As an internationally-ranked tennis player, my schedule is often completely full. To an outsider, it would probably seem excessive. They’d quickly grow exhausted and sullen, looking ahead at all the seemingly impossible tasks. To me, conquering the impossible is just a normal day. It all starts at three in the morning when I begin my daily routine of stretches and lemon water. This then moves to a trip to the courts, where I practice by myself for around an hour until my couch arrives. We don’t break until lunchtime. Sounds tedious? You wouldn’t make it in top tennis with that attitude. There are certain things that are required to be this successful, and constant practice is one of them. You always have to be in perfect form. Recently, though, I’ve noticed that one of my eyes has been a bit off – something that my coach says is in the realm of a behavioural optometrist. I can’t describe it properly, but it’s like I’ve lost my depth perception. This is obviously a huge problem as a tennis player, where I have to subconsciously perceive the depth of the ball every single time it gets slammed across the net towards me. If I can’t efficiently track the one object I need to track, then my career will be over. We can’t let that happen, especially not when I could technically still have two decades of top competitive play ahead of me. I’ve always wanted to become the richest tennis player of all time, and I’m not going to retire until I make that a reality.
My coach recommends we visit a Bayside eye care doctor. As specialists in all things optometry, they will be trained to help my eyes. To tell you the truth, I’m slightly nervous about the visit. I’ve read some things online detailing exactly what the optometrist will be looking for as they inspect my eyes. Things like convergence, tracking, scanning and focusing will all be tested by machines. I hope my depth perception problem is easy to fix.