Local tennis star CoCo Vandeweghe courts

Carmel Valley News/Del Mar Village Voice
June 18, 2009
29
Local tennis star CoCo Vandeweghe courts success on her own terms
By Matt Liebowitz
to
Newport
The future of women’s
Beach. Peterson
tennis may rest in the racket
also coaches Vanof local resident and Grauer
deweghe’s tennis
School student CoCo Vanidol and mentor
deweghe.
Lindsay DavenA professional tennis
port; the two met
player on the junior circuit
in 2007.
for the past two years, VanWhen the
deweghe, 17, made her
tennis day is
Women’s Tennis Association
done,
Van(WTA) debut in the 2007
deweghe comes
Acura Classic, won by Maria
back down to the
Sharapova. Soon after, VanGrauer School in
deweghe hit her first peak
Encinitas, where
when she took the title at the
she’s enrolled as a
2008 US Open Girls’ Singles
junior in an indetournament, at Flushing
pendent
study
Meadows-Corona Park in
program
that
Queens, N.Y.
allows her to
In April 2009, Vanreceive private
deweghe competed in the
instruction around
2009 Sony Ericsson Open in
her busy practice
Miami. A new member of the
schedule. Most
World Team Tennis (WTT)
days see her driWashington Kastles, Vanving up to Newdeweghe’s next tournament
port Beach for
is July 2, against the Newport
two, two-hour
Beach Breakers.
sessions beginCoCo Vandeweghe
She’ll compete, with
ning at 10 a.m.,
Photo/Dr. Stuart Grauer
teammate Serena Williams,
then returning for
through July, and plans to play
class at 3:30 p.m..
in the Australian Open, beginning Jan. 18, 2010, in Mel“Grauer has been tremendous in helping me,” said
bourne.
Vandeweghe. (She attended La Costa Canyon High
A hectic on-court schedule, but it’s nothing Van- School freshman and part of sophomore year, but was
deweghe can’t handle.
forced to leave because the school couldn’t work with
With coach Adam Peterson, Vandeweghe practices her athletic schedule).
four hours a day, six days a week, traveling most days
Balancing serves and volleys with homework
Living Well with Phoebe Chongchua
Take action, no worry
By Phoebe Chongchua
“Worry a little bit every day
and in a lifetime you will lose a
couple of years. If something is
wrong, fix it if you can. But train
yourself not to worry. Worry
never fixes anything.” The
words of Mary Hemingway are
straightforward
and easy to listen to but not
necessarily easy
to do.
Training
our brain to not
worry can be a
lesson in frustration for many of
Phoebe
Chongchua us. We can use
up many hours
in the day caught in needless
worries. Transforming a worrisome life to a worriless life takes
a real attitude adjustment.
Winston Churchill said,
“When I look back on all the
worries, I remember the story of
the old man who said on his
deathbed that he had a lot of
trouble in his life, most of which
never happened."
Yet each of us probably has
done our fair share of worrying—and some people volunteer
for overtime in this area! Like
drug addicts, we do it secretly,
hoping no one will discover our
destructive habit. And like any
addiction, the unhealthy bond
can be broken, especially when
you realize the harm it causes.
Think of the following analogy: “Worry is like a rocking
chair, it gives you something to
do, but won’t get you anywhere.” Then there is this one,
from Arthur Somers Rache:
“Worry is a thin stream of fear
trickling through the mind. If
encouraged, it cuts a channel
into which all other thoughts are
drained."
Worry stops creative juices
from flowing. It eliminates possibility and hope. But the wonderful thing is, if you learn to
trash your worries, you’ll make
room for real treasures in your
life. Action is the antidote. Don’t
sit and worry; take action on
even the smallest worry, and you
will find that you have set into
motion the energy to diffuse
worry.
Telling someone not to worry
is like saying, “Don’t look over
there.” Immediately, the head
whips around as though you had
instructed the person to look in
that direction. What works better
to reduce worry are these five
directives taken from my book.
Practice them each individually
until you can call upon every single one of them to help you
through a worrisome time.
Three Directives to Reduce
Worry:
1. Reveal your worries
2. Differentiate between productive and non-productive worries
3. Disarm your worry
Here’s how to make these
directives work for you. Read the
directive, let it sink in, then read
the principle—understand how
taking action by following the
directive will create a place in
your life for you to have less
worry and more peace.
1. Directive: Reveal your
worries
Principle: Revealing and facing your fear allows you to
process information more clearly. When you keep your
worry/fear bottled up inside, it
begins to eat away at other areas
of your life, such as your health
and can cause a multitude of
physical ailments.
2. Directive: Differentiate
productive from non-productive worries
Principle: Some worries are
productive and others are entirely
See PHOEBE, page 34
“hasn’t been too bad,” she said.
“It’s pretty easy once I got the hang
of it.”
Athletic prowess runs in Vandeweghe’s family, but she isn’t letting it pressure her performance.
Her mother, Tauna Vandeweghe, was on the 1976 U.S.
Olympic swimming team and the
1984 volleyball team. Her grandfather, Ernie, played basketball for
the New York Knicks in the 1950s.
Her uncle, Kiki Vandeweghe, was
the 11th draft pick in the NBA in
1980, and, until his retirement in
1992, played the majority of his
career for the Denver Nuggets. In
1983 and 1984, he was selected for
the NBA Western Conference AllStar team. He is currently the General Manager for the New Jersey
Nets.
The impressive lineage didn’t
play a significant role in her decision to pick up a racket, said Vandeweghe.
“I never really knew when I
was younger what they all did,”
said Vandeweghe. Her introduction
to sports, she said, came not
through her parents as much as
through her older brother, Beau,
who now plays on the Pepperdine
University volleyball team.
Looking toward a bright
future on the tennis court, Vandeweghe is living up to the high
expectations, while also staying
cool and confident, and keeping her
eyes fixed on her own personal
goals.
“I’m just trying to be as good
as I can be,” said Vandeweghe.
“My main goal is to be number one
in the world. It’s what I’ve always
wanted to be.”
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