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She’s hit rock bottom, but Sarah Pang won’t give up on tennis pro dream

SINGAPORE — A flicker of emotion, then a wry smile on Sarah Pang’s face.

Singaporean tennis player Sarah Pang.

Singaporean tennis player Sarah Pang.

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SINGAPORE — A flicker of emotion, then a wry smile on Sarah Pang’s face.

She has heard it before, criticism that her dream of becoming a professional tennis player is out of reach.

The words, which once came from a friend, stung. “I remember him sitting there and telling me, ‘Sarah, seeing you play is like seeing a bathroom singer trying to be an opera singer’,” she told TODAY ahead of the round-of-32 qualifiers of the S$25,000 Singapore ITF Women’s Circuit WC1, which kicked off over the weekend.

But Pang, who switched from badminton at the age of 19 and once worked three jobs to fund her tennis career, has learnt to roll with the punches.

“People still think I’m crazy…sometimes the people you thought would be supportive are not, and I’m learning how to get past that,” she said.

Since making the leap to pursue tennis full-time in 2014, the 33-year-old has spent four years on the road competing alone. She has slept in dingy hostels in India, lived in a ghetto in Italy and was almost lured into a gang rape ruse in South Africa.

Pang has been trying to compete consistently on the International Tennis Federation (ITF) circuit. Players earn a point after victory in the first round of a tournament, and have to win three points in a calendar year to get a Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) ranking to play on the tour – Pang’s long term goal.

Singaporean Stefanie Tan is currently the only WTA ranked local player, with a singles ranking of No 699.

Pang was one point short in her first and second year of full-time tennis before money ran out.

In 2015, she took to crowdfunding to pay for a coach and travelling and other expenses, despite being “petrified” at the thought of asking strangers for money.

She initially targeted US$230,000 (S$308,000) in order to compete in 20 to 30 tournaments annually for three years, but had to scale back after raising S$55,000.

She has achieved modest results so far, qualifying for the doubles quarterfinals thrice on the ITF pro circuit, a semi-final doubles spot at the 2015 Indonesia 15k pro circuit, and recently winning an ITF pro circuit singles match in Thailand.

“My ultimate goal is to play on the WTA tour. I’ve seen the (ITF) circuit and the landscape and I know it’s possible. It just takes time,” she said.

“We’re so fixated on instant results but that takes years to build, and it’s so hard to find athletes who are committed to a cause for so long.”

SOME ARE LOOKING AT THE STARS

The fifth of six children aged between 31 and 48, Pang grew up in four-room Housing and Development Board (HDB) flat in Bukit Merah. She spent hours training on the neighbourhood badminton court with her father and younger brother.

When it rained, her father, school teacher Roger Pang – who was himself trained by All England champion Wong Peng Soon – would make the siblings soak up the water on the concrete court with newspapers so they could train.

“The lights used to go out at 10pm, so we would lie on the court and do exercises while staring at the stars. My dad would talk about us playing at the Olympic Games, and it sparked a sense of wonder in me,” she said.

Pang became a top badminton junior and trained with future national shuttlers such as Commonwealth Games silver medallist Derek Wong.

When she turned 19, her father said she had to choose either tennis or golf if she wanted to be a professional athlete, as he felt they offered athletes more autonomy and control in their training and careers.

On her choice, Pang said: “I was young, and still in want of some wisdom. In retrospect, I wish I had chosen golf, because you can have babies and go back to the sport (unlike tennis).

“I was so excited then (when I started playing), little did I realise how long a journey it would be.”

In the beginning, she and her father would travel to an aunt’s Bukit Gombak condominium, where they played using second-hand rackets from The Salvation Army and balls that cost four for S$1 from NTUC FairPrice.

Her decision to pursue professional tennis caused some tension in the family, as her “conservative” siblings pooh-poohed the idea of her taking the less trodden path.

After graduating from the National University of Singapore (NUS) with a degree in English Literature, she worked three jobs as a copywriter, English tuition teacher, and life skills coach to pay for a three-week training stint at Barcelona’s Sanchez-Casal Tennis Academy.

For the next 18 months, she lived on a monthly allowance of 200 euros from her father, drank tap water and worked 12- to 15-hour shifts as a dorm warden in order to continue training in Spain.

After returning, she took up a job at Sport Singapore and spent the next three years learning what it would take to be a professional player.

In 2014, she decided to take the plunge and pursue tennis full-time.

S$1.87 LEFT IN THE BANK

Things got even tougher in her third year, when she ran out of money and had to cut her season short.

The cost of travelling and competing on the circuit can add up to about S$400,000 a year, particularly if a player travels with a coach and other support staff.

She sank to one of her lowest points in the middle of last year, when she had only S$1.87 in her bank account.

With funding support from a potential sponsor falling through, she sat at the void deck of her HDB block and cried “with snot running and all”.

“I didn’t want my mum and dad to see me (crying). I could have asked them for S$100, but I didn’t want to do that. I learnt to make it on my own two feet,” she said.

Down and out, Pang sent a message to friends for help. The first person she reached out to was Paralympian swimmer Theresa Goh, who offered words of encouragement and financial help.

A group of 11 friends pooled their money to send Pang to California in the United States to train with her coach Vasileios Psyrras for three weeks.

Guardian angels have also appeared in the form of strangers.

Besides anonymous donors who chipped in for her crowdfunding campaign, an “uncle” at NUS gave her a second-hand ball basket.

An unexpected benefactor was Zsolt Karosi, a Hungarian tennis coach working in Singapore. Desperate for a sparring partner, Pang had approached Karosi at the tennis courts one day to ask if she could hit with him before his training session with a client.

Although initially reluctant, Karosi agreed – and asked her to return the next day for another session. When told that she could not afford to pay him, he told her, “Don’t worry”.

After three days, Pang asked why he was helping her.

“He looked at me out of the corner of his eye…this rugged Hungarian man with his messy hair, and he said, ‘We tennis people, we’re like a band of brothers and we stick up for each other’.”

It turned out that Karosi knew of her journey to become a professional athlete. Initially sceptical, he is now a firm supporter.

“He said he saw videos of me playing and said, ‘This girl is such a fool, a phony’. But that changed after he got to know me and what I stood for. He’s never charged me for lessons and he even pays for the court…he’s the reason I am where I am now,” she said.

BIGGER THAN PLAYING TENNIS

Her financial situation has improved this season after she managed to raise S$80,000 from a corporate sponsor, Sozo Cardiology, and two private donors, but Pang is still on the hunt for more supporters in her quest to compete in more tournaments and travel with a support team.

Pang has also found support and solace in giving back to the community by conducting tennis clinics and speaking to youths in schools.

“The look on people’s faces when they come up to me, the glow on their faces …when they say they always wanted to (play professionally). It’s been very humbling because I realised that my journey is bigger than wanting to play tennis.”

Pang knows she is at the age where some professionals have already hung up their rackets. But she is determined to keep pushing for a ticket to the WTA tour.

“With the level of sports science today, an athlete can push to their 40s. My dad kept telling me…Wong Peng Soon won the All England in his 40s. He (Roger) played at a high level at that age. He knows that a body can still be in good shape,” she said.

The ultimate dream, she said, is to play in a Grand Slam. While most players’ picks are either Wimbledon or Roland Garros, Pang’s choice is the US Open in Flushing Meadows, New York.

“I like the US Open because it feels more ghetto, and it echoes my spirit and my journey,” she said.

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