North Vancouver tennis pro Philip Bester will take his final shot at glory this week, playing the Odlum Brown VanOpen at Hollyburn Country Club one last time before retiring from the sport.
Thus will end a career that began with a quintessential athletic creation story of a young child falling in love with a sport and vowing to conquer it. Bester was just five years old when he announced his intentions to his parents. After, that is, they finally let him on the tennis court.
“I was always kept outside the fences on my bicycle because I would cause a lot of commotion,” he said with a laugh. “So finally I just threw this huge tantrum that I wanted to play tennis, and they let me hit some balls on the court.”
That was it, he was hooked.
“The ability kind of came naturally for me and I loved it. I wanted to play all the time, I was competitive right from the start,” he said. “I sat on the bench when I was five and I told my dad that I wanted to be No. 1 in the world one day.”
Early in his career it looked as if Bester might actually make that dream come true. He trained at Hollyburn with his dad Alek as coach and at age 14 was signed to a contract by managing giant IMG Sports and Entertainment and began training at the famous Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida. At age 16 he added to his collection of national titles by winning the Canadian U18 crown while also claiming his first-ever professional match victory. He announced his presence to the world at age 18, making the final of the 2006 Junior French Open. With that he became the first Canadian male ever to make a junior or senior Grand Slam final. An article in the Globe and Mail after the French Open pronounced that Bester was “well on his way to becoming the new face of Canadian tennis.”
The jump to the senior level, however, did not yield the same results. He never made a Grand Slam tournament main draw, and played only 10 ATP World Tour Matches, winning two. He spent most of his career on the lower Challenger and Futures tours, reaching career high world rankings of 225 for singles and 140 for doubles. Constant nagging injuries played a part in holding him back, including numerous stress fractures in his upper and lower body, persistent back problems and a hip injury that required surgery to fix in 2013. The sponsorships and support he earned as a junior eventually dried up, leaving him fighting just to keep the dream alive.
“There was at times financial stress of not knowing if I had enough money to play in the next tournament, or play in a month,” he said. “I was a road warrior who just kept finding solutions and ways to keep going, playing under immense amounts of pressure and persevering in many situations.”
There were, however, many high points along the way as well, many of which came while representing Canada. In 2011 he capped off an incredible comeback for Canada’s Davis Cup team, winning the final match to give the squad a 3-2 win over Ecuador after trailing 0-2. That win, in adverse conditions, helped push Canada back into the Davis Cup elite World Group for the first time since 2004.
“We were in a pretty hostile environment – on Day 1 there were gunshots fired in the crowd,” said Bester. “That fifth match I played with what I later found out was a broken hand. It was just meaningful because it was for more than just me, it was for Canada and for the rest of the guys on the team.”
In 2015 Bester teamed up with Gabriela Dabrowski to win silver in mixed doubles at the Pan Am Games in Toronto, and last year partnered with fellow Canadian Adil Shamasdin for one of the biggest wins of his career, knocking off then world No. 1 player Novak Djokovic and his partner Nenad Zimonjic in doubles at the Rogers Cup.
For nearly a year, however, Bester has been contemplating retirement and the 28-year-old made it official late last month, pinpointing his hometown tournament as his final event. He’s still coming to grips with the thought of taking his final swings.
“There’s days I feel good, there’s days I feel a little uncertain in a sense,” he said. “But I think that’s natural – I’ve been a professional tennis player for 12 years on tour and I’ve been playing tennis since I was five. There are a lot of different emotions that have been surfacing as this has become public knowledge and reality, but deep down I’m really excited for what’s to come and happy with what I’ve learned as a person being a player.”
Bester freely admits that his career didn’t reach the heights he dreamed of when he stormed onto the scene as a five-year-old, but said he’s happy with what the game has given him.
“Life is full of curveballs,” he said with a laugh. “The challenges that I’ve faced with coming back from injuries, finding solutions to keep my career alive, persevering through these moments, it’s really built a lot of character in me which will carry over to whatever I do next in life. … It’s been an interesting journey for me. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve maybe not accomplished everything that I dreamed of accomplishing, but it’s been a great ride for me and I think it’s opened many doors for me in the future of having a very happy, successful, fulfilling life.”
He won’t stray far from the sport though. Bester said he’s already got a few opportunities to choose from, transitioning from tennis player to coach.
“I have a natural passion to make a difference in a person’s life, so I definitely want to stay in tennis and be able to share my knowledge and experience,” he said.
First, however, he’ll have one last rip as a player. The VanOpen runs all week at Hollyburn, and Bester will play in both singles and doubles (the draws are not yet completed – visit vanopen.com for updated schedules and results).
Bester has had a tough go of it at Hollyburn in previous VanOpens, but said it’s a fitting place to play his final tournament.
“It’s always been a tough tournament to play just in terms of handling the pressure that I put on myself as I want to do well in front of friends and family,” he said. “It’s obviously very meaningful and extra special to do well at home, but going into it this time, I’ve done it so many years and this is more now a celebration of the end of my whole career. I’m really happy that I’ll be surrounded by friends and family as I go into the last tournament of my career. It’s a special place to be able to do it, kind of where it all started when I was younger. … I think that being at home at Hollyburn, I think that it will just be great to be there and nothing but good vibes and good memories.”
