Coelho springs back to form

By Paul Pickering
GLOBETROTTING Endeavour Hills tennis pro Andrew Coelho is hoping to put a frustrating winter behind him after back-to-back wins on the Australian Money Tournament circuit.
The 22-year-old left-hander returned from a three-month injury layoff to win the singles event at Melbourne Park last week, before taking out the singles and doubles crowns at the Waverley Tennis AMT at Doveton Tennis Club over the long weekend.
Coelho, who now plays chiefly on the second-tier Futures and Challenger tours in Europe and America, heralded the local triumph as a homecoming of sorts.
“I haven’t been out here for a long time, but I used to play Saturday morning competitions at Doveton when I was pretty young, so it was a bit like (a home tournament),” he said on Tuesday night.
Coelho’s presence at the tournament was a coup for organisers, and he more than justified his status as the number one seed in the singles and doubles draws.
Despite his lack of match fitness, he breezed through the singles draw and defeated fifth seed Michael Look in Tuesday’s final. He then partnered good mate Marvin Barker to win the doubles final.
The AMT series is, of course, a long way from the glamour and fortune of the ATP Tour, but Coelho is just happy to be back on the court – for now.
His year started promisingly as he and fellow Victorian Joe Sirianni progressed to the third round of the Australian Open doubles. He followed that performance by making the semi-final of the Futures event in Mildura in February.
But, after battling through the American and European summer, he sustained a hip injury in July and decided to come home to recuperate.
The injury lay-off saw his world singles ranking balloon out to 492, down from his career best of 208 last November.
Coelho wasn’t expecting much in his first tournament back last week, but was quietly chuffed with his form.
“Last week was a bit surprising,” he said of the win at Melbourne Park. I actually played pretty well and won comfortably, then this week I thought I played pretty good again, so I was happy. The injury stalled me a little bit, but these two weeks have shown me that I can still play pretty competitively and do well.”
Coelho will play in another AMT event at Melbourne Park this week, before setting himself for the Bendigo International Futures tournament later this month as a springboard into the Australian summer.