In which I realise that there will always be times when family are the only ones who will believe in your potential, and that the only way to cure a case of ‘It’ll never happen in Scotland’ is to forge ahead and create your own opportunities.
WHILE JAMIE WAS recovering from the Cambridge experience, I was becoming increasingly aware of the need to set up a base in Scotland from which we could deliver a more meaningful and effective programme. I had been Scottish National Coach for four years now, but I was still finding it very difficult reporting to a largely anonymous board who didn’t understand what I was trying to achieve. Again and again my suggestions and requests were met with a lack of ambition and belief, a sense that no one was really interested – no matter how good our results.
I don’t think anyone at an administrative level really grasped quite how good some of these kids were, that it wasn’t just me blowing my own trumpet about my players or my own kids. We had a proper squad, and a reputation in Europe now, but still my reports were met with a sense of: ‘Well, you would say that, Judy.’ I wanted to grow the national programme but I needed a decent base to really put in the long hours so we could be in charge of our own courts, instead of being beholden to the university and my limited budget. All of us – coaches, players and parents – were prepared to do that, but the powers that be just weren’t committed like we were: at Stirling University all of our training was dictated by availability of courts. Yes, it was called the National Tennis Centre, but we had to book the courts and pay for them like everyone else, and play second fiddle to the University’s own court requirements.
If we wanted to practise on say, Boxing Day, we would be told it was out of the question as the university was closed over Christmas. Fair enough, but this arrangement simply didn’t work for kids who were by now at a national and international level, who had a competition on the 27 December and wanted to prepare properly for it … if only the infrastructure around them would step up and match their level of commitment. I was also starting to suspect that the kids needed a bigger and more varied pool of players around them and to mix with older kids and adults, as learning those social skills is crucial to the life of a serious player.
Just as I was reaching peak frustration, I was offered a fantastic position at a new private sports club called Next Generation in Edinburgh – it was the first of its kind in Scotland and was run and managed by Scott Lloyd, the son of David Lloyd of the eponymous sports club chain. They were a dynamic team and offered me autonomy over the courts and the club tennis programme, as well as a lot more money than I was earning, just when I needed it. I leapt at the opportunity and handed in my notice as National Coach.
My brief was to create a performance academy, a structured programme for the better juniors so that they could be developed to a top-notch level out of this new club, so I set about hiring a team I knew well and could trust. The first key team member was Leon Smith, who had been working with me for about three years on the national squad programme. He was enthusiastic, switched on and had that sense of get-up-and-go that I longed to see a scrap of in most of the senior management I had been dealing with at the time. He had quickly become a valued member of my team on the national squad programme. Andy and Jamie idolised him, the younger kids loved playing with him as they all thought he was super-cool, and I had come to love him like an extra member of the family. I poached two other coaches I knew and trusted, and we set about building a club, a membership, a whole tennis community, based at the Next Generation Club.
It was a dream job at the perfect time and proved to be a huge eye-opener into the commercial tennis world and what could be achieved with a healthy budget and control of the courts. It wasn’t to last though. After about eighteen months, I came back from the British Junior Championships in Bournemouth to discover that the club suddenly had a new after-school programme manager who had already taken it upon himself to change things around. As I soon discovered when I went to book some courts and found that they were now being used for other activities such as, well, trampolining, gymnastics and birthday parties. I don’t think it was a gender thing, or even a hierarchy thing – rather, it was a case of the money being the deciding factor in how the courts were used. But no one had told me.
Big group activities are obviously more lucrative than teaching small groups of kids or adults like I was doing. And that was just the start of the incoming changes. It very quickly became a very different place for me to work: one focused on revenue rather than results. And that wasn’t what I had been pitched. I had always been lucky enough to play and coach tennis for the sake of the sport rather than worrying about the bottom line of a larger business, and even when I did have to manage a budget, I’d found a hundred and one ways to stretch it, whether that meant roping in mates or selling hot dogs to fund the purchase of ping-pong bats. But I had certainly never felt the responsibility to make someone else money. It didn’t sit well with me, when I could see that it was at the expense of the kids’ training and the overall club tennis programme.
So I was very lucky when Tennis Scotland approached me to say that the person who had taken over my role as National Coach had only lasted six months, and to ask me to consider returning to the position. Given that I finally had a choice, I was able to negotiate a pay rise for myself and, crucially, a new budget which meant that I would be able to create opportunities for the players and coaches. More travel, more training centres, more backing. It felt good to return with a more substantial set of promises from the powers that be. It made me hopeful for the future.
A few months after Jamie’s return, Andy followed in his footsteps and headed to Miami for the 1999 Orange Bowl Championships. He had shown limited interest when we’d been there the previous year, being a bit brief on the phone and happy playing with his mates. But when we came home that Christmas, with Jamie clutching the runners-up trophy, talking about how wonderful the tournament was and everything he had done and seen, Andy’s interest soon rocketed.
When Andy went out to Miami, things had been already set up nicely for him by Jamie’s success. He wasn’t heading into the unknown, but was off to the sunshine having heard about it all before, safe in the knowledge that Jamie had done so well, and that there was nothing to fear. Anything was possible.
Indeed it was. This time I didn’t go as captain, but took my mum for the last week as a holiday to say thank you for all of her help over the years. When we arrived, I wasn’t overwhelmed this time; I was excited. I knew the lay of the land and was more relaxed as a result – and I’m sure this rubbed off on Andy, who had already been there a fortnight, having a blast. He immediately picked up on the American positivity that had made such an impression on Jamie, and had the time of his life.
As the week drew to a close, it became clear that Andy was in with a very good chance of winning. I was as nervous as I ever had been as I watched him play that final, but – as has now become a regular habit – I sat alone to watch, as far from my mother as I could. There’s something about the way that she vibrates with every emotion, constantly twittering on about every tiny thing she feels. I find it too stressful, when I am already feeling every frustration and endeavour that the boys are going through on the court. It’s been nearly twenty years now, but I still have to sit alone when they play big matches, trying to keep my expression as neutral as possible as I know how much every gasp or wince impacts on them.
In Andy’s final he was playing the Czech player Tomas Piscacek, and we were watching from a sort of mezzanine patio on the roof of the clubhouse, looking down onto the court. My mother was at one end of the patio and I was sat at the other. The final shot was played – and Andy won! – and as I rose to my feet to applaud him with the rest of the crowd, the sound I was most aware of was an incredible shrieking coming from the other side of the balcony.
‘He’s won! He’s won!’ I could hear my mother yelling as she hurtled towards me.
Oh God, why the big exhibition? I found myself thinking, despite my pride at Andy’s achievement. I guess we never quite grow out of being a little bit embarrassed by our parents …
The presentation took place immediately after the match and it was a moment of enormous pride for me to see Andy win a tournament abroad for the first time. He was beaming with happiness and we were all delighted to see that the winner’s trophy itself was an actual silver bowl full of oranges.
In the hubbub after the prize-giving, while I was waiting to congratulate Andy myself, his opponent’s coach came over to congratulate me, saying that Andy was a very special, very clever player. I thanked him, beaming, and he asked who else I coached.
‘Oh, you won’t know anyone else,’ I said, ‘I just coach in Scotland. What about you?’
‘I’ve been working with Tomas for eighteen months,’ he explained, ‘but before that I spent thirteen years with Jana Navotna.’
Oh.
Only the year before Jana Novotná had won the Ladies’ Singles title at Wimbledon. This guy had nurtured a young player to a Grand Slam title. It was way out of my league. I think that was the first time I paused, accepted how good the boys could actually be, and how I was now reaching a point where my lack of experience and contacts may well start holding them back. I realised with that comment that compared to the other coaches and support teams working with the best kids this age, I knew next to nothing, and knew next to no one.
‘Oh my God, he knows exactly what to do. And I know nothing!’ I mouthed to myself as that coach strolled away with a nonchalant swagger. It was time to up my own game if I was going to give the boys the chances they deserved. But I had no idea what to do. This panic threw me into paroxysms of worry for a good few months. This also coincided with the point in my friends’ lives where we were all so busy that we rarely had time to see each other. Of course, there was the odd big old catch-up every few months, complete with wine and gossip, but by and large I felt rather alone during this time.
I was reluctant to burden my parents with what might seem like my professional anxieties – they’d had their own careers and they didn’t deserve to be lumbered with my worries. It all felt overwhelming, I had no idea what was coming next, professionally or personally, but that winter I resolved not to overthink things. I had to trust my gut, to use my common sense, and to make sure I didn’t panic just because I was heading towards the unknown. I was a grown-up; it was time to get my head down and get on with it.
I knew what the top Under 12s in the world now looked like, as some of my squad were among them, but in order to give them the best shot of climbing to the next rung of the ladder, I had to learn what the best Under 14s in the world looked like, so we could all be ready. I needed to know what I was aiming for and then put the right stepping stones in place. I realised I was going to have to try and invest in myself as a way of investing in the team. I had to learn more by seeing more, and that seeing more meant travelling more. Fair enough, I thought. It was a commitment I was prepared to make.
I worked out that if I could travel more with the GB Under 14 girls, I could see more of the Under 14 players across the board. I could expand my knowledge, and thereby the chances of the squad. For each age group I needed to study the players a few years older and anticipate the next challenges coming their way. It’s the case with so many ambitions: a glance ahead at what’s to come and you’re equipping yourself for the coming battle. So that is what I made it my mission to do: investigate the world of junior Grand Slams, as that is the ultimate junior tennis goal. It was my goal to travel wherever, however I could in my capacity as National Coach. Naively, I hoped that, by now, with not just a couple but a significant handful of good up-and-coming Scottish players at international level, support and funding from sporting bodies might begin to perk up a bit. Far from it.
By the spring of 2000, the need to go and watch a junior Grand Slam tournament was becoming really urgent if I was going to avoid the squad being totally leapfrogged by other nations at the next stage. At this age, boys in particular are growing fast and I had no idea what they’d be facing in the following year or two if any of them made it to one of the major events. The obvious choice was the French Open at Roland Garros as it was the closest distance to travel, and a different playing surface from the more familiar grass courts of Wimbledon. I would be able to observe the best players in the world, familiarise myself with the event, speak to coaches, and take back this valuable knowledge in time to prepare my lot for what was – hopefully – to come.
The LTA had a formal opportunity for coaches to visit the French Open as part of their Coach Education Programme. I was a performance coach, I had players competing internationally, I wanted to learn and I had the determination to do my best for them. So when I was invited to apply for a coach’s pass and sent off my application form, explaining my situation, listing my players and specifying their ages, I felt I was in with a good chance. However, I received a reply saying that this year there had been unprecedented demand for the places, and so the passes had been allocated randomly by ballot. They were sorry to say that I had not been awarded a pass.
Fine, I thought, knowing that my decision to start attending these tournaments had been made already. I’ll go anyway. I scraped together enough money to go for two days, got myself to France and queued up with everyone else for a ground pass. I needed to watch these junior matches. I made my way to an early match where I knew the top seed in the boys singles was playing, a Serbian lad called Janko Tipsarević. He was a fantastic player, and already looked like a man compared to the gangly lads I had back at home. He even had tattoos! The experience was already invaluable, but there was a lot of work to do, I thought to myself as I frantically scribbled notes on Tipsarević’s technique, physicality and ear piercings. Years before I had taken a shorthand course before starting at Edinburgh University. It was especially good for just these moments. And the bonus was that no one could read what I was writing. The spy!
At the end of the set I got up to move to another match. As at Wimbledon, the smaller courts are arranged with banks of seating rising back to back. As I stood, I looked over to the adjacent court. And there, within the crowd directly facing me, I saw the very woman who was in charge of allocating those few precious seats to GB coaches. She was sitting alongside her husband and her children, lanyards and passes around each of their necks. Unbelievable.
I applied for that pass, and I had a really good reason to get it, I thought to myself. So I’m damned if I’m going to let her know I haven’t noticed what she’s done.
‘Bonjour!’ I cried across the court between sets, with a cheery wave.
As I left Roland Garros that day, I made a mental note: If I wanted stuff done, I was going to have to do it myself. At the time, I would wonder if I was seriously mad to keep having this much belief in my little squad and this much ambition for Scottish tennis, but if I had listened to the people over the years who had rolled their eyes and said, ‘Pffft! Scottish tennis?! Grand Slams! It’ll never happen. We don’t do tennis in Scotland’, I would have given up that spring while we were nursing the wounds left by Jamie’s painful experience. But something in me refused to surrender. A quiet voice that could never quite shut up, kept saying: ‘But why not? What is there to stop us? Apart from some rubbish weather and not much money?’
With a determination to keep pushing forwards, things seemed to get a little easier. Jamie settled back into life in Scotland, Andy continued to progress through the latter stages of junior tournaments and I was still working hard with the national squad. I felt as if we were always on the go, with me like Mary Poppins and her carpet bag full of toys and games!
The best, most meaningful work as a coach is done with kids away from the court. When they open up to you when you’re just playing a card game, doing a jigsaw or chatting to them over dinner – that is when you can work out what is motivating them or holding them back and how to help them move forward. It’s much easier to forge a bond away from the balls and the rackets, and that’s why I always drew a line when tennis was done for the day. We would head out for pizza or ice cream all together and just let them enjoy being kids. Every now and again I would get out my book or magazine and lift it up and there would be a little ripple among the gang. A sense of ‘Okay, Judy’s switching off now.’ After all, you’re on duty all day, all night in these situations. You’re more than the coach. You’re the minibus driver, the organiser, the ATM, the surrogate parent, and sometimes the human launderette!
It was such a great couple of years. Jamie came back to tennis in his own time. We were having fun every weekend, and best of all, I really felt as if we were making a tangible difference. The structure was unrecognisable from when I had started in the job. The kids were improving and loving being a part of something. We really were like a big family: the smallest group we ever took was four of us and I think the biggest was about seventeen. That’s a lot of puzzle books, but it’s also a lot of fun.
It was also around this time that I realised that it’s not that easy coaching your own kids. And not that cool being coached by your mum. It is much more important to be the parent than the coach, so I continued to oversee their training and competitive programmes but brought in Leon Smith to deliver most of the on-court work. Happy days.
Perhaps inevitably, Andy eventually outgrew the set-up we had. In February 2002, he was playing against Spain for the GB team, as part of the European Under 16s Championships in Andorra. At that stage, Rafael Nadal was playing for Spain and the two had struck up quite a friendship some years before. Rafa is a year older than Andy, so Andy looked up to him with admiration and curiosity. I guess he saw a template for what was possible.
In the final, there were two singles matches and a doubles match. Andy and Rafa both won their singles so the tie was decided by the doubles, which Spain won. After the presentation of the trophy the boys sloped off to play racquetball – a sort of squash/tennis hybrid played on an indoor court.
I wasn’t in Andorra for that event, but when Andy materialised on the end of the phone later that night, he was talking so loudly and with so much energy that I almost felt as if I were there. It was a long time before the boys had mobile phones so he had called up on a payphone, reversing the charges. He wasn’t one for phoning home that often and my attitude had long been ‘no news is good news’, so when I heard it was him, I suspected nothing more (or less) than a lost wallet or missing passport.
So I took a breath and said, ‘Oh hi, Andy. What’s the matter?’ I shouldn’t have judged him by the standards I had set for myself in Barcelona all those years ago. Within seconds I was holding the receiver a foot from my ear.
‘I’ve been playing racquetball with Rafa,’ he ranted down the phone, ‘and do you know he doesn’t even go to normal school?!’ was the opening gambit. ‘He trains on clay all day in Majorca and he gets to hit with Carlos Moyá and people like that! And what have I got? I’ve got the university, and no one but you and my brother. I want to go to Spain, I need to go to Spain!’ And so it continued. For some time.
He was more excitable than truly angry, but I could sense that there was now genuine frustration in his voice. Rafa had obviously unwittingly painted this amazing picture in his mind of hitting with Carlos Moyá (who was number 1 in the world at the time) in the sun and never having to go to real school.
As a fourteen-year-old who had been in the same place with the same opportunities for almost a decade, compared to Rafa who was playing hours of top-quality tennis per day, getting to hit with the best in the world, Andy now realised what he was missing out on, and Jamie’s awful experience away from home was now sufficiently long enough ago not to feel relevant.
Andy’s refusal to go away to train had long been more about heading down south than actually leaving home. He was now a good few years older than Jamie had been when he had left, but his mantra had never changed: ‘I don’t want to train with the LTA: look what an awful time Jamie had.’ But now Andy had had his eyes opened: there were facilities beyond the UK where he could train.
Secretly, I was quite pleased to hear him shouting like this. I had long known that we would eventually run out of options for him in Scotland – we didn’t have the expertise, the facilities, the sparring partners, and so much else that was needed if he was going to fulfil his potential. But there was no way that I could be the one pushing him to look elsewhere. So thank you, Rafa, you did us a huge favour.
Over the coming months, we agreed to let Andy look at a few schools abroad, and it was quickly clear that the best fit was the Academia Sánchez-Casal, just outside of Barcelona in Spain. Andy already knew a couple of lads who had gone to train there, and he had heard good things. Good things that were more than justified by our visit: it had clay courts, hard courts, a gym, accommodation and an American High School franchise on site, as well as a clubhouse, a football pitch and equestrian centre. Yeah, no wonder he liked it.
What I liked about it was that it wasn’t just an academy for hothousing children – it was a functioning tennis club, too, with adults playing, people having fun playing tennis with each other, and all of the social benefits that go with those two things. I wouldn’t be sending a son to be pushed too hard at the expense of everything else again.
On the second day of our visit, Emilio Sánchez, a former top ten player and co-owner of the academy, asked if he could play a couple of sets with Andy. ‘Of course, whatever you want,’ I said, before heading to the clubhouse with my book so that I didn’t cramp anyone’s style by being the beady-eyed mother on the look-out.
When they returned, Emilio said to Andy, in front of me, ‘Andy, you go and take a shower while I have a talk with your mum,’ and pulled up a chair next to me. ‘Well, that has never happened to me before,’ he said.
My stomach lurched. Andy was such a hothead at this stage, and when he played competitively his temper was at its worst, especially if he was losing. Oh no, I thought, he has behaved really badly. I was convinced something had gone horribly wrong.
When I returned my focus to what Sánchez was actually saying, I realised that he was explaining that they had quickly reached 3–3 in the first set, then it had all changed. ‘It only took him six games to work out how to beat me,’ he said, smiling. ‘He is so clever; it is very rare to find someone so young who both understands the game, and has the variety to play it, to pick you apart, to make you struggle.’
Emilio was now in his late thirties, but had previously been a top ten singles and doubles player, and he had extensive experience of top-class tennis and an eye for strategy. Which Andy had apparently intuitively worked out within six games. I wasn’t quite sure how to respond when Emilio told me that Andy was a special player, a future champion and that they would love to have him at the academy. My voice said thank you, but my brain was fizzing – how on earth were we going to be able to afford this?
The first thing we had to do was work out a costing: how much we would need for a year at the academy, expenses for a whole schedule of competitions and then flights to Barcelona and back several times a year. Luckily the campus was right behind Barcelona airport, almost sharing the same land, so there would be no trains or taxis on landing, but still – airfares were a consideration as he would need to travel, and I was determined that we would all visit regularly. After discussions with the academy and a lot of time at the kitchen table with a notebook and pen, we worked out that we would need about £35,000 per year. That was £35,000 we didn’t have.
Our first obvious port of call was the LTA. It was evident that they didn’t have a suitable training environment for the age and stage that Andy was at now, and they knew it, so perhaps they would fund him elsewhere. We made an appointment with their Head of Performance and Will and I flew down to Stansted on the cheapest flight we could find, and took the train and tube to their London headquarters in Baron’s Court. I can’t remember what time the appointment was, but I do remember the agony of being kept waiting for forty-five minutes, and the panic about possibly missing our train back up to Stansted, and the rebooking of a flight if we missed it. We sat and we sweated.
Eventually we were called in to make our case. I have never been terribly good at asking for anything, but luckily Will did most of the talking. And he did a great job.
We weren’t asking them to fund everything: we just wanted to know if they would be prepared to make a contribution. We explained that we needed £35,000 and reinforced the fact that Andy was by now ranked number 2 or 3 in Europe in his age group. There was not another British player who was even close to that – surely they had to help him?
But they were very reluctant to commit to anything. We were flummoxed. Was it because we were Scottish? Was it because of the experience with Jamie? Was it because I was a national coach? Even bearing in mind all of those things, surely Andy deserved a chance on his own merit? At that point, fifteen years ago, they were an organisation with so little track record of actual success in tennis – Tim Henman was a top 10 player at the time, but he hadn’t been trained through the LTA. Suddenly they had a player who was pitching well above his weight internationally, was prepared to make this huge commitment to the game and … they weren’t sure? But we are a Grand Slam nation, we pleaded, as a country we are punching well below our weight considering we have Wimbledon. We have no one else making an impression like this right now.
After what seemed like endless toing and froing, we were offered £10,000 towards the total cost. I barely remember what I felt as I was so shocked at how little that was compared to the potential budget they had, but I do remember Will, quite rightly, saying, ‘So what you are telling us is that you don’t believe in him?’
‘No, we do believe in him,’ came the answer, ‘but there are no guarantees are there?’
When is there ever a guarantee? How could they reduce this to little more than a numbers game? It was a child’s life and an exceptional chance, and we were left sitting, begging, panicking.
‘If Andy were a footballer at this age, at this level,’ said Will, ‘you lot would be breaking down our door to sign him up.’
He was absolutely right, and I think everyone in the room knew it. But the answer came back, immovable: ‘Ten thousand pounds is the best we can do.’