{"id":19057,"date":"2023-11-23T23:24:18","date_gmt":"2023-11-23T15:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/?p=19057"},"modified":"2023-11-23T23:24:44","modified_gmt":"2023-11-23T15:24:44","slug":"was-storm-hunter-honoured-for-year-end-world-no-1-milestone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/news\/2023\/11\/23\/was-storm-hunter-honoured-for-year-end-world-no-1-milestone","title":{"rendered":"WA’s Storm Hunter Honoured for Year-End World No. 1 Milestone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tennis Australia team members gathered on Thursday at KIA Arena to celebrate WA’s Storm Hunter, who finished the 2023 season as the doubles world No.1.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Storm Hunter became emotional on Thursday at Melbourne Park as she continued to process her incredible achievement of ending 2023 as the doubles world No.1.<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old secured the milestone in a whirlwind, rain-affected 48 hours at the WTA Finals in Cancun, before immediately jetting to Seville to represent Australia at the Billie Jean King Cup Finals.<\/p>\n

She only recently returned home to Melbourne, and the enormity of the accomplishment continued to sink in.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t until after (the Billie Jean King Cup) that I kind of got to sit down and reflect and celebrate with the team in Spain, which was amazing. And now being home and having some time to reflect\u2026 honestly I\u2019m speechless still, I can\u2019t believe that\u2019s happened,\u201d she said at a media event at KIA Arena.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s really nice to come home and enjoy and celebrate.<\/p>\n

\u201cFive years ago I wasn\u2019t playing at all. I was here at the National Tennis Centre, in the gym doing rehab every single day with my shoulder. I was out for a full year, didn\u2019t think I was going to play tennis again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the biggest thing with becoming world No.1, is looking back on my journey, and through those moments of fear and doubt and questioning myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hunter teared up as she continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust to be able to sit and be like, wow I got through that, yeah, is really amazing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t do that without the people around me. People from Tennis Australia who helped me a lot in those moments, just supported me, and didn\u2019t doubt me at all \u2014 they gave me the belief when I didn\u2019t have it myself. Which I\u2019m super grateful for.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd obviously my parents, my family, and everyone else in my team, I\u2019m just really lucky and feel really incredible and grateful to play this sport \u2013 I think it\u2019s a beautiful sport and we\u2019re the luckiest people in the world to be involved in tennis. And it\u2019s a sport for life.<\/p>\n

\u201c(I\u2019m) looking forward to January.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, several high-performance team members from the NTC attended on Thursday to recognise Hunter\u2019s climb to the summit, as did Tennis Australia CEO Craig Tiley, Australian teammate Ellen Perez and husband Loughlin Hunter.<\/p>\n

She thanked Tiley for scheduling her AO 2023 third-round doubles match on Rod Laver Arena \u2013 one of her highlights of the season \u2013 as well as Loughlin, who quit his job to travel with and support her on tour full time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you everyone for coming out \u2013 this is really, really special,\u201d said Hunter, who was overseas for almost nine months in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo see all these faces, some that have been part of my journey for a very long time, since I was a 12 or 13-year-old in Perth\u2026 I really appreciate it.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, it\u2019s always been a dream of mine to be world No.1, but I really didn\u2019t think that it would happen to me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a really great year and coming into the WTA Finals I was sitting at No.3 in the world, and kind of knew there was a little chance, but I was like, I don\u2019t want to believe it, just in case it doesn\u2019t happen. And how could it happen to me? I\u2019m just Storm.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tennis Australia team members gathered on Thursday at KIA Arena to celebrate WA’s Storm Hunter, who finished the 2023 season as the doubles world No.1. Storm Hunter became emotional on Thursday at Melbourne Park as she continued to process her incredible achievement of ending 2023 as the doubles world No.1. The 29-year-old secured the milestone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6359,"featured_media":19058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}