Serving time for the future

Rachel Dillon, whose move to Paris could result in her becoming the first Irish woman to break onto the world tennis scene. "I changed house. I changed school. I changed language. I changed tennis coach and I changed country in one week. I couldn't call the scores when I arrived," she says.

If you told them cannibalism would give them an edge, they'd be fattening missionaries in the outside courts. Tennis, junior tennis.

"The Russian girls and the girls from Kazakhstan, they're so hungry they'll go through you for a short cut," says Rachel Dillon. Boy, do you believe her.

Dillon has been cutting her teeth in the shark pool. She became a teenager two weeks ago and a tennis professional apprentice the year before when she moved from Donnybrook in Dublin to a north Parisian suburb. She is Young Ireland meets ambitious European, a sacrifice maker.

"There is a huge amount of cheating," says her father Frank. "There is nothing nice in the business, it is very tough. It is not leisure or pleasure. It is work and it is hard work."

A dentist by profession, Frank Dillon has stopped numbing gums in his practice. Instead, he has frozen his career to support his daughter's determination to play on the most glamorous tour in women's sport. And expert eyes believe she can.

French coach Isabelle Demongeot believed in the Irish girl in the summer of 1999. Demongeot, the coach of current world number 16 French star Amelie Mauresmo, saw Dillon then as an 11-year-old.

The former professional phoned the youngster's parents in Dublin. Demongeot wanted Dillon to come play in her team in Paris. The family thought it out and were convinced by the former French professional's trained eye. Their daughter's talent warranted a four-year investment.

"I changed house. I changed school. I changed language. I changed tennis coach and I changed country in one week. I couldn't call the scores when I arrived," she says.

"Physically, my shape wasn't good either. I'm very tall and just skinny. I'd a lot of work to do. Technically, I was good except for my serve, so I've worked hard on those."

Working hard never has been enough for those trying to break through. Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union's collapse has added a sharper bite to the tennis tour scramble, but Dillon has the armoury to hold her own. She even has a temper.

At the apex of her age group in France, her father and coach cannot yet tell whether she will make it as a professional. But she is the only green shoot in what has been a desert for Irish players. Dillon, at 13, is meeting the game head on.

Sean Sorensen and Matt Doyle provided an Irish flourish in the 1980s in main-draw Grand Slam events, but no Irish woman has been able to do it. That fact provides tennis with its own peculiar anomaly.

Golf, snooker and athletics regularly provide competitors in the top 10, but Irish tennis has never had a woman in the top 100. Kelly Liggan is currently the highest-ranked at 234 and Yvonne Doyle lies behind her at 424.

"She is not going to win a WTA tournament for another three, four, five years and even then who knows?" says her father. "Life is short. You get one chance at this. We have decided to give her the chance and if she wants to give up she can. We will not be parents from hell.

"We have tried to take a global view of what we did with Rachel last year. We did the balance sheet, the pros and cons. We were not prepared to risk anything educationally.

"Even now, she is bilingual and is qualified to coach tennis in France. You can't do that unless you've reached a certain classification and she's already surpassed it."

"While we can't guarantee she'll make into professional tennis, I can guarantee that the courage she has displayed in the last year is a pretty sure sign she will be successful at something. It has been a toughening experience, a life-forming experience."

Last season, Rachel played 70 tournament matches, won 52 of them and was beaten 18 times. She reached three semi-finals.

In France, where there are a million registered players, five of their women, Mary Pierce (7), Nathalie Tauziat (10), Julie Halard-Decugis (15), Mauresmo (16) and Sandrine Testud are currently ranked in the top 20. Only the USA with seven players have more.

Between the phone call from Mauresmo's coach and the end of this year, Demongeot faded and Frank Rosseeuw entered the coaching equation. He alone coaches Dillon on a professional basis.

She is weighed and measured every week with training eased off during growth spurts. This season has been a continual string of unmissed training sessions, Dillon the only one on the team with a perfect attendance.

Next season will involve around 75 matches. She will require new shoes every eight weeks and will wear out tennis balls at a rate of £100 a month. It is lonely, but people are watching.

The French Tennis Federation certainly are. They covertly approached the family and intimated that they would cover the costs of her tuition if she then declared for France.

No organisation in Ireland has shown similar prescience, but the notion of turning from green to blue was never entertained. That decision has cost them £25,000 a year. A sponsor? Yes please.

It was Jenny O'Brien who first cupped Dillon's hand around a racket. The former Irish federation cup player and neighbour led her around to Donnybrook Tennis Club at four years old and opened her eyes.

In time, the teacher saw not only a wonderful all-round ability, but an obvious intelligence at work. "She was very bright, very athletic, had very good hands and never gives up. That, you cannot teach," O'Brien says.

Inevitably, her talent out-grew her contemporaries and her ambition went further than amateurism or leisure tennis.

"I kept meeting the same girls all the time in Ireland," says Dillon. "Out of 70 matches in France I've probably replayed the same girl maybe twice.

"In France it doesn't go by age, it is by classification. So I play against people of all ages in tournaments on different surfaces."

"At the beginning, I was losing. I didn't speak a work of French. For the first six months I wasn't settled. But now I've moved up three classifications so it's a good level after one year. I'm happy with it."

Statistically, that means Dillon is in the top three per cent of senior French tennis players. In Ireland, where she has never been beaten by anyone of her own age and where only three matches have ever gone to three sets, she could have basked in a comfort zone.

Instead, by 15 years of age she hopes to be around the top-30 mark in France and by her 16th birthday aims to start attacking the ITF Challengers. She cannot turn professional until she is 16. Nothing, save injury, will compromise the programme.

"I don't have any regrets about the last year and I know that if I ever want to go home I can," she says. "I think what I'm doing is the best way - four hours of practice a day and the rest in school. My education is still very important."

Balanced and single-minded. No need to fatten missionaries. Already her edge, at 13 years of age, is to see the big picture for what it is.