In which I try to ignore my intuition and regret it almost immediately. No opportunity can come at the cost of a child’s happiness, and having the courage to say no is a lesson once learned, never forgotten.
THE YEAR ENDED on a high, but not all of 1998 went according to plan. Jamie was talent-spotted that January at a tournament in Telford for Under 14s called Teen Tennis. It was a warm-up tournament for a big February event in Tarbes, and saw kids from all over Europe and beyond gather for a bit of match practice before heading to France.
Jamie was spotted by Ian Barclay, a UK-based Australian coach, who had coached Pat Cash when he won Wimbledon in 1987. He was quite an elderly guy – not one of the cool young coaches, but a wise, grandfatherly figure. He was working for the LTA at the time as lead coach at the National Tennis Centre at Bisham Abbey, a residential base for young players who were on the LTA full-time programme. They went to school nearby and received coaching and physical training under the watchful eye of Ian and his team. They were, however, all much older than Jamie who was still not even twelve at this point.
I had met Ian a few times before when the boys had been down to Bisham Abbey for various national camps. Although those camps weren’t run by Ian, he had been around, and was aware of the boys. He made a huge contribution to the boys’ training in offering to analyse videos of their strokes and returning them with training advice. And he was a nice man, who understood that kids just need to be kids sometimes. A kind of grandfatherly figure who could see that these children had needs beyond tennis and that care was of as much value as training drills. I had gone down to observe some of those camps as part of my own job as National Coach, and he had been very helpful in terms of giving me tips about what kids should be working on at certain ages and stages, so I trusted him as a person, not just a coach. When he watched Jamie playing at Teen Tennis that January, he asked me what my plans were for him in the future. I didn’t really have any; I was still making it up as I went along.
He broached the subject of Jamie coming down from Scotland to be based at Bisham Abbey, to train with him. Of course, it was a huge honour that Jamie was even being considered.
But there was a big niggle: Jamie was still very much a child at just twelve. It really was a huge concern for me that if he accepted this LTA-funded place (and not everyone did as it was still a considerable commitment), he wasn’t left on his own, a little boy far away from home.
We made a tentative visit down south to go and look at nearby schools. I still had my doubts, but Ian had promised that he would look after Jamie and would invite him over to his house to check up on him on an emotional level from time to time. He had a wonderful way with kids, and I had absolute faith in him. We took our time to decide. It was a massive, life-changing decision. After some soul-searching, we found a really nice boarding school. It was lovely, near to Bisham Abbey, and somewhere I could just about imagine leaving Jamie to head off on such a big adventure. Jamie was desperate to go because in his little mind he wanted to be a tennis player, and he thought that to be a tennis player you have to leave home and train with special people.
By May that year, we had visited the school again and the decision was made. Jamie would be living amongst a lot of other kids his own age there, so it solved the problem of him being so much younger than the boys training alongside him on the LTA programme at Bisham Abbey. He wasn’t always going to be the youngest, he would have appropriate time and space to develop emotionally as well as to improve his tennis. So we were reasonably confident that this would be a good solution, or at least one worth trying, particularly as the LTA would be funding it as part of his inclusion in their training programme.
Looking back, if I had known then what I know now, I would never have even considered it. What happened over the next few months was one of the most heartbreaking experiences of my life, and certainly one of the most difficult as a mother. Hindsight is everyone’s best friend, but oh how I wish I could have paid a little less attention to the flattery of professionals, and a little more to my raw maternal instincts. Now, whenever parents speak to me about moving house in order to be closer to a tennis opportunity, or remortgaging their home to send their kids away as young as that I say, ‘Absolutely not, they are just too young.’ And I know I am right.
But it is different when it’s happening to you and your child. It is hard not to feel flattered when someone who has recently produced a Wimbledon champion is telling you that your son has enormous ability, has what it takes to make it to the top and simply needs some tailored training. If you’re already feeling a little out of your depth, if you want the very best for your kids, it is all too easy to believe somebody who does, demonstrably, know what it takes. It is as if they have the keys to the magic kingdom and they’re inviting you in, as simple as that. But … it’s never that simple, is it?
Jamie had his bags packed months in advance, and was counting down the days. He was like a puppy – so enthusiastic about more tennis, more play, more of what he enjoyed. I don’t think it’s unusual at that age to be excited if someone offers you a big opportunity to do what you love, but he really was delirious with joy and I was delighted for him. As far as he was concerned it was basically a chance to do his hobby nearly all of the time.
Everything was set up for him to start in September. As the date drew closer we contacted Jamie’s current school and said he wouldn’t be coming back, explaining what he was off to do. At the end of term in June they had a little ceremony for him at the school and explained to the rest of the pupils what he was doing, where he was going and what an incredible opportunity it was. They made a big fuss of him at the school assembly, wished him luck, gave him a card and that was that.
That July, I went down to Bisham Abbey alone as I was due to take a group of Under 14 girls away for two weeks to Germany and it was still the launch post for those trips. While I was there, I made a point of finding the guy who was in charge of setting it all up for Jamie. Communication from the LTA had gone eerily silent. When I spotted him I asked him what was happening with the school for Jamie, as we hadn’t had any paperwork or anything back yet. He said, as casually as could be, ‘Ah, I need to speak to you about that.’
‘Uh huh?’ I replied, as the blood started to chill in my veins.
‘Well,’ he continued, ‘there’s been a change of plan. The LTA have decided that they’re going to close Bisham Abbey as a centre over the next twelve months, so there isn’t any point in Jamie starting in September.’
I looked at him, absolutely dumbfounded. ‘This is the middle of July. We’ve taken our son out of school and set him up to go to this new school because you had promised him a training place down here. Now you’re casually telling me – because I happen to have tracked you down – that there has been a change of plan?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I’m really sorry, I’ve only just found out about it.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ I replied. And I didn’t. He was only telling me because I had cornered him. ‘I just don’t believe you’ve only just found out about it. When were you going to tell me? What are we going to do now? Jamie has had his bag packed since February. The school held a leaving ceremony for him and he’s ready to start.’
Uppermost in my mind I was thinking, How on earth am I going to tell Jamie that this isn’t happening now? But I was doing my best to keep my cool and salvage the situation where possible.
The new strategy was to close Bisham Abbey and to set up seven regional training centres around the country. ‘One of those centres will be in Cambridge,’ he explained, ‘and there will be a place for Jamie there. There is a very good school nearby …’
‘Uh huh?’ I said. ‘And what about Ian Barclay?’ It was Ian’s participation, after all, which had sealed the deal as far as we were concerned.
‘Well, he’ll come up and train with Jamie three times a week.’
This entire arrangement was a far cry from what we had agreed to. I was furious. I was shaking, flabbergasted that they could leave it that late to tell me what was happening. They must have known for a long time by this point: they already had these regional centres set up and ready to go. I was supposed to be leaving in the morning to take the girls on this trip and I didn’t want to let them down, but heard myself saying to him: ‘I feel like walking away and just leaving you to it. I’ll just go home and sort my family out, shall I?’
In the end I agreed to go and do the trip to Germany just for the first week. ‘I need to go home and put things right for my family,’ I said, my heart hammering at the thought of what this would do to my happy little son.
When I came home and we finally told Jamie, he just put his arms on the table, buried his head in his hands and cried his eyes out. It was the worst thing I have ever had to do to one of my children. It absolutely broke his heart. We explained to him about the Cambridge option, and asked him whether he would like to go and look at that. There were one or two boys he knew who were starting there in September, but again, they were a little bit older than him.
So, filled with trepidation, we headed down south again, but this time I felt like there was so much more on the line. We looked at the tennis centre, at the lovely facilities. The school nearby was really fantastic, but the classes were divided differently there – Jamie would have been in the prep school at this place, whereas the other boys he knew would have been in the senior school, living and being taught separately from him. So, as well as being in a different school from the few boys he did know, he was also having to go in at the top of the prep school, which is the hardest time to try and integrate as a new boy. All the friendships there would have been made years ago and I knew it, even if he was prepared to try and brush that aside.
If you’re going to make a decision like this – literally splitting your family in half for months on end – you have to be doing it because the child really, really loves their sport. And Jamie did love the sport. But the key for us agreeing to send him away originally had been the combination of factors: Ian Barclay was a hugely respected coach, but he was also a decent human being and a good substitute for a family member. And three visits a week, if that, was not the same as what we had been promised. Jamie couldn’t see that then, though, and I didn’t have the heart to hold him back. And that was probably my biggest mistake.
Even if Jamie had felt terrible and been horribly nervous about going away to a different, unexpected school, I think he still would have said yes to it because he wanted to be in the system, to play tennis, to be selected. He wanted to be special, to be at the top. I think that running through his mind the whole time was: I want to be a tennis player, I’m not going to be able to do it in Scotland. It’s just my mum and some mates up there, no real opportunities. Particularly now that his eyes had been opened by all of the overseas trips.
So off he went. He was a classic mixture of nerves and excitement, and gave it a good go at first. Andy missed him enormously and even convinced my parents to buy him a dog, Abbie, to keep him company while Jamie was away. But with crushing inevitability it did not take long before the cracks started to show and we could tell that Jamie was miserable at boarding school. It takes time to make friends and integrate into an established group and he didn’t have the time. On top of this, while the school was fantastic and the boarding house was exceptional, the tennis was not. The coach at Cambridge who was put in charge of Jamie’s tuition had just come off the Tour as a professional player, and wasn’t really a coach. His experience was as an adult male player, mixing with others like him, not as a figure communicating and nurturing a twelve-year-old boy. He was very nice but not the right person for that role. You don’t become a good coach overnight; it takes years and years, and it takes a certain type of temperament, not to mention experience, to coach children of that age.
He made some changes to Jamie’s forehand in the first couple of weeks which were totally destabilising. Anybody who knows the first thing about kids can tell you that if you take them away from their comfortable, known environment, from their family and their friends, the last thing you do is mess with their skills in the early stages of that emotional transition. This chap took away a strength from Jamie before Jamie knew him or trusted him. Jamie was selected for the programme because he was told he was talented, then spent the first couple of weeks being made to feel he wasn’t that great after all. At that point tennis was all Jamie had, so far away from his friends and family, and it was as if that was being whipped away from him, too.
Jamie was a nice child, a good boy; he liked being liked and he was too young to question authority. He was never going to say, ‘No way, this is my best shot, screw you,’ and an experienced coach might have recognised he was uncomfortable with so much change so soon, and given him time to settle into the new environment. As a coach you need to build up a relationship with the youngsters in your care: the better you know them as people the more you can influence them as players.
This lack of experience in the coach, combined with the situation at the boarding school was a toxic mixture. Jamie needed time to settle. All the time that he might have spent getting to know the other children, forging friendships or developing a support network was spent playing or training with his coach or a small sparring group.
On top of this, he rarely had time for a proper meal – lunchtime was a packed lunch on the hoof, unable to eat with the others at school and in the evenings he often missed the main meal, too. He missed all the school trips and any sort of bonding experiences. Both the headmaster and the boarding house matron expressed huge concern at the hectic and demanding daily tennis schedule. Despite that three-week trip to Miami and a happy Christmas break at home, after about three or four months he was really struggling.
‘Do you want to come home?’ I would ask when we called.
‘No, no, no. I definitely don’t want to,’ his soft little voice would say.
We would take it in turns – me, his dad, his grandparents, even Andy – to tell him it was okay if he wanted to come home. But he wouldn’t. I could tell how unhappy he was, crying on the phone most nights. We all could, it was devastating. So we took it in turns to go down there and give him a bit of moral support. We’d all go down on the train at different times, just for a day and night to spend a bit of time with him and try to help him through.
January 1999 came round and so did the trip to the Tarbes tournament in France again. I saw Jamie at the Teen Tennis event the week before, and got a chance to watch him play a little in between my responsibilities with the girls’ team. I could tell that little had changed in his well-being, despite a happy Christmas break at home.
When I arrived in Tarbes with the girls, Jamie had already been out there for a couple of days with the boys’ group, but I knew we were designated to share a room once I arrived. My heart just felt lighter when I saw him again. On that first morning I woke up early and lay in silence, staring at the ceiling and wondering how best to help my son. It seemed impossible: I would see him heartbroken either way.
When he woke up, he just rolled over and looked at me with those big sad eyes and said a single word. ‘Mummy.’ Then he reached his hand out to touch mine. I could tell from that huge, lonely smile how happy he was just to be with someone he knew, and all I could think was: Sending him back down there is wrong.
Jamie wouldn’t let go of me all of that week. I could sense how filled with dread he was about going away again. He stayed close to me at all times, which was entirely out of character – normally the boys couldn’t wait to shake me off and do their own thing. When it was time for him to go back to Cambridge and me to go back to Scotland he really got quite upset. We left Tarbes and headed to the airport together and I snapped. Enough.
I just said to the coach, ‘No, he’s coming home with me.’ And I looked at Jamie and said, ‘Enough, you’re coming back with me.’
Again, he just said one word: ‘Okay.’ And that was it.
I bought him a new flight and we headed home to Scotland together. I just had to make the decision for him and once I had, he accepted it without question.
I can’t believe I made such a big mistake that year. And I will never know where the line between confidence and skill lies, and therefore what lasting damage was done to Jamie’s game by that experience. What I do know is that he left for Cambridge a confident, competitive singles player – ranked in the top 3 in Europe for Under 12s along with Rafael Nadal and Richard Gasquet – and he returned with shattered confidence, now only at his best as a doubles player, with someone alongside him on court. Are those things connected? How can I ever have a definitive answer to that? But the change was marked.
When Jamie returned, he went straight back to the same school and all of his old friends, and only one thing changed: he didn’t play tennis for months and months. He just played golf, decompressed in front of the telly, kicked a football around instead. He loved tennis, but what he didn’t like was the life around the sport – it was too much for him, too young. I know that now, I can see it very clearly and I caution others wherever I can to avoid that path. There has to be a balance between sport, education and social life.
When you aren’t experienced, you don’t know that it might turn out like this, or how much is at stake. You are seduced by somebody saying your child is talented and special and you think: ‘Okay, what do I have to do?’ I wanted to give him every opportunity, but I didn’t consider the costs to his well-being carefully enough.
But you live and learn, and I didn’t make the same mistakes with Andy. He was at home throughout this period and saw it all unfold. He missed Jamie a lot, of course he did, but they saw each other a great deal because of playing in the same tournaments. I don’t know whether they discussed it – I think when you’re a little boy you might not open up in that way, or even really understand it at all. What I do know is how upset Andy was to see Jamie so unhappy. He was very aware of how miserable Jamie had been and it had a huge effect on him, seeing first-hand what that sacrifice for the sake of tennis could do. For several years he would repeat the same mantra: ‘I’m never going away from home, look what it did to Jamie.’
Did it last though? Did it hell.