enjoyed my time there a lot and i made some good friends who I still have contact with today. One time I was training with my coach when my parents were watching me and my mom was reading a tennis magazine about the 8 best tennis academies in Europe. One of those 8 was the academy where Dominic Thiem trained at that time run by Günter Bresnik and the father of Dominic in Vienna, Austria. After looking at it she told my dad that we should go there. He then called Wolfgang Thiem and he asked us to come in a few moths so that I could do a test training there. When my parents told the academy I was training at they were not so happy and wanted us to stay there.
In April 2017 I finally had the opportunity to train with the great coaches of Dominic Thiem’s Academy. The training there was even more intense than at my old academy and the coaches were yelling all the time. At my first training there I trained with the strictest coach and I was crying during it because it was so tough, but the coach just kept yelling. Note that I was only 7 years old. Most 7-year-olds would have gone to a different academy that's less strict but I wasn't like most 7-year-olds, I showed up on the next day. After the this one week of test training Wolfgang Thiem said, that I could come and train regularly with them. So we decided to move to Austria to that academy. In August of 2017 we moved to Vienna, Austria and I started training there permanently. From the first few days I was very loved by the older players and all the coaches being one of the youngest in the academy too. In summer my day would always look like this in the academy; I would come to training with the bus because we didn’t have a car in the first few months living there. Training always started at 8 am and would go on until 11 am or so. Everyone would eat lunch in the basic cafeteria there, rest and come to afternoon training including me.
Each summer was very special there because you would literally spend the whole day from 8 am till 6 pm at the academy and you could spend a lot of time with your friends when you were not training. Many times, I would even go to play football in my 1-hour lunch break which I always enjoyed as well. 2019 was the year when I started playing more tournaments in Austria as well. A few where only the best 20 or so in each age in Austria get invited. Most of the times I ended up getting 3rd place or 4th place but I knew that I would win one eventually. Those tournaments were very fun and I loved to take part in them because you stay in the same room as your friends or people that you end up playing against. In December 2019 I won my first of national invitation tournament, where only the best Austrian players were allowed to compete was very special. Playing in that final against my friend and number 2 in my age group was a great feeling, and we had all the players and parents watching too. The match would go to a third set super-tiebreak that I won 10-5. On championship point I fell to the ground because I was so happy to win it.
Dubai – Training at Mouratoglou and CF Tennis Academy.
When Covid regulations started to become stricter in October the quality of training in the academy went down by a lot. Most of the times we would be 6 players and 2 coaches on one court because of the limited court usage. Then in February of 2021 we decided to go to Dubai because my dad heard that there should be a very good academy there. When we arrived in Dubai it was very overwhelming for me because of all the buildings, the big roads and how many shops were open past 7 pm. In the town where I lived in Austria there was barely anything and you couldn’t get anything after 7pm. I really liked it there the moment we arrived. We went to the academy which was right next to the ATP Dubai 500 stadium and when I saw it, I imagined myself playing there and winning the title in 9 years. The coach that I trained with there for the first two weeks was from Spain and his dad won the first ever French Open. We focused mostly on footwork which was really complicated but it was worth it. The training there started always at around 6 am so we I had to wake up at about 4 am every day.
In the last few days we came to Mouratoglou to train with a former Top 72 player from Netherlands. I really liked the training there and they were really nice courts right by the famous 7-star hotel. So, without further thinking we moved to Dubai in April 2021 and I started training at Mouratoglou. I was having a lot of privates and semi privates with very good players. A few months after I joined a French boy who was Top 2 in his age in France at that time came and I shared most of my practices with him which I am very thankful for.
It was all going well until around March 2022 when the level of my training and performance dropped so I left the academy 2 months later and went back to the Spanish coach.
In the academy we were mostly focusing on technical and tactical which was good. In October 2022 I started playing local tournaments more regularly and won most. In February 2023 I got the opportunity to be a ball kid for the tournament which I was really excited about. I always noticed the ball kids on the TV and I imagined what an experience that must be. I did ball kid for a lot of pros such as the Semis Djokovic v Medvedev which was probably the best day of my life. The whole two weeks of the tournament was an experience that I will never forget and that I’m forever thankful for. After I kept playing local tournaments which I also loved.
Vienna, Bangkok, first ITF Tournaments.
I left Dubai mid of June for summer and went to Austria to my old academy because I noticed that the training in Dubai wasn’t good enough. In Vienna I had the opportunity to have high intensity training every day for up to 7 hours a day. I loved being back in the town where I grew up and it was great seeing my old friends. After those 3 months of training there it was planned to go back to Dubai but because of new rules we couldn`t enter and decided to go to Thailand for a holiday. We wanted to find a place where I could train at as well. We found one where the level was surprisingly good and decided to move to Thailand because of the good quality training and we loved the country as well. I love how convenient Thailand is compared to Dubai and that you don’t need a car at all.
I played my first ITF Main draw in June in Malaysia where I came through qualifying and won 1 match in the main draw. I got my first ITF points in that tournament as well in doubles with my close friend Frong where we managed making it to the quarters after saving 3 match points in the first match. In the second week I didn`t get in for the singles but got a Wild card for doubles where I managed to get to the quarters again with a different partner. Even though we lost that match it was probably the most fun and my best doubles performance ever with a full stance. Now I’m training hard again and preparing for more ITF’s.
In this phase of my tennis, it is becoming all about setting the path right and having a dedicated plan which includes all crucial areas to compete on a very high level of the game. Covering areas like the right share of physical, technical, tactical and mental training. Throughout the years I understood that in order to reach a big goal or to fulfil a bold dream, it is all about the work and preparation.
My dream is to become the best Tennis player in the world and encourage more people to discover the beauty of this sport.