Ian Watson (Diamond Creek) has a burning desire to play tennis that few can match. He has played 33 Pennant seasons straight, with only a cruel injury stopping him reaching 34 last year.<\/p>\n
It is an outstanding show of longevity and Watson doesn\u2019t plan on hanging up the racquet anytime soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know whether I\u2019ve played too much tennis, but my Grade Four teacher would be aghast at seeing me fill out score cards holding the pen with a continental grip,\u201d joked Watson.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how many matches I\u2019ve played but it must be around 1500.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis includes Saturday Afternoon Mixed, Tuesday Night Men\u2019s, Thursday Night Men\u2019s and Thursday Afternoon Veteran\u2019s competitions.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also still plays Pennant for Bundoora Tennis Club.<\/p>\n
Watson was a late bloomer when it came to starting tennis, only picking up a racquet for the first time as a teenager.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was 15 my younger sister won a tennis racquet … being into little athletics, cricket and football I\u2019d never held a tennis racquet before,\u201d said Watson.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably because my sister had something I didn\u2019t, I felt the urge to use the racquet and hit balls against the double door garage of the family home.\u201d<\/p>\n
During his first season of tennis, Watson was paired up with Ashley Foley and the two are still playing alongside each other today after striking up an unbreakable friendship.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t always played together, but we\u2019ve always met and kept in touch. I still see several people that I first met in my junior days.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe social contact is a key attribute within tennis circles,\u201d Watson added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ian Watson (Diamond Creek) has a burning desire to play tennis that few can match. He has played 33 Pennant seasons straight, with only a cruel injury stopping him reaching 34 last year. It is an outstanding show of longevity and Watson doesn\u2019t plan on hanging up the racquet anytime soon. \u201cI don\u2019t know whether […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5907,"featured_media":9028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9027","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\/9027","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\/5907"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}