GreyHawk Landing tennis player has ace potential

For all the talent five-star athletes have, they still have to deal with pressure. 

Just ask Hayley Roberts. 

Roberts, from GreyHawk Landing, is a five-star tennis player according to the Tennis Recruiting Network. The service ranks Roberts, a sophomore in the Florida Virtual School, as the No. 53 player in the national class of 2025. Roberts has been playing the sport since she was 5, but her game and national exposure has exploded in the last 18 months, when she began training with Lakewood Ranch Country Club's head tennis professional Chris Marquez. 

Photo by Ryan Kohn

The pair have made a lot of progress in that time. Marquez said Roberts, among other qualities, has elite quickness and footwork, allowing her to cover lots of ground and get to shots that would blow past other players.

Roberts, who is 5-foot-8, is also able to use her height to her advantage. Marquez said it gives her more reach and more chances to be explosive versus staying back and letting the ball come to her. 

Marquez said after a lot of hard work, Roberts is now capable of putting on a consistently great performance — in practice, at least. 

Tournaments have been more of a mixed bag lately, both Marquez and Roberts said. The Tennis Recruiting Network has Roberts' record at 37-24 — 13-15 versus five-star and blue-chip players, 24-9 versus everyone else. They are fine marks, but ones Roberts would like to improve. 

It's harder than it looks. As Marquez put it, Roberts used to be the hunter. Now, because of her ranking, she's the hunted. 

"There's a lot of pressure, whether you're playing a lower-ranked opponent (you are expected to beat) or you're in a big tournament and there are rankings and points and pride on the line," Roberts said. "It's a lot. You just want to win so bad." 

As a result, Marquez said a lot of Roberts' training has focused on the mental side of tennis. Marquez said Roberts plays her best when she plays free and aggressive. When she shies away and plays tentative, she loses. 

Part of the pairs' solution to the pressure problem has been Roberts taking more stock of her own emotions. When Roberts hits a string of poor shots and gets upset, she needs to notice that, Marquez said, so she can avoid letting that attitude continue to affect her game. Roberts is a perfectionist, he said. While that trait will help her become great, it also makes emotional adjustments like this difficult to make. 

Roberts said she also needs to push her timidness aside and start translating the new skills she has been acquiring in practice and using them in tournaments, like her forehand inside-out — a forehand shot hit from what would typically be a player's "backhand" side of the court — which Roberts believes can lead to a lot of success, as not many girls tennis players use it. Marquez agrees and called Roberts a natural ball-striker, a trait that is hard to find in young tennis players. The more shots she can master, the more ways she has to exploit an opponent's weaknesses. 

Photo by Ryan Kohn

Logic would dictate that the pressure Roberts feels at a tournament would skyrocket with college coaches in attendance, but thus far, that has not been the case. Marquez said Roberts has a knack for saving her best play for those matches. Though colleges cannot contact Roberts directly until her junior season, schools at her matches include the universities of Tennessee, Kentucky, Arizona, Oklahoma State and South Florida. 

"She wants to put on a good show for them and she always does," Marquez said. "I love that. It shows maturity. She's trusting the work that she's doing in practice. That's big." 

Thanks to her mental training, a corner seems to have been turned for Roberts. At the United States Tennis Association Girls 16 Winter National Championships, held Dec. 28-Jan. 2 in Orlando, Roberts reached the round of 16 before losing to Jane Dunyon of Utah. 

Roberts' natural talent is self-evident to anyone who watches her play — or challenges her. Marquez said Roberts trains with a group of his former trainees, all college tennis players, when they are home on breaks, including Mississippi State grad student Gia Cohen, Rutgers junior Tara Chilton and San Francisco grad student Rita Colyer, among others. 

Marquez said the training sessions are serious, and Roberts has shown she can compete with the more mature players. For Roberts, the sessions have given her a lot of confidence, but they also have become about more than just honing skills. 

"The girls are all so nice, and it makes me look forward to college tennis a lot," Roberts said. "Everyone on your team is like family. It feels like they're my best friends when they come back. I talk to them about my personal life and we joke and go do things together."

Roberts has years to go before her college dream can become reality, but both she and Marquez are confident it will, especially if she can continue to play with physical and mental freedom. 

"She's done great," Marquez said. "She just needs to swing away."