The real advantage in tennis
by Lynette Robinson
He is ranked 29th in the world, but on the court you won’t hear any grunting or shouts of
"c’mon" from this tennis champ.
Associate Professor Vladimir Ejov is as competitive as the next player - his ranking in the International Tennis Federation Seniors 45+ category is no fluke, after all - but his passion for tennis is motivated by much more than just a desire to win.
"I remember from very early childhood, the sound of a tennis ball was magic to me," Prof Ejov says, having barely worked up a sweat after hitting it out with a colleague from the School of Mathematics and Statistics, Research Associate Serguey Rossomakhine.
From first hearing a tennis ball to first hitting one with his aunt’s bent, wooden racket, to winning the West Beach Community Bank SA Seniors 2006 Mixed Doubles 35+ Championship in 2006 with then fellow UniSA staff member Maria Montanes Gassol, the most important aspect of tennis remains constant for Prof Ejov - friendship.
Indeed, Prof Ejov continues to enjoy tennis friendships forged while completing his PhD in Mathematics at Moscow State University in 1986.
"Dmitri Ktitarev was one of the top players in the town of Dubna in the Moscow region," Prof Ejov says. "I still have a close contact with Dmitri and his family, who now live in Darmstadt in Germany. In fact, I just got an email from him today." It was Dmitri who recommended him to the Moscow University tennis squad back in 1978.
Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika played a role in his tennis career, too. As the cost of living in Russia began to rise, in 1986 Prof Ejov took on a tennis coaching job at Moscow Olympic Village - where working as a translator during the Summer Olympics six years earlier he met and befriended Lindsay Gaze, then coach of the Australian Olympic men’s basketball team and father of Andrew.
"A friend, Vitaly Kozlov and I applied for and got coaching jobs," he says. "Vitaly then married an American girl, Nancy and they moved to the US, and soon after I lost track completely of him."
Imagine Prof Ejov’s delight when nearly two decades later, mutual friends brought them together again after they saw Vitaly’s name on the ITF rankings.
But Prof Ejov’s tennis friendships are new as well as old. Playing at the Australian National Veteran Championships in Perth in January this year, he met Danny Bowen from WA as an opponent.
"On opposite sides of the net the friendship just developed," he says. This year, they plan to do a Baltic Tennis Tour (that includes four ITF Seniors tournaments in three Baltic countries in the span of three weeks in July) as doubles partners.
Prof Ejov insists it’s this capacity for friendship and fraternity that makes tennis a wonderful sport.
"Tennis brings people together. It’s a language that’s understandable everywhere."
He wants to establish a tradition of a UniSA tennis challenge event (of a Davis Cup format or larger) of teams made up of teachers versus students.
"A key to its success would be mutual interest and promotion. If well attended and organised, it would help teachers to understand students and grow students’ enthusiasm for learning if they respect the teachers performance in competitive sport."
Also on his horizon is a goal to get selected to represent Australia in the national Men’s 45+ team in the Veterans Tennis World Cup in Turkey next year.