In which I realise how fast things can change, and that careers will never stop demanding creative responses to individual problems, seeking new answers and different approaches for different people.
THE FINAL STRAW was Andy’s experience at the Australian Open in January 2006. It was the first time that he had played at the tournament, and given that it was only six months on from his first Wimbledon, he was still a new kid on the block, unused to the media, the pressure, and unfamiliar with the vast majority of competitors.
After a spate of run-ins with the media, he was becoming far too guarded. He felt that if he didn’t speak, people picked his appearance apart, and when he did speak they zoomed in on his language, his accent, saying he was grumpy or he had a problem with women.
He was still smarting from an uncomfortable experience with the press corps at the ATP event in Auckland, a fortnight before the Australian Open. The conditions were tough. It was incredibly windy, which affected the ball toss when serving and caused many more breaks of serve than you’d usually find in a men’s match. When asked about all of those breaks in a post-match interview, he had quipped that it had been a bit like a women’s match, where multiple breaks of serve are commonplace. Within hours reports were out saying he’d had a pop at the women’s game. The tension was mounting and a narrative was starting to form in the press. He was getting known for being difficult, so the press waited for him to be difficult, at times even baiting him. And so the trend continued.
Andy’s focus was always on his tennis. He didn’t really understand why this small gang of twenty or thirty journalists should be so important when there was a huge world of players, coaches, industry specialists and of course tennis fans who mattered so much more. But life’s more complicated than that, as he was increasingly finding out – to his cost.
At the Australian Open in 2006, he was scheduled to play on the Tuesday – the day after Tim Henman had lost. He was playing Juan Ignacio Chela, an Argentinian ranked 46 in the world to Andy’s 64. It was not a match that Andy was expected to win. It was potentially winnable, but far from a dead cert. But if he did win, he was due to play Australian superstar Leyton Hewitt, which would have been a huge match and a huge story as Leyton was the home favourite and one of the world’s best at the time.
Andy played and lost, and was subsequently led into the media suite for his required interviews. The tone of the interviews was a little harsh, as there had been a lot of excitement around the prospect of him winning, and it felt like he had ‘let the side down’. The press wanted answers. The most obvious answer was that he had been playing a much more experienced and higher ranked player, but the journalists were pushing, and Andy felt that they were pushing too hard.
‘Look,’ he said – admittedly gruffly, ‘this guy is 46 in the world. I’m 64. I’m only eighteen. This is my first Australian Open and you’re putting too much pressure on me.’
I can remember it as if it were yesterday, as I still have a DVD of that press conference. It is a perfect example of how not to handle a difficult situation. Because at this point the press turned on him, accusing him of blaming them for his defeat.
It’s easy for me to see that he wasn’t trying to blame them for the actual result, but was just trying to call them out for being unrealistic. What he was trying to say was: ‘Don’t write it up as a defeat in an easy first round, because it was never that and I’m still just a kid.’ But that’s not what he actually said, and it’s not the tone in which he said it. And they were a pack of twenty-odd British journalists who had gone out to see the Brits and had been disappointed. They were frustrated, they were looking for a story, and they chose to focus on Andy’s temperament in the absence of anything juicer.
That evening he – thankfully! – took some advice from the media advisor at Tennis Australia, and accepted the opportunity to go back to the press the next day and apologise. He understood that the animosity between them couldn’t be left to fester. And I understood how he’d unintentionally got himself into such a mess. The level of expectation that had sprung up from nowhere over these six months was now at fever pitch, and he was having to learn how to adapt all over again.
Prompted by this, we started to look at other press conferences, to record interviews with people like Andy Roddick who was really great with the press and made it look fun and effortless, or Roger Federer, of course, who is so relaxed that he does interviews in several languages while looking as if he’s having a massage. We tried to analyse how these people spoke, what it was that they were communicating beyond their words, what they chose to say and what made them so at ease. It was simple and obvious: they all had something that Andy didn’t. Experience. And he knew it.
So as he headed to San José for another ATP tournament, he was the most guarded he had ever been. This time, he travelled with a smaller group than normal. Mark Petchey, who had been his personal coach since the previous summer, was unavailable, as we had all agreed that he would not work during his kids’ school holidays. It was just Andy, Kim – who was by now his girlfriend of a few months – and James Auckland, a former British pro who had played doubles with him in the tournament and decided to stay on and support him in the singles final after they lost at the quarter final stage.
In typical Andy style, after a huge low, a period of being knocked down and feeling overwhelmed, he had quietly headed off on his own, regenerated, and come back stronger. It was here that he won his first ever ATP title.
Obviously, it was a long-dreamed-for moment to hear that Andy had won his first ATP men’s title. All those cold winter training sessions, the endless travel and the nights spent staring at the ceiling wondering if remortgaging the house again was really worth it suddenly seemed a thing of the past. Andy had done it! He could win at ATP level and he had done it after a couple of really tough experiences, which would have left others battle-scarred and distracted. That was impressive, and typical of Andy’s stoicism. But the circumstances in which I received that news, and the impact that it had were never part of the dream. In fact, for Jamie especially, they were somewhat nightmarish.
Jamie and I were staying in our usual budget Travelodge during his tournament in Sheffield. I went to sleep the night of Andy’s final match with my phone turned off. As ever, my attitude was, ‘Well, there’s nothing I can do from here anyway, might as well try and get a good night’s sleep.’ On top of that, I was sharing a twin room with Jamie so I didn’t want to wake him before a big match with texts buzzing away or whispered phone calls at three in the morning.
When we woke up, I checked my phone and there was a text from Andy to say that he had beaten Leyton Hewitt in the final. Of course, we were thrilled! I told Jamie when he woke up and we were both absolutely delighted, buzzing for him … but also very aware that Jamie had a big match that day too. I didn’t want to dwell on the news; I wanted him to have his own space to get his head clear and to be as prepared and confident as possible when he stepped out onto the court. Ha, as if! It was he and I alone who cared about that.
As we arrived at the tennis centre in Sheffield, we saw vans of TV crews arriving, which was highly unusual for a tournament of this size. And when we got inside, we quickly spotted that there were cameras being set up around the court. It did not take long for us to work out why: they wanted a story on Andy, and they were going to use Jamie’s appearance to get it. For the entire match, the hum and buzz of the cameras followed Jamie as he tried to play his best. But knowing that the lenses were following him, to get a shot with which to accompany a piece about his younger brother, was – of course! – a horrible distraction. He knew they weren’t interested in him or his match. How can you be the best version of yourself when everyone around you is only using you for comparison? It is an impossible task. And he played terribly.
In the interviews following the match, he was asked repeatedly about Andy, Andy’s success, and Andy’s prospects. He was genuinely thrilled for his brother – he had seen the effort he had made to get there, he had been closer to it than anyone, but he still had the right to be seen on his own terms. That match had been huge for Jamie, but it was now squandered and he was left having to discuss his little brother.
It was an extraordinary day. A uniquely difficult moment in family life. This unit of ours, which had been so close, for so long, was now feeling stretched and pulled apart. It was a taster of what life was going to be like for Jamie from now on. He was horribly torn: he never wanted Andy to do anything other than brilliantly, but understandably he wanted to focus on his own game, and be respected for his own achievements. Worst of all, we had no way of knowing how to deal with this. There were no comparable dynamics in tennis – or certainly none that we knew of. A lot of people compare the boys’ careers to those of the Williams sisters, but they reached the top virtually hand in hand, their ascent almost completely level for years. They didn’t suffer these early bumps, comparisons and difficulties. Once again I found myself wishing there was someone to talk to or a manual on how to deal with these tough situations. Parenting is hard enough, but everything for my boys felt magnified. Jamie must have felt very alone. I know I did. And I know that Andy felt the pressure, too.
It was time to take better control of things to prepare for the grass court season of 2006. It was time to set about making plans: I couldn’t sit around complaining or contemplating – it’s not my style – so I decided to get learning. One of the first things I did was to take a course on communicating with the media. There was nothing to be gained from simply feeling hard done by. Perhaps understanding the situation better would help me to regain some trust in the press, and help Andy relax around them.
By now, I was struggling as a parent to read the coverage Andy was getting. I knew he was a good kid who wanted to work hard and be treated fairly. I also realised he was having to grow up in the public eye and that’s not easy. But as a professional adult whom he still relied on for guidance and comfort, I needed to work out a way around this horrible situation. There seemed to be a stand-off between him and the press. His relationship with the media had deteriorated very quickly. But you can’t fix someone’s behaviour simply by telling them to change. I had as much hope of getting Andy to be more chilled by asking him to simply smile more on court as I did of persuading the media to give him an easier ride just by asking them politely. Sure, I still felt like Andy was a kid, but he was nineteen now, in an adult’s world, and we had to engage with the press on adult terms.
There were a number of female tennis journalists, such as Alix Ramsay and Eleanor Preston, who had kept an eye out for me over the last year or so. They would tip me off if someone was snooping around, looking for a story where there was none, or let me know if someone was planning a piece about the family and scoping around for gossipy interviewees. They were very good to me; they understood the pressure that I was under to behave the ‘right’ way, as well as continuing to look after the family. Perhaps it was because they were women and they could empathise better with this curious attention my support for the boys seemed to attract. And it was Eleanor who suggested that we take this public relations course together, as she was looking to expand her repertoire into player management and event management from a media and PR perspective.
As a newcomer to the media game, I was finding it hard to understand that what I was casually saying to a journalist, while trying to be polite, or answering their question specifically, could end up in print with a completely different tone, different context, being transmitted to the nation. And I knew for sure that Andy was also struggling with this idea that what you say to one individual is effectively what you are saying to the world. The course was bespoke to us. We told them in advance what we wanted to learn and the company tailored the three days to us and us alone. We learned the basics of how the various media outlets operate and how to work with them on things such as image building and damage limitation. Once it was explained to us how journalists are trained and what they are after, we understood better how to manage a productive and positive relationship with them, how to handle difficult questions appropriately, some dos and don’ts of what to say and what not to say under pressure, and what not to talk about … namely football and politics!
It was one of the best decisions I ever made. Learning what I needed to help myself was easily transferrable to Andy’s situation, and I was able to explain various angles to him, helping him to better manage his own responses in future. And the whole experience gave me the confidence to look people in the eye again after a bruising couple of years. It was the beginning of my transformation from someone who was too scared to have tea wearing a pair of jeans, to someone who would happily turn up on Britain’s Got Extra Talent just because I’m a bit nosey about some of the contestants and fancy a look behind the scenes. For Andy and Jamie’s careers it was invaluable; for me, it was transformative.
This sense of empowerment beyond the tennis court was something I needed to build for the escalating business and financial demands that Andy’s recent success brought us. Sure, he had started to win, but he was hardly earning big bucks. We were still incurring massive costs each week, and now, when money did come in from sponsorships and prize money, it created a huge volume of work in terms of tax and accountancy – and most of it was international.
I started to lead a sort of double life at this point; I was no longer just a tennis coach, but someone trying to learn how to manage the life and business of a pro player. Andy had a management company at this point, but players can choose different types of management according to their budget, their ranking, their ambition or personal preference. We were mindful not to hand absolutely everything over to one company. Earlier we had suffered considerably as a result of misplaced trust. It happened at a time when we were vulnerable, and I desperately needed support and guidance in taking the boys and their playing to that next level. I had never felt so out of my depth or so close to losing faith in human nature. My judgement of people was something I had always seen as a strength; how was it now my biggest weakness. Trust is so important in this business, and it took me a long time to recover from this situation. Even now, I find myself cautious about trusting newcomers, wary of their intentions. So different from the easy faith I had in people long ago.
We were working with the Ace Group – a sports management company – who were pretty much a two-man band. We’d chosen this deliberately as it meant Andy was the focus of their efforts, but the disadvantage was that they couldn’t provide all of the services that a bigger group might. This left a lot down to me. I had to get to grips with setting up a website, working out how to do basic accounting and navigating the simplest way to complete tax returns in several different countries. I was doing less and less coaching, and spending more time finding and managing other coaches, physiotherapists, fitness trainers, financial advisors and agents. Suddenly, business, strategy and management were now as much a part of life as the game itself.
There was only one son I was having to do this for though, as Jamie was finding himself in a different situation altogether. While Andy had been having this monumental breakthrough in his career, Jamie had been going through something of a lull. He had returned from training in Paris, where he had been playing the ITF junior circuit and taking part in some men’s Futures tournaments. By early 2005, he had decided to leave his training base in Paris. His coach and two of his training partners had left the academy. He was back in London, sharing a flat with some other players in Southfields near Wimbledon, and training as part of a squad of four with one coach.
But it hadn’t taken long for me to realise that the training wasn’t good enough in that particular arrangement. There was little attention to detail; Jamie was just drifting and starting to get a little dejected. What was keeping his confidence up were his regular wins in doubles. As the year wound to a close, it became clear to me that while his singles level was Futures, he could happily be playing doubles – where his serve-volley game and natural flair were better suited – on the Challenger Tour.
However, as is very often the case, he still saw himself as a singles player. He saw it as more important than doubles, as if to enjoy the victories in doubles matches was somehow an act of surrender. Doing both was making scheduling a nightmare for him though: for each tournament he would have to be onsite in time to play in the qualifying event for the singles, often on the Thursday before the event opens, then stay long enough to compete in the doubles finals the following Saturday. This meant that he would be at tournaments for ten days rather than a week at most, and that he was often needed at the early stages of the next event’s singles qualifying rounds while he was still playing doubles at the previous one.
Sure, there is not as much prize money in doubles, but it was increasingly obvious that his game was far better suited to it. Back in 2006, there was no one in the UK going for an out and out doubles career. He saw it as a result of being a poor second best. I saw it as a massive opportunity. Early that year, I started to look at the careers of successful doubles players, the biggest of whom at the time were the Bryan brothers, American twins who had played together for years. They were obviously very marketable because of this and had carved out a very successful career both on and off the court.
The more I studied the doubles circuit and the way that it was changing to be taken more seriously, the clearer it seemed that there was a real chance for Jamie here – not just to compete at a higher level or to win more matches, but to do it on his own terms, playing to his own strengths. Where Andy has more of the grit and tenacity under pressure – he actively enjoys it when his back is to the wall and fighting his way out of trouble – Jamie was not as confident, and he hadn’t been for years. As I’ve already said, much of this I trace back to him going down south to train at such a young age. But a lot of it is down to the fact that he did not have the key advantage Andy did: an older brother treading the ground before him, making it all look that little bit less terrifying. It wasn’t just his game that was better suited to doubles, but his temperament, too. Having someone alongside him brought the best out in him.
So I put together a sort of presentation to show him that he could make a successful career in doubles. As a Grand Slam nation, GB players can count on a certain number of wild card places at major tournaments prior to Wimbledon. They also have the chance to play in the Davis Cup and earn decent fees for that, as well as building up some exposure at those sorts of events, and working towards getting some decent sponsorship. One day in early 2006, at the Bridge of Allan Tennis Club, near our home, I put my argument to Jamie and Colin Fleming, a Scottish lad a couple of years older than Jamie and his doubles partner at the time. They seemed pretty keen, unflustered by the suggestion, and agreed that they were up for pursuing a career in doubles and looking for a doubles coach. At this point, taking the focus off playing singles seemed like no great hardship, and a chance to excel elsewhere seemed to appeal.
A few weeks later, I was at a Masters event in Monte Carlo with Andy, geekily spending a bit of time watching the practice courts. This had long been one of my favourite ways to indulge myself on tour – checking out how other coaches worked with their charges. I was fascinated to see the drills they used and to observe their body language and how they communicated with their players. I made lots of notes and picked up loads of ideas. I loved a quiet afternoon doing this, and spent a happy couple of hours watching a guy I had never met before working with an Israeli doubles team. I was so impressed with how he was running the session; he demonstrated a great combination of patience, authority and attention to detail. Everyone was completely absorbed in the session. It was run with military precision.
Afterwards, I approached him, introduced myself, and said that I had a young son who I thought could be a great doubles player, and was looking for a coach. ‘Yes, I know Andy,’ he said, as quick as a flash. He seemed a little confused by the suggestion.
‘It’s not Andy,’ I replied. ‘It’s my older son, Jamie. He has a completely different game.’
At this, he was intrigued. He was Louis Cayer, a Canadian coach who had relocated to London three years previously but had – amazingly – never been asked by anyone to work with a British player. He seemed interested in the idea of working with Jamie, but was committed to other players until at least the end of May. He suggested I send a video of one of Jamie’s matches to him, and offered to analyse it, to feed back his thoughts, and give us the best chance to see if they would be a good fit. It seemed like the perfect solution.
What he came back with was very impressive. It was a comprehensive report, with an amazing number of observations. He had looked at the video, freeze-framing bits and drawing lines on the frames to illustrate court positioning – whether they were too far back or not in line with each other, their movements after serves and so on. He made it very visual, very easy to see and to understand what needed to be done. This helped us appreciate his insight as well as his ability to communicate. And the attention to detail was excellent; he had clearly taken a lot of time to make his thoughts as clear as he possibly could. He seemed to have noticed so many things about Jamie’s game that I hadn’t. I have met very few coaches in my life who would go to those lengths for a prospective client, and I liked the way he addressed the problems in hand. Basically, he told us that they were all very simple things to fix, and he had ideas of how to do it, but that while he would like to help out, he couldn’t do anything until the end of May. Then he gave us a breakdown of his costs … He was expensive, but he was a great coach, and I figured that as both he and Jamie were based in London by this point, there would be no expense on accommodation or travel, so we could just about stretch to it – for a while.
I figured out that we could afford about six weeks of his time. As it turned out, the scheduling was perfect as he would step in just in time for the grass season. I found one of the Scottish coaches to work with them, too, as a hitting partner, and also as an opportunity for him to learn as much as possible from a pro like Cayer. It was a change in direction for everyone, a bit of a leap of faith for all of us involved, but then, only six months after the anguish of that match in Sheffield, and only eight weeks after working together, Jamie made the final of an ATP tournament in Los Angeles. This was a fantastic result, and such a fast turnaround! For his confidence, for the validation of the new approach, and to level things out a bit as Andy continued up the singles rankings. Above all, it meant that he was now well out of the Futures level events, where he had been at risk of languishing as a singles player. My big worry had been that he would simply become very good at being average, and never improve enough to make a living from the game. An even bigger worry had been that he would accept that for himself. I knew that he had the skill to be a really great professional tennis player, but unlike Andy who’d not had quite such a bumpy ride, Jamie had been at risk of letting a toxic combination of low confidence and bad circumstance get in his way.
Being able to hit a ball extraordinarily well is not enough to become a top player: you need the mental stamina, the emotional resiliance, and of course the luck and guidance, too. My concern for Jamie had never been that he wasn’t good enough, but whether he could handle the life and business of tennis. The ups and downs, the rough and smooth of professional sport. But now he had matched his skill set to a type of play that suited him. He had been the one to choose that path, and it was starting to work for him. Result! Relief!
My suggestion for him to commit to doubles was a good one, but the real key to Jamie’s success was Louis Cayer, not just the technical and tactical expertise but the psychological impact he made on Jamie’s game. Jamie and Louis have gone on to enjoy a consistent coaching relationship of a kind that Andy has never really had. Players need different influences at different stages of development. It’s unusual to find one coach who can provide everything from teenager to top tenner.
The relationship between player and coach is a delicate one, and one that does need to change over time as the player matures both physically and emotionally and moves up through the various levels of competition. When Andy was still a teenager, Rafa Nadal’s uncle Toni told me that he believed that all coaches need to inspire a mixture of fear and respect in their players, and I believe that he was right – particularly with regards to younger players. You need to be able to convince a young, fit, enthusiastic youth that your greater experience, your emotional insights and your wisdom are worth listening to – that there is a strategy at play, even for the most impatient player, or indeed that psychological hard work is just as valuable as fitness training for the more emotionally volatile player. You need to sell yourself through your actions and achievements, but you also need to inspire that tiny drop of fear. Your player has to want to impress you – to work his butt off for you – every day in training. If they have worked out how to get round you as they would an opponent, or if they think your commitment doesn’t match theirs – your time might be numbered.
Then there are the lifestyle choices that being a coach demands. Sometimes a player can find the perfect coach for them, but they might have a young family and be unprepared for the disruptive lifestyle that following a pro around the world entails. Or they may prefer working with younger players, nurturing them from childhood, or training a small squad of players rather than feeling the pressure of being responsible for one player alone. Perhaps above all, you have to find someone that you can face having dinner with most nights, someone with whom you can shoot the breeze, whose company, advice and even jokes you can enjoy. The pitfalls are almost endless, so any fruitful coaching relationship is to be treasured. Louis is someone who not only made a radical difference to the course of Jamie’s career, but has also gone on to be one of my closest friends. I was even ‘best man’ at his wedding!
It was at this point that the coaching methods for the two boys diverged more than ever before. They have stayed very different ever since.