Ball Boy is Grand Slam Gal’s trusty side-kick.
BallBoy is a huge fan of all sports, especially the English Premier League (Spurs in particular) and Aussie Rules Footy (go Hawks!). During the 2012 fan slam he managed the logistics, took the photos, carried the bags, went out for coffee and did a million other things to help each day go smoothly.
Grand Slam Events Ball Boy has attended to date:
Australian Open : 4: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015
French Open : 3: 2008, 2010, 2012
Wimbledon : 2 : 2008, 2012, 2015
US Open : 1 : 2012
FanSlams Completed : 1 : 2012
When we met in 2006 Ball Boy quickly got up to speed on all things tennis (because he’s that type of guy). In fact, I knew he was a keeper when I had a conference in Paris during the last week of January. The day sessions of the conference were held at the same time as the men’s Australian Open night matches (which I hated having to miss). Trusty Ball Boy emailed me game-by-game updates of the important matches so that I could keep up via my BlackBerry.
There was a minor glitch with Ball Boy joining me for the fan slam. Ball Boy is allergic to clay, which proved to be a problem at a windy French Open in 2008. For a while there he could only see out of one eye and frankly, I had to ask him to leave the seats so I wasn’t disturbed by the sneezing 🙂
In 2012 he came prepared with a big supply of strong anti histamines.
He still takes the majority of the photos that I share on this blog. Read his article on Practical Tips for Taking Better Photos of Tennis Players.