It’s always a pleasure to meet another Sally, and today I am excited to be welcoming Sally Bradfield as a guest blogger at Aussiereviews. Over to you Sally.
The Genesis 
Hi, My name is Sally Bradfield and I spent many years (try twenty) travelling the globe working in marketing and communications on the professional tennis circuit. Yes, I met and worked with all the household names you can think of: Serena and Venus Williams, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova, Novak Djokovic…
My first real tennis job was a WTA Communications Manager. The WTA stands for Women’s Tennis Association. Watch the movie on Billie Jean King (who I am also proud to know), called ‘Battle of the Sexes’ to understand how the women’s tennis tour began. I remember starting this job and being blown away by being paid to travel around the world, staying at five star hotels, eating room service and watching tennis. I said to a few long term employees – how could you ever get sick of this? Then the real work began. As the meat in the sandwich between getting players, sponsors, fans and tournaments together, the communications team are always fighting an uphill battle. You work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week and get yelled at a lot. But you do meet amazing people, see unbelievable places and watch astonishing athletes at play.
About ten years ago, I gave it all up to settle back in Sydney. I am married to a former professional player, now coach – Nicole Arendt (who is American, but moved here so we could live in the greatest country in the world). I missed tennis and some of the travel. A bit like Hotel California, they kept calling me back. Each year when the tennis came ‘down under,’ I worked at the Sydney tournament, visited my friends at the Australian Open. Every couple of years, we went to Wimbledon. Nicole often played the legends event and we are given special access forever as Nicole’s a member of the Last 8 club (having reached the Wimbledon Doubles Final). We feel very lucky and blessed to be able to keep in contact with the old and new crews, without having to travel full time.
A few years ago, I talked about writing a book about my life on the tennis circuit. I enrolled in and completed a Masters in Creative Writing at Sydney’s UTS. There I started my fictional novel. The first title was ‘Balls in my Face.’ My UTS lecturers hated the title, but I thought it was brilliant. The first draft took my several years and it was way too close to a thinly veiled autobiography. Fun for me and interesting to others, but likely to end up in litigation. At some point, I will write my autobiography, but it will be truthful, rather than hiding under the fiction tag.
As the drafts evolved, the protagonist, Katie Cook, became less Sally Bradfield and more her own person. An amazing thing happened, she started to speak to me. She was her own woman (twenty-eight and full of opinions). She was certain of the way her story should be told. I was not always in agreement. She mostly won!
The tennis characters in the book are all fictional, but the world they live in, is very real. It was important to me that those in the know, felt the book was an accurate depiction of life on the Tour. So far the feedback from those people has been extremely positive, which was really fulfilling. They said it was like ‘reading about my life.’
There have been books about life on the Tour before, but they always felt like they were written by outsiders and they mostly were. I’m proud to have my book stand on its own feet and hopefully entreat people to want to know more about the tennis world. It’s a great place to visit…
You can purchase the Ebook via this link; https://books2read.com/u/bzvzx
My website www.notquite30love.com has more information and links how to buy.
My author Facebook page: https://bit.ly/357v5bs
Instagram: NQ30love
Twitter @sallybradfield
Below is a little more about the book and about me.
Twenty-eight year old Katie Cook lands her dream job in the world of professional tennis.
It was like being invited to the Academy Awards, except they were all wearing branded tracksuits.
Katie finds life in Sydney to be not quite measuring up and makes the move to follow her childhood obsession with professional tennis, running away to join this circus of a world and finding work as a publicist.
Racing around the globe faster than a Contiki tour, creating internet scandals wherever she goes, Katie is seduced by the appearance of glamour and her weakness for bad boys.
She falls for one of the troubled champions and starts a trending relationship.
With an archenemy placing social media bombs in her way and hashtags haunting Katie in her sleep, she navigates her way through a series of social media and love crises.
Katie has some decisions to make. Does she want a hero or a career? Will she end up happily ever after? What does that even mean?
One thing is for sure, she will never schedule an Instagram post again! #Girlscanbeheroestoo.
The story is written by a tennis insider and has been described as The Devil Wears Prada meets the exciting world of professional tennis.
Author Bio
For almost twenty years Sally Bradfield has worked with the who’s who of professional tennis.
She has travelled the globe working as a Communications Manager/publicist for the WTA Tour. She worked alongside Venus and Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, Martina Hingis, Monica Seles, Anna Kournikova and hundreds more.
Subsequently she joined the men’s tour as Brand Manager for the ATP. She ran major events with Roger Federer, Andy Murray, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and many other household names.
Wanting to leave the suitcases and hotels behind, Sally settled back in Australia with her retired tennis champion partner, Nicole Arendt. Together they live in the Blue Mountains in NSW running tennis and fitness businesses.
To find out more visit www.notquite30love.com
Sally also has a Podcast series called No Challenges Remaining.