Bicknell ready for return
Published:Friday | July 3, 2020 | 12:09 AMRobert Bailey/Gleaner Writer
Having fully recovered from a right-hand wrist injury which kept him out of action for almost two months, national senior tennis player Jacob Bicknell says he is now ready to return to competitive action.
The 21-year-old Bicknell, who is the number three ranked tennis player in the country, told The Gleaner that he has used break from competitive tennis because of the COVID-19 pandemic to heal his injury properly. He said that he is now eager to get back into competition.
“I think I have improved my game a lot during this break because I have been training with my brother Blaise and Randy Phillips for two to three hours every day during the week,” Bicknell said.
“Once the tournaments are open again, which will probably be in August, I will be ready to compete and to continue my tennis career, because I am anxious to get back into tournaments.
“I have been training a lot harder and I am hoping to play a few pro tournaments before I go back to school in the [United] States,” Bicknell added.
His younger brother Blaise is ranked number one in the country, while Phillips is rated second.
Bicknell, who will be entering his final year at Elon University in North Carolina, last represented Jamaica at the Davis Cup tournament in Costa Rica last summer, where he helped the nation to secure promotion to Group Two of the tournament.
Targeting big competitions
Ranked 567 on the International Tennis Federation men’s rating, Bicknell said that he plans on using the Futures tournament to gain points to improve his chances of getting into one of the world’s biggest tennis competitions.
“I am just looking to do well at the upcoming tournaments so that I can secure some ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) points,” he said. “These ATP points will get me into every Futures tournament, and once you get to the Futures tournament then you will continue to get more and more points.
“My aim is to get into one of the big ATP tournaments and, therefore, I have been putting in a lot of work, and hopefully this will happen one day.”