Behind the glamour of famous tournaments like Wimbledon and the Australian Open stands a man \u2013\u00a0once the world\u2019s top junior tennis player \u2013\u00a0who has flat-out had enough. Channelling rage into words, Todd Ley recently published his first novel Smashed which exposes the harsh realities of a child sporting star caught in the net of the tennis world. We sat down with Todd at Byron Writers Festival to discuss his writing process and breaking out of an identity which has shaped his entire life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a highly successful child athlete, Todd knows firsthand how brutal the world of elite sports can be, especially for the young. Given a racket at age three,\u00a0Todd\u2019s journey through the competitive tennis circuit left him with far more than trophies. It left battle wounds. His memoir Smashed isn\u2019t a celebration of victory, it\u2019s a reckoning.<\/p>\n
When asked what drew him to explore and share his experiences through the medium of memoir, Todd answers bluntly, \u201cRevenge and disgust. I had to put my experience out there somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Signed by IMG at just 11 years old \u2013 making him the youngest athlete the agency had ever signed \u2013 he quickly became captured by the high-pressure environment of the prestigious international tennis academy\u00a0 which he now jokingly refers to as a kind of incarceration. But behind the humour lies the dark truth of fame and pressure which resulted in family collapse, bankruptcy, alcoholism and mental health issues.<\/p>\n
Writing the memoir was both cathartic and confrontational and now that it is all out in a book he admits to feeling better about the whole experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven speaking about it today during the\u00a0Tennis Smashed\u00a0panel on the\u00a0Lilly Pilly stage it feels like I\u2019m digging up something that I\u2019ve buried the bones of.\u201d He says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Todd, memoir isn\u2019t just storytelling \u2013 it\u2019s liberation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something about revealing indecent exposure, in a way,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt feels naked, like flashing. But once it\u2019s out there, it doesn\u2019t belong to me anymore. It\u2019s not polished. It\u2019s raw. And now, I can walk away from it. It was a massive part of being able to course-correct my life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In order to defy people\u2019s expectations in writing and in his career he mentions, \u201cliterally [having] to destroy yourself to leave,\u201d he say. \u201cIt\u2019s an identity breakdown. Otherwise you\u2019re only seen as that.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Todd draws a comparison to celebrities like Justin Bieber who he says \u201cwears jeans 5,000 times too big for him, not as a fashion choice but for an expression of him saying, \u2018I\u2019m not who you think I am\u2019. I\u2019ve experienced my own version of that at a much smaller scale.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Breaking out of the box that others put you in, especially a box that you have been in since childhood requires deconstructing your image completely. Todd\u2019s writing is part of that process.<\/p>\n
Sports still plays a role in his life by means of tennis coaching, however the passion that once fuelled him has shifted. The sport is no longer his identity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to do something else \u2013 but it\u2019s not an easy escape when you\u2019ve done that one thing your whole life and everyone identifies you as that. My relationship to it is that it\u2019s a job, I can make good money out of it and work my own hours.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
As for the future, Todd is currently working on a TV show called\u00a0Tennis Parent\u00a0which tackles similar themes to his memoir, but in a more lighthearted way. Through satire and character study, the show dives into how environments shape someone to be the way they are.<\/p>\n
At the crux of everything, for Todd, telling the truth \u2013 no matter how uncomfortable \u2013 is the real prize.<\/p>\n
A MESSAGE FROM BYRON WRITERS FESTIVAL
Byron Writers Festival\u00a0wants to thank everyone who made this year\u2019s event possible.\u00a0BWF\u00a0is looking forward to welcoming everyone back to celebrate its 30th year. If you would like to support the festival and help keep the arts and literary culture thriving in the Northern Rivers, you can make a tax-deductible donation\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Behind the glamour of famous tournaments like Wimbledon and the Australian Open stands a man \u2013\u00a0once the world\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-194435","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}