The exhibition match between leading Northland tennis player Jackson Bodle and Ari Davis, one of New Zealand's top 18-year-olds, at Thomas Neale Memorial Park, brought Bodle one step closer to reaching the clay courts in the South of France. Bodle and Davis' face-off was part of a huge fund-raising effort forthree Northland tennis prodigies, who on May 25 will be jetting off to France with coach Peter Stenberg to gain an invaluable insight into playing overseas. Bodle, 19, won comfortably on Saturday, 6-3, 6-0, now with Ashley Kitchen, 17, and his younger brother Lachlan, 15, of Kamo, and two players from Whakatane and Rotorua, Bodle will leave the New Zealand winter with their coach for three months of tennis in the European sun. Based in Pezenas, the boys will play two tournaments a week in the surrounding area, between Carcassone and Marseille. In between playing tournaments and training, there will be trips to watch the French Open and also into Spain - the trip of a lifetime for the Kitchen boys, who have not visited Europe before. It will be the fourth such excursion for Bodle, currently based in Auckland and playing for the Blockhouse Bay club. Bodle was in the United States last year for six months, contesting tournaments and training, as well as Germany in 2007, and France and Spain in 2006. The reason behind the trip was to challenge and extend the boys, who have shown a lot of potential recently, giving them overseas competition experience and the chance to meet other international players. At the start of the year, Lachlan Kitchen showed huge promise when he claimed third place in his age-group at the Nationals, while Bodle is climbing higher in the New Zealand's men's singles rankings following his recent success at the Remuera Classic.
