“IF you don’t lose, you don’t learn.” The wisdom comes from Connor Thomson, an 18-year-old Scottish tennis player who is determined to make the most of the harsh lessons on offer at the ITF World Tennis Tour. This one has been dispensed - 6-0, 6-3 - by a 24-year-old from the USA called Alexander Ritschard in qualifying for the Scottish Championships at Scotstoun in Glasgow, an annual tournament which carries a $25,000 prize purse for both men and women.
The son of Malky, the former footballer, assistant manager and current Rangers youth coach, Connor is playing out his last season as a junior. Having won a round in both singles and doubles at the Australian Open boys’ competition in January, he will get a second go at Junior Wimbledon in the summer and then it is off to a tennis scholarship in the US at the University of South Carolina.
The lessons seem tougher than ever at this level right now due to a mid-winter rejig of the rankings which saw around half of the players in the system essentially fall off the ATP grid because none of their points had come in either ATP or Challenger-level events.
One such player is Aidan McHugh, whose only two senior tournament wins came at Futures level. While one knock-on of the changes is a filtering down of Challenger-level players to this kind of event, McHugh will hope to take another scalp this afternoon against Jeremy Jahn of Germany as a wild card into the main draw.
READ MORE: Callum Skinner, the free-wheeling free thinker leading the fight for rights of the athlete
“I’m actually quite lucky because I have a high transition tour ranking so I can get into a lot of the tournaments just on that,” said McHugh. “The rankings change is not going to help me, but it is not terrible either. Some of the guys at the Challenger Level have had to drop down so ‘futures’ events like this are a bit stronger. But you are going to have to play them anyway, so it is not like it is a disaster.”
The 18-year-old is signed to Andy Murray’s 77 Sports Management Agency and when he completed a week’s training with the Scot out in Miami in December, everything seemed rosy. Three months later Murray is resting up after a second hip operation - one which will alleviate pain he feels in the joint and either prolong his career or end it for good.
“I went out early with Andy and started in Miami at Crandon Park, I was there with him for four or five days then I went to IMG for the British camp,” said McHugh.
“Andy was working away as normal back then, he was looking good, moving really well, a high level in the practices and I really enjoyed it. But I think he was just in too much pain. I don’t know how long it takes to recover, before he can start training again. But hopefully he does – it would be great.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here