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  • 1 year ago
Every year in February the ATP and WTA championships in Dubai depend on the ball kids for its smooth operation. What started with 75 children in 1993, under the tutelage of Clark Francis (who still organises the programme now in its 27th year for Dubai Duty Free), has now grown to be a huge operation with 120 kids divided into 10 teams.
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00:00October 1992, Clark had mentioned to us that he was responsible for this ball kit thing
00:09that was a novelty to us, and we were told that we would have the opportunity to get involved.
00:16Clark put us through the first year of training. There was a lot of us.
00:20A lot of us unfortunately got rejected, a lot of us made it through, and we learned a lot.
00:30Mr McLaughlin, the Executive Vice Chairman of Dubai Duty Free, had a wonderful idea to organise a tennis tournament in Dubai.
00:44He came to me and he said, I'm going to be organising this event, would you kindly organise the ball kits for me?
00:51Is that something that you can do?
00:54And I agreed. I was delighted that he asked me, and we trained I think 75 ball kits the first year,
01:02because there was only a men's tournament then, there was only ATP.
01:05The ladies started seven years later as you know.
01:08And here we all are, enjoying Mr Federer and Djokovic and Monfils and everyone this year.
01:15My favourite moment was when I was a ball kit for the finals of the 2019 Dubai Tennis Championships,
01:25and it was Roger against Tsitsipas, and it was really nice.
01:28Roger almost gave me his racket, but due to lack of time I could not get it.
01:35But when I went to the O2 this year, me and Stephanie were chosen to participate in the O2,
01:42he gave me his headband, which was really good.
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