Tennis Victoria Pennant is deeply entrenched in the winter calendar of tennis in metropolitan Melbourne, with its rich history defining the coldest months of the year.<\/p>\n
The well-established competition is the largest inter-club competition in Australia, entering its 136th consecutive year this year. <\/p>\n
Players of all ages and all abilities partake, attracting a range of people, including those from the same family.<\/p>\n
For the Batty family, the opportunity to play in Pennant as two father-son duos was too good to resist. <\/p>\n
Adrian and Ashley Batty are brothers who grew up playing at the Geelong Lawn Tennis Club, a place where Ashley, and his son, Austin, still play.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had our own tennis court (so I) started playing very young. Maybe five years old,\u201d Ashley explained.<\/p>\n
With a dad who ran juniors on Saturday mornings, playing was a must for the brothers, and it was only inevitable their sons went on to play too.<\/p>\n
Luke (son of Adrian) and Austin (son of Ashley) are cousins who have had varying experiences playing tennis, but are ultimately enjoying playing with their dads.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started Hot Shots at age five,\u201d Austin said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the game and enjoy playing with family and friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is good to play with Dad as it is something that is good to do and is fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Austin has been playing since he was five and has progressed from playing in section 15 to section 1, Luke has only been playing for four years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started having some lessons around 12,\u201d Luke said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year is the first time I have played in a competition other than socially.<\/p>\n
Playing with your dad isn\u2019t as wonderful as some might make it out to be as Luke explains.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad can\u2019t run, has a dodgy shoulder and injures himself every second week. <\/p>\n
That could be a result of a nearly three decade hiatus from the tennis court for Adrian, who is back playing with his son this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI played as a junior in Geelong and ultimately several seasons in Victoria Pennant in the 1980\u2019s but effectively ceased playing once starting work 27 years ago,\u201d Adrian said.<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year presented an opportunity to field a team with two brothers and two sons.
\n\u201c(We are doing it) for a bit of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
The brothers are familiar playing with each other, with both of them sharing strong memories of playing Country Week and other local tournaments together.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe used to play Country Week tennis over the Christmas break as kids.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur parents would drive us down and we would set up in the caravan park across the road from the courts,\u201d Adrian explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe probably should have won the tournament more than than we did as we tended to get a little distracted by the social scene each night.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Batty’s take over Tennis Victoria Pennant as two brothers and their sons take to the courts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6228,"featured_media":20951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}