MELBOURNE – How many child prodigies have you seen in your lifetime? Six-year-olds who played the piano as only geniuses can, seven-year-olds who solved the most intricate mathematical problems, eight-year-olds who recited the Penal Code from end to end? Or 12-year-olds who play tennis so well that their future as stars is inescapable.
And what became of these children? Most of them disappeared from the scene as easily as they shone on it, most of them suffered a lot, because they couldn’t be kids when they were kids.
This is the case of the Australian Todd Ley, who at the age of 12 became the best tennis player in the world at that age, but today, at 36, hates tennis, although he is obliged to continue embracing it: his parents programmed him to be a tennis player and did not allow him to be interested in anything else, he did not have the opportunity to be educated in anything other than the racket.

That is why today, when Ley is asked what he dreams of, what his dreams are, the Australian’s first reaction is to remain mute.
And that is also why, to explain the cost he paid for being a child prodigy of tennis, Ley leaves a chilling phrase during an interview with CLAY in Melbourne: ‘Alcoholism was better for me than tennis’.
Ley, father of a young child, has just published a book, ‘Smashed – Tennis prodigies, parents and parasites’ (Unsportsmanlike Publishing, Melbourne 2024). In this interview he explains what happened to him and why it was imperative for him to write a book.
– Who are you?
– I am Todd, that’s my name, Todd Ley, and I was the youngest person ever signed by IMG at 11 years old. I was the number one junior in the world at 12 years old, I spent a lot of my life at IMG at Bollettieri’s talents academy. When I wasn’t there I was basically travelling around the world playing tournaments, junior tournaments, and abruptly stopped at around 17, 18. And then went on afterwards to coach, because I didn’t have anything else to fall back on. Even though I really despised the sport, I wanted to get out of it, but I didn’t have anything else to do. So tennis, I hated it, but it sort of was my lifeboat to be able to do anything else. I’ve coached Grand Slam champions, champions and I’ve coached at the grassroots, so I’ve sort of seen it every and which way there is.
– How old are you now?
– 36, spent 32 years in tennis.
– When did you start to play tennis?
– Three, yeah.
– Why?
– I can’t remember, but it was said to me that I got like a tennis racket. And then I came from a rather dysfunctional household, and so if you were busy, it was helpful, so you could avoid a lot of things. Ironically, I was good at tennis, I had a knack for doing it a lot because I didn’t want to be around other certain circumstances in my house. And then, all of a sudden it became apparent that I had a bit of talent out of it and then went from being sort of a fun hobby to something else pretty quick and pretty young. Pretty quick and pretty young …
– What happened when you were 12?
– I went to America through IMG, I’d been sort of scouted as a young kid in Australia and they said go over and play Eddie Herr, Orange Bowl, those two tournaments to basically figure out where this kid is at. And I went over to them and I was a year out of my age group in the 12s and I won the Eddie Herr singles, doubles, mixed doubles. Everything. Yeah, everything. The sportsmanship award. I sort of cleaned it up and then I went to the Orange Bowl and did pretty well there. I lost in the quarters. And then, ironically, like four years later, I got defaulted from the same Eddie Herr tournament. Like my career had taken quite a turn in a short period of time.
– You said you were the youngest player to be ever signed by IMG. Why? How did it happen?
– Again, I don’t really know how it happened, I just know that a lot of attention was basically put on me from a young age. I was scouted by certain people within that organization.
– Who was the driving force behind your tennis career ?
– My dad, who pushed me.
– Was he a player?
– No, no, he didn’t play at all. A lot of the people who have got players to be the best can’t play tennis. It’s kind of crazy so I detail that in the book as well. They’re a big driving force behind… My dad: he was the sort of person that backed himself in at whatever he did. He didn’t ever sort of question his ability to do things that he couldn’t do at all, he just did them, just went for it. A lot of these people that you come across who have done that, they do the same thing. They have that sort of lack of self-awareness. It’s like a blessing to lack self-awareness when it comes to certain things.
– Better not to think at all?
– Yeah. That’s exactly right. So he didn’t think it through, he just went for it.

– At 12 you were playing great tennis and you were the best in the world. And what happened after? I mean, did you have a professional career as a project or you never wanted to do that?
– I played the Australian Open at 16. I got a wild card here. After I played well, I won like a thing in Adelaide. I did well, I lost to a guy that was in the top 100, kind of in a tight match, but in straight sets. And then from there, I went on and made the final of the lead-in of the Australian Open. And then they gave me a wild card here for the qualifier, I lost tight. So it was going in the right direction. But then later on that year it was like none of the wheels came off, it was like the straw that broke the camel’s back, it was just like I’d gone through enough and something within me just snapped eventually. Really what I was doing was like tanking, it was the only way for me to be able to get out of my career which I wasn’t enjoying was to self-destruct, because no one was paying attention to the warning signs. It didn’t really matter what I did. It was like there was a lot of attention on me, but basically no one noticed me at the same time. I was looked at as a thing, not a person, I was a human doing, not a human being. So, I was doing everything I could to try to get people to pay attention and no one would listen, but they’ll listen when I basically stop playing when I like to annihilate myself. I took great enjoyment in destroying this identity that these people had created, because I found it very cathartic.
– They took control of you for many years.
– Yeah, but it’s not done in a malicious way. But that was the outcome. So it wasn’t like these people are malicious tyrants. At times, it could seem like that.
– And what was the position of your mother? Was she pushing your career too?
– Everything’s great. Everyone’s having a great time here, we don’t want the neighbors to know anything and I hope your auntie doesn’t hear anything. Just concerned about everything the way that things look. If it looks okay, everyone’s okay and you kind of looked okay… Yeah I looked great. And we’re allowed to be happy .
– There are three groups you mention in the cover of “Smashed”, your book: tennis prodigies, parents and parasites. What is a tennis prodigy? How do they work? How do they live? How can you summarize this kind of guys that have all these skills to play tennis at a very high level but are still struggling because they’re kids?
– I think a tennis prodigy is just someone really that has a knack or a talent for the thing that they’re doing. Just because someone has a talent for something doesn’t mean they like it, you know? It doesn’t even mean they want to do it at all. But people would think that if you’re good at something, you enjoy it.
– But did you have at that time of your life a desire to be, I don’t know, a football player, a chess player, an engineer? Did you have a different idea than being a tennis player?
– No, not at all.
– Or you didn’t have that chance to think about it?
– I was ostracized from the rest of society. So it was like, you’re going to be a tennis player, and now everything outside of that, we just basically cocoon you. Okay. And if someone’s talking about football and wants to kick a football with you, well, now they can’t come around the house anymore.
– Really?
– They arranged tennis friends like marriages, like ‘this is your new tennis friend’, and like ‘he looks a bit big but you know what I mean’, and it was just he likes tennis. I’ll give you your best friends with him so it was like everything was calculated in a way to make sure that the only thing that I was to do was to do this hobby. You go around the world and you do this hobby. Don’t worry about everything else. And I got spoiled and then also sort of like neglect, you know. There were also a lot of things, I’ve got a lot of stuff given to me and then also got neglected and I missed out on a lot.

– And there were other tennis projects besides you. Did you have contact with them? Did you have deep conversations with? Kids of your age and whether they’re suffering the same? What do you recall?
– The people that you’re friends with, they’re also the people that you compete against. So you are also kind of told, look, don’t…
– Not a real friendship.
– No, not at all. There’s a stigma behind, you know, hanging out with other people. There’s a stigma to hanging out with the outside world because they’re going to corrupt the tennis Grand Slam plan from happening. And then also don’t reveal anything to these people because they’re the people that you’re going to war against. So it was like there’s just real isolation. And it’s like it’s a very extreme way to grow up as a child. And so you can come out of that quite warped. But for me, that was all normal. I thought that was normal.
– You told me about your father, but parents, what did you see about parents?
– When I was younger there was a lot of brutality, a little exploitation, just brutal, not not seeing the human being at all. Not seeing the child that’s in the job. Speaking about children who are 8, 9, 10, 12, 14 years old.
– Very young people.
Yeah, that’s exactly right. It was quite brutal. Because I grew up in IMG and the best of the best were there. And a lot of the people that came out of there like made a quarter of French at 15. There were a lot of good players coming out of there.
– What’s the worst thing you’ve seen from parents in those years you were playing tennis?
– Most of the people that I’ve been around have suffered from it to some degree. Some not as bad as others but really it comes down to how grounded the parents are like how gone are they to this dream. And if both of them are, well the kid’s in trouble.
– Your country had the paradigmatic case of Jelena Dokic and her father. You were not the exception.
– it’s a very stereotypical type of tennis parent that, you know, he seems like a tyrant sort of thing. They’re around. They have a propensity towards extreme nature.
– Did you have these conversations with your parents once you decided, I don’t do this anymore?
– Once I stopped? Oh, then it was treated like a sort of death in the family.
– Really?
– Oh, yeah! It’s like each person has their own response to the death. Like, you know, again, it’s been like this 30-year-running tragedy where a lot of people still don’t even really want to acknowledge that it’s happened. It’s a bit like when you go to war. It’s like ‘come back, but don’t talk about it’, it doesn’t happen and it doesn’t happen unless we talk.
– How old were you when you said ‘I stop’?
– 17.
– Did you announce it to your parents? Or how did you do?
– I tried to say to my dad, but I knew that just saying like ‘I don’t want to do it it’ wasn’t going to get me out of it. I had to fake an injury, I had to pretend I was sick injured to be able to get out of it because that was going to be accepted. Just not wanting to do it wasn’t a valid reason. So next thing I’m wobbling around town like this and then all of a sudden my back started hurting. I didn’t know what was real. And so all of these, you know, imaginary issues were then.
– Since then, have you had the chance to talk with your family about it or are things still the same?
– My father and I became friends, because again, once I stopped playing, both of our lives just basically went down. And we had that in common. So we sort of bonded back over that and drank. And it was great. It was really, really good. We sort of became like father and son in a way. Through alcoholism.
– Through alcoholism? That was a little bit unhealthier than tennis.
– It was healthier!
– Healthier?
– Yeah, yeah, absolutely. For us, it was healthier. It was better to drink than to play tennis.

– Is it better to drink than to play tennis?
– Way better. Absolutely. So that connected me with my father. So it was great. Until it wasn’t. Until it was literally killing me and it was killing him.
– Until you started to drink too much.
– Until I was almost basically killed.
– You and your father.
– Yes. He’s in an early dementia ward from, you know, excess, I guess you could say. And I was lucky to not go down as far as him. It was great but it was also killing us.
– Do you still drink?
– No I don’t drink, I don’t drink.
– Was writing this book a healing process?
– Yeah, yeah, it is. It is healing, yeah. Now that I’m releasing it, I feel better. I feel better about releasing it. I didn’t feel great when I was writing it.
– The process of writing must have been painful.
– No, no, I was sort of dissociated.
– Was it?
– It was sort of like I was able to write about myself like a journalist.
– The third category in your book is the one called “the parasites”. Who are they? The agents?
– Not the agents, but the whole federation and stuff, hangers-on people. People that when things are going well they’re up for a good time, and then when things aren’t going well… well, they’re nowhere.
– Back to the Bollettieri experience, how was it?
- I was sent over there to live by myself at 12, and I had this dorm and I was living in this sort of place. People who were signed by IMG had sort of the rule of the roost of the academy, of the place. They could do sort of whatever they wanted, but they were sort of incarcerated. It’s like a compound sort of like in jail. I had the privileges but I was still in jail. A lot of these people signed by IMG were from America, so they would sort of be with their family. They go play tournaments and fly and use this sort of place like a drop-in place. In my case, that was my actual home, so I would spend a lot of the time there alone. I was just left to my own devices from a very young age, and I was having a lot of issues at my home when I was young, and it was surprising that my parents would even allow me to go over there by myself. I was having these episodes that would basically happen at the campus. I would sleepwalk during the night. I think it was wrong.
- Did you end up having a great forehand like anyone who plays in the Bolletieri Academy?
- No, I didn’t.
– How long did you live at the academy?
– I spent from 11 to 17.
- And who was your coach there?
- Who was my coach there? It wasn’t that clean cut. It was really sort of anyone and everyone. It sort of depended on how you were doing. Like I work with Nick a little bit. And it sort of depended on how you were doing. There’s like a pecking order there. And you go, you work.
- Your experience with him, with Bolletieri?
– I liked him, I liked him. He was a good guy. And he was sort of like the face of it as well.
- Which names do you remember practicing with you those years at Bolletieri’s?
- Kei Nishikori, he was la creme de la creme. Nicole Vaidisova, she made the quarterfinals of French Open like at 15. Donald Young, the Williams sisters would come in, and there was Kournikova and Sharapova training. Navratilova, Tommy Haas, Malisse. Lots of people.
– Do you have some pleasure in playing tennis today?
- Not at all. It’s my job, I’m a coach. It’s sort of like going back to an ex-girlfriend. What’s the point of that? There’s no point in catching up.
- It’s your 8 to 5 job, then.
- Yeah, because I was never given an education, so tennis was the only thing.
- If you think back about the very young Todd, did you have any dream that you couldn’t fulfill back then, but now you notice you wanted to be? An engineer, a pilot, a lawyer, a football player...
– No, no, no. It was always tennis for me. There wasn’t really anything else available. It wasn’t even an option. When something’s not an option, it’s hard to even have the idea that that’s a possibility. But while I was having these massive changes, like I would have massive changes in identity. So I’d go from like being a rock and roller to like a rapper to like a wrestler within a week, like dressing differently. And these were just very much identity problems and trying to find my own persona, but never really finding it at all. You see it with a lot of players. They don’t know who they are.

- The main tennis players live in a very unreal world, do you agree?
– That’s right. They travel around doing their hobby, and everyone else sort of takes care of the rest. And then once it’s over it’s complicated, it gets weird.
- You talk like you are a very old guy, but you’re 36. You must have some other dream, you must have the chance to want something else besides tennis. What’s your dream now?
– [silence] Well, I’ve written this show. The TV show was initially the thing. It was called Tennis Parent. And it was about the similar sort of theme done in a more lighthearted way, where it shows sort of the ridiculousness of some of the people and pundits that are within this industry and what shapes and makes a person to be the way they are, like that was seen in the media with Kokkinakis and Kyrgios and Tomic, where everyone’s got an opinion about these people, about whether they’re wankers or they’re, you know, are they just being deprived? So I aim to be able to, I think there’s, I’ve got skin in the game to be able to tell that story. And it annoys me that it’s not, the misrepresentation.

- Any reaction from the powers of tennis about your story? Tennis Australia, the International Tennis Federation?
- No, not really. You know, I’m not a victim and I’m not a survivor, I’m neither of those things. That is just my story and take from it what you want. A lot of other people that I’ve seen and been around have had sort of similar experiences.
– Did you write this book to let people know what can happen?
- That’s it. I don’t have any sort of hope, because I’m not hopeful, I don’t have any hope that something will change. I know what this is. I’m not like an activist, you know? I’m just writing my story.
- You wanted to write this. You needed to write this. That’s it. And you did it.
- That’s exactly it. And if someone gets their hands on it, someone who needs it, which I think a lot of people do, because I think I’m not the only one in this boat, it can do something.