Four years after it was established in 2022, the Ashley Cooper Scholarship’s positive impacts are increasingly visible.
The scholarship, named in honour of Australian tennis legend Ashley Cooper, provides financial support to elite Australian players aged 12-24 to assist in their career journey.
LEARN MORE: The Ashley Cooper Scholarship
Cooper, an Australian Davis Cup player and four-time major singles champion, came within two matches of an historic calendar-year Grand Slam in 1958. The Queenslander was later awarded an Order of Australia medal and inducted into both the Australian and International Tennis Halls of Fame, and also served as a respected tennis administrator.
He was renowned for his tennis excellence, attitude, hard work and dedication to the sport – values selectors look for in emerging players when determining scholarship recipients.
Critical transition time
Several recipients have since gone on to crack the top 100, with more trending in that direction. Others are showing great promise in their transition from the junior to the professional ranks, such as Alana Subasic.
“Tennis is a tough journey most of the time, and we do travel a lot as tennis players basically all year round, and I'm super grateful that this scholarship has allowed me to play more tournaments, especially overseas,” said the 19-year-old Sydneysider, a scholarship recipient in 2024 and 2025.
“Being Australian we do have to travel more, and I'm really grateful that I’ve had the privilege to play more tournaments than I could.”
Subasic spent almost five months competing overseas on the ITF circuit in 2025. Ranked No.1107 at the beginning of June, she reached four finals – winning two – and by the end of the season was knocking on the door of the top 500.
She has since risen to 412th in the live rankings after reaching another ITF final in Timaru, New Zealand, and last week was a semifinalist at the Australian Pro Tour event in Swan Hill.
Tim Jolley, Tennis Australia’s Chief Strategy and Performance Officer, is part of the nominations committee which recommends players for the scholarship. He said Subasic is the type of talented and committed player embodying the values that align with the criteria.
"The Ashley Cooper Scholarship fund team has always been interested in focusing on players that are in that transition between their junior careers and trying to make it as senior pro players,” he explained.
"Another category of players we've helped is those who have just come out of college and come into our National Tennis Academy program. Adam Walton is an example of that player; the Ashley Cooper Scholarship was critical for him in the early days of his post-college career to essentially help fund his travel and living expenses while he was trying to push up the rankings… and he's obviously now embedded himself in the top 100.”
Walton peaked at world No.74 in October last year and at one stage enjoyed an uninterrupted top-100 stint of almost 18 months.
The 26-year-old Queenslander was among the original cohort of Ashley Cooper Scholarship recipients in 2022. After spending five years at the University of Tennessee, he’s accruing impressive tour-level results, last year reaching the fourth round of the Miami Masters and third round at the Cincinnati Masters, scoring his first top-20 win over Daniil Medvedev at the latter.
He was also an ATP Los Cabos semifinalist in 2025 and has won main-draw matches at three of the four Grand Slams.
"The Ashley Cooper Scholarship was great for when I started out playing pro tennis, because at the low-level tournaments, the money is obviously quite small and you're having to pay for accommodation and flights and everything,” Walton told tennis.com.au.
“Just to take a little bit of financial stress off the start of my career was very helpful. I’m very thankful to have received the scholarship."
West Australian wave
Another top-100 player is Talia Gibson, who made the tennis world take notice in March with her performances during back-to-back WTA 1000 events at Indian Wells and Miami.
She qualified for Indian Wells and went all the way to the quarterfinals, then qualified in Miami and progressed to the fourth round. She beat five top-20 players along the way, and by winning 11 of her 13 matches during this ‘Sunshine Swing’, soared to a career-high ranking of 56th.
“I was truly honoured to be a recipient of the Ashley Cooper Scholarship in 2024. The funds I have received have enabled me to travel widely and compete at the highest level on the pro circuit which I am eternally grateful for,” Gibson told tennis.com.au.
“This year in particular has been a breakout year for me competing at the AO, Indian Wells and Miami Open resulting in a new career-high ranking. I am also super excited about being selected to represent Australia as part of the Billie Jean King Cup team in April at Melbourne Park.
“I can't thank the Ashley Cooper Scholarship enough for the wonderful work they do and for the support that is assisting me to achieve my goals.”
RANKING MOVERS: Gibson nears top 50 after historic Sunshine Swing
Fellow West Australian Taylah Preston, one year younger than Gibson at age 20, is another recipient. Since September last year she has won more than 40 matches across all levels, rising from world No.259 to enter the top 150.
She won her first Grand Slam main-draw match at AO 2026, a week after overpowering top seed Emma Raducanu to reach the semifinals in Hobart, her best WTA-level result.
“It's helped me so much in my career and journey so far, just having the opportunity to have that extra funding to gain more experience,” Preston said of the scholarship funding.
“Tennis is a very expensive sport to travel around the world, 35-plus weeks of the year, with a lot of expenses – flights, accommodation, food, and a lot more. So the extra money really helped me to be able to experience more tournaments, especially at the lower levels, where you're not making much back in prize money, either.”
Like Gibson and Preston, Tristan Schoolkate hails from Western Australia, and rose to world No.95 last September after reaching the second round of the US Open and also winning Masters main-draw matches in Miami and Canada.
In 2025 he won 44 matches, two ATP Challenger titles from three finals, and improved his ranking by almost 100 places.
"I think the Ashley Cooper Scholarship is massive… I received it in 2024 when I was sort of going through the phase of [playing] Futures and Challengers, where you're obviously not earning a whole heap of money, unless you're having some big results,” Schoolkate told tennis.com.au.
“I think some of that financial pressure with paying for either a coach or a team, travel – that's obviously something which maybe doesn't get talked about, is how often you pay quite a lot for last-minute flights or tickets like that – so it definitely helps to ease that and let you focus solely on just playing tennis and getting those results.
"Through that year I had a good year and made some strides towards the main tour, and definitely thankful for the help from that scholarship, which pushed me forward and got me up the ranks.”
Schoolkate highlighted the fact the scholarship funding was especially valuable from a travel perspective, given Australia’s geographic isolation from most pro tennis events – meaning long stints away from home.
“Obviously that amount of money is very well spent in terms of getting from tournament to tournament, and those weeks abroad, maybe where you have to spend a week to train, or in between tournaments,” he said. “It can definitely help to keep you afloat and make sure that you're going well and things aren't stressful."
“A long journey”
Jolley notes the average age for players to crack the ATP top 100 is currently 25 years of age.
This is a career juncture Dane Sweeny is approaching. Having just turned 25 in February, Sweeny last month hit a career-high ranking of No.131, a phenomenal improvement given that at the same point in 2025, he was ranked 665th.
He competed in almost 100 matches – mostly on the ITF Circuit – in 2025 and won 73 of them, kickstarting the significant rise that has opened new scheduling doors, such as the opportunity to enter Indian Wells and Miami qualifying last month.
“[The scholarship funding] enabled him to stay on the tour for the last couple of years and find that opportunity for the breakthrough he had at the Australian Open this year,” Jolley said of Sweeny.
"For the average player that gets into the top 100, it's a long journey these days. And the Ashley Cooper funding has been playing a critical role in keeping these guys in the sport and getting them through to that point where they're able to have really financially sustainable careers.”
Sweeny confirmed the scholarship funding had been enormously beneficial in his career, during which he first competed on the Futures circuit outside Australia in 2019.
Almost seven years on, he upset Gael Monfils for his first Grand Slam win at Australian Open 2026, earning A$225,000 in prize money with this breakthrough.
"Tennis is such an expensive way of life, and [the Ashley Cooper Scholarship funding] really just eased the burden of the travel, accommodation and all the expenses that go with the journey,” said Sweeny, a recipient in 2023.
“So I was very grateful for the opportunity, and yeah, money always helps, so it was a great privilege to have that scholarship.”