Tennis greats will collect at Kooyong on Sunday to shine the sunshine on psychological well being on the inaugural “Remembering Todd Reid” charity occasion.
Four years after Reid misplaced his battle with melancholy, his household stay heartbroken concerning the lack of assist the previous Wimbledon junior champion obtained after harm and sickness curtailed his profession.
After sharing the courtroom with Roger Federer as a teenage boy surprise within the Australian Open third spherical in 2004, Reid was struck down with glandular fever – and was by no means seen once more on the large stage.
“I never got over what happened to me when I was 19,” Reid advised AAP the week earlier than he was discovered useless, aged 34, close to his dwelling in Sydney in October, 2018.
The nice Rafael Nadal was within the draw when Reid received the boys’ title on the All England Club in 2002, hours earlier than Lleyton Hewitt claimed the boys’s trophy in a golden Aussie double.
Reid and Hewitt, together with Todd Woodbridge and Wayne Arthurs, efficiently teamed up for Australia in Davis Cup two years later in opposition to Morocco in a tie in Perth.
But the highs of taking part in Federer, beating the likes of Bernard Tomic, John Millman and French Open champion Gaston Gaudio preceded the bottom of lows of being largely forgotten about when compelled off the ATP Tour.
Now Reid’s sister Renee, with the assistance of the CorriLee Foundation Tennis Charity, IC Australia and the Black Dog Institute, are intent on elevating consciousness across the significance {of professional} athletes receiving satisfactory assist to transition into on a regular basis life post-retirement.
Especially these compelled into untimely retirement.
“We need to be having conversations about it – raising awareness and the money to try to help people that are suffering,” Renee advised AAP.
“Todd was sent home from Melbourne with an ankle injury and glandular fever and not supported at all. The tennis world for the most part disappeared.
“Maybe they did not know what to do. What I do know is that there’s a degree of guilt from numerous folks that I’ve spoken to who did not realise simply how dangerous it was.
“It’s confronting – yes. It tears pieces off me to talk about it but the feedback that I get from doing it puts those pieces back together, where people comment that what I have said is powerful.
“And that I’m nonetheless doing one thing for Toddy, though we weren’t truly capable of save him, and maintaining his reminiscence alive.”
Despite many of Australia’s contemporary stars gathering in Melbourne for the Newcombe Medal on Monday night, organisers of “Remembering Todd Reid” were unable to lure any of today’s stars to Sunday’s event.
But two-time Australian Davis Cup champion and former captain Wally Masur, fellow great John Alexander, Scott Draper and Nicole Pratt are among those who will hit the famed grass courts of Kooyong before celebrating Reid at the charity dinner on Sunday night.
Lifeline 13 11 14
beyondblue 1300 22 4636
