{"id":28325,"date":"2025-04-07T18:34:30","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T18:34:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/josh-ward-hibbert-from-junior-grand-slam-champion-to-basketball-trophy-gatherer\/"},"modified":"2025-04-07T18:34:32","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T18:34:32","slug":"josh-ward-hibbert-from-junior-grand-slam-champion-to-basketball-trophy-gatherer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/josh-ward-hibbert-from-junior-grand-slam-champion-to-basketball-trophy-gatherer\/","title":{"rendered":"Josh Ward-Hibbert: From junior Grand Slam champion to basketball trophy-gatherer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Close friendships were formed as Ward-Hibbert travelled the world playing tennis, and in 2012 he reached the pinnacle as he teamed up with Liam Broady to win the Australian Open junior doubles title.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ward-Hibbert turned professional and won one singles title and 13 doubles titles on the ITF Futures circuit, including five with Broady and four with Lloyd Glasspool, another who is now a regular on the main ATP doubles circuit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But he struggled to progress beyond that, and at 22 he decided to step away from tour life to go to Loughborough University to further his education.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There were a few things that happened in my personal life, and I had a little injury that kept recurring and was not going away how I wanted it to,&#8221; he said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Everything just combined to put me to a tipping point.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Tennis is a super-tough sport, physically and mentally. You are always travelling, you are constantly living out of a suitcase. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;No matter where it is, you have got to live it. It&#8217;s difficult, it&#8217;s very much a lifestyle, 45, 50 weeks of the year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But Ward-Hibbert would not be without his tennis career.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It is an amazing sport. There were so many highs, it taught me so much as a person, and the kind of person I am today is from the journey I had.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;m definitely glad I had that journey. It would be remiss not to say I wish I had got to world number one, but that wasn&#8217;t in my path.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I got to win a Grand Slam with one of my closest friends still to this day. That is a memory I am never going to forget.&#8221; <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/articles\/c62x962xd0po\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Close friendships were formed as Ward-Hibbert travelled the world playing tennis, and in 2012 he reached the pinnacle as he teamed up with Liam Broady to win the Australian Open junior doubles title. Ward-Hibbert turned professional and won one singles title and 13 doubles titles on the ITF Futures circuit, including five with Broady and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28325"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28327,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28325\/revisions\/28327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}