Did Oliver Golding make the right decision by opting for tennis over acting?
Deciding on whether to choose professional tennis as a career or not is an extremely challenging decision to make. It is an unpredictable and highly competitive sport and one can never be sure of being the best, because in tennis even the best can be overthrown.
Only true passion and love for the game is what can make one opt to be a professional tennis player. This has been the case with Oliver Golding. This young tennis star, who was born in London, gave up his promising career as an actor to focus on his tennis. His decision appeared to be vindicated after he managed to pull off a brilliant performance in Wimbledon 2010. He was part of the boy’s singles competition and made it to the semi-finals and has been the first British player to have reached the semi-finals since Buster Mottram in 1972. However, he was unable to make it to the finals of the tournament when he lost to Ben Mitchell of Australia. But getting to the semi-finals has also been quite an achievement for Golding and has taken his career to greater heights. Britain has high hopes for this junior tennis player.
Before making his way in professional tennis, Oliver Golding was well on his way to become a famous actor. The first time he appeared on television was in a commercial for Vauxhall Motors in 1996. At this time, Golding was only two years old. By watching him on screen at such a young age, no one would have guessed at that time that acting was not his destiny and that he would end up making a name for Britain in the world of tennis. In 1998, this young actor made it into a television series. It was the wartime romantic drama ‘Coming Home’ in which Golding starred alongside Keira Knightley. His most famous role as an actor was in the 2005 film ‘The Adventures of Greyfriars Bobby’ (USA: Greyfriars Bobby) for his part as Ewan. After progressing somewhat in his career as an actor, Golding has now switched his focus towards tennis and is doing very well at the sport. He is the youngest junior player from Britain to make it to the number one rankings in Britain which shows how good he is and that switching to tennis from acting was not a bad decision after all.
Oliver Golding is always trying his best to improve his tennis performance, and one way in which he tries to do this is by mimicking the best players of the game. He did a very good impression of becoming one himself when he made it into the semi-finals of the junior’s singles in Wimbledon 2010. He does a great impersonation of Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal while playing. During his match in the fourth round which he won in order to reach the quarterfinals, Golding managed to produce a serve which was only fractionally slower than that of Nadal. The speed of his serve was recorded at 128 miles per hour and it has been declared to be the fastest serve in the junior Wimbledon even this year. He beat top seeded Jason Kubler 4-6, 6-4 and 6-4 and progressed to the quarterfinals of the tournament. Seeing him produce a serve like Rafael Nadal, who is the greatest player of all time, it is quite evident that the future of this junior tennis star has success written all over it.
Being able to master and act out the playing styles of other players out there on the court shows that Oliver is a talented actor but the greatness he has achieved in the world of tennis with his game prove that he is an extremely talented tennis player. Very few actors can manage that! In a few years there is a chance that this young player, who is currently only sixteen, will become the pride of Great Britain.
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