Chapter 2 — When Tennis Became My Life 🎾 At some point, tennis stopped being just a dream. It became my life. The more I played, the more I realised that if I truly wanted to make it, I couldn’t treat tennis like a hobby. I had to commit to it completely. That meant early mornings. Long training sessions. Giving up things other people my age could enjoy. Travelling. Losing matches. Starting again. Pushing through the days when my body and my mind were exhausted. And slowly, I began to understand something: Talent can open a door, but hard work is what keeps you inside. I started competing more seriously and travelling for tournaments. Every tournament taught me something different. Some gave me confidence. Others broke me down. There were matches where I walked off the court thinking, Maybe I’m not good enough. But then I’d wake up the next morning and train again. Because I didn’t want to be someone who wondered what could have happened if I had just tried harder. I wanted to find out how far I could actually go. The dream started getting bigger. I wasn’t just dreaming about winning matches anymore. I wanted to represent South Africa. I wanted to play internationally. I wanted to compete against the best players in the world. And eventually, I wanted to play on the biggest stages in tennis. At the time, I didn’t know how difficult that journey would become. I didn’t know how many sacrifices it would require. I didn’t know how many times I’d have to choose the dream over comfort. But I had already made my decision. I was going to chase it. No matter how long it took. The next chapter is about my first school tennis trip. And this was only the beginning. ❤️🎾