Ball boy served up a treat as he mixes with legends of the game

BALL BOY: Patrick Styles with tennis star Jo-Wilfred Tsonga at the O2 Arena in London

Published on 21/11/2012 09:00

Stowmarket’s Patrick Styles shared the spotlight with US Open and Olympic champion, Andy Murray at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals.

Having won a nationwide competition to become a Barclays Ball Kid, the Woodbridge School pupil shared the court at the O2 Arena with the cream of world tennis, including Roger Federer, eventual champion and world number one Novak Djokovic and Murray.

After his week in the limelight, 14-year-old Styles – who saw off 2,500 other children to get his 15 minutes of fame – admitted it had been an experience to savour.

“It was definitely the best tennis experience I have ever had,” said Styles, who appeared in front of 20,000 spectators a day at the London event. “We had the best seats possible.

“Being on court with Djokovic was amazing. He was really nice to us all and is obviously one of the best players around at the moment so it was a pleasure to watch him.

“Having been able to see how they operate will help me when I next play tennis.

“In particular I was amazed by the amount of top spin they put on the ball and how easily they do a one-handed backhand.

“Being part of Murray’s matches was fantastic and the atmosphere was amazing. I was positioned right next to the umpire which gave me a great view.”

For more information on becoming a Barclays Ball Kid at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in London, visit www.barclaysballkids.com

Sport

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Ball boy served up a treat as he mixes with legends of the game

Top stories

Sport