Wihan Van Der Merwe striving to improve Australian tennis ranking

The Kooyong Tennis Club member lived in Warrnambool until 2015 before moving to Melbourne with his family.

He is the number two men's seed in this year's three-day Warrnambool Grasscourt Open, which started on Monday.

Van Der Merwe, 18, is the 177^th ranked male tennis player in Australia.

He wants to crack the top-100 by the end of 2021.

"I am just going to train as hard as I can and hopefully travel mid next year and play a few futures (tournaments) and see how I go," he told The Standard.

"If I don't do as well as I thought I would then I would try college in America."

Van Der Merwe has high hopes for his tennis career.

"It has always been my dream to be one of the top players in the world and Roger Federer inspired me to play tennis. It is what I have always wanted to do," he said.

"I just love tennis, I like playing, it's really enjoyable and just playing well appeals to me, I like putting on a show. You don't want to be mediocre, you want to be the best."

The former King's College and Warrnambool College student, who finished VCE at Berwick Secondary School this year, said Kooyong Tennis Club was helping him achieve his goal.

"I got a scholarship there and they support you, you get to play for them and you get to use their facilities so it's good," Van Der Merwe said.

Tennis took a backseat during Melbourne's strict coronavirus virus lockdown this year but Van Der Merwe is making up for lost time.

"Ever since the end of lockdown and after school finished it's been lovely," he said.

"I have been training a lot, trying to do as much as I can, hit the gym and go as hard as I can with tennis."

Van Der Merwe said he enjoyed playing on different surfaces and wanted to be adaptable.

"At the moment I am liking hard court a lot but it depends on how I am feeling," he said.

"I am playing well on clay as well but I have always loved the grass and being from Warrnambool I love the courts here, they suit my game I guess."

The teenager is also trying to fine-tune his game and has identified areas in need of improvement.

"My backhand wasn't a weakness but it wasn't the strongest part of my game so I work a lot on that and now I am feeling great with it," he said.

"I used to make a lot of errors. When it was on it was good but it used to be a bit inconsistent.

"Now I can hit it consistently at a high level. I have always been able to hit as well as the top guys, I just didn't have the ability to match them over a longer time, so I am just getting a lot of match play and hitting with them helps a lot."

Van Der Merwe started his Warrnambool Grasscourt Open campaign with a 6-2, 6-4 win against unseeded Jia Feng. He hopes to face number one seed Nicholas Jovanovski deeper in the tournament.

"He lives in Melbourne and he's pretty good," Van Der Merwe said.

"He's top-100 (in Australia). I want to play him to see where I am at."

The Officer-based prospect would love to reach Wednesday's men's open final at his former home club.

"This year we came back to see some family friends and stayed with them for Christmas," he said.

"I thought 'may as well play a tournament'. Even those there's no points, it's good match practice on the grass for Shepparton."

Hawkesdale's Eloise Swarbrick, who was the number one women's seed, fell to Bianca Duff 6-1, 6-4 in her first match.

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