Chapter 2, The Beginning
Mum had been urging me for a couple of years to let her know if there was anything I wanted to do and she would back me all the way. I used to get upset and say, “I don’t want to do anything.” I was happy just being a kid. She explained she had wanted to be an opera singer when she was younger, but her parents didn’t support her. She would support me if there was anything I wanted to do. She certainly did that for my tennis, working nights as a carer to pay for coaching and equipment, driving me to practice and tournaments by day. One Christmas Eve, after a night-shift, she was so exhausted we couldn’t wake her up. She slept straight through. That was the day my dad bought me my first electric guitar, a second-hand Fender Stratocaster USA, in three tone sunburst with Lace-Sensor pick-ups and a maple neck. The same as the Eric Clapton model, but without his signature on the headstock. It was £350. An expensive Christmas present, even by today’s standards. We were never poor. We just weren’t rich.
It always amazes me how things come and go, people and places. The shop where I got my guitar, close to where Nanny and Grampa lived in Hayes, closed soon afterwards. Not much bigger than a broom cupboard, out of place in amongst the butchers, bakers and launderettes, in a row of shops they call “up-the-top.” Like a portal from a science fiction movie, it gave me what I needed, then disappeared. I played electric guitar when I wasn’t playing tennis.
That Christmas Eve we had spent the whole day out. Before going to the guitar shop, dad had taken us to play tennis at the David Lloyd Club in Heston, not far from Nanny and Grampa’s. At the time it was the only indoor tennis club within a one hour drive of our house. There were no indoor courts near us, or any floodlit tennis courts. In winter, it meant playing tennis after school was impossible, because it was dark outside. These days there are David Lloyd Clubs all over the country, but Heston was the first and only one for many years, financed by tennis champion Chris Evert-Lloyd, who was married to David’s brother John. The only other club in London at that time with indoor courts was Queen’s Club in Baron’s Court. And not just anyone can become a member, it’s exclusive; You have to be proposed by an existing member, and there’s a waiting list. Even guests have to wear all white tennis clothes. It was also where the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) was headquartered.
Back to the start. Mum got me a pair of Dunlop Green Flash tennis shoes and a kids Slazenger aluminium tennis racket. That was cheap. And it gets you started. And you think, tennis is not an expensive game. And then as you go along and improve you need a more expensive racket and more expensive tennis shoes. And you think, this is still affordable. A bit expensive but affordable. And then you improve some more and start to play more often; you enter tournaments, get some tennis coaching, start practicing more seriously; you have to add into the budget for petrol costs for the car to get you around, tournament entry fees, the cost of regular tennis coaching, tennis balls, lots of tennis balls, and the strings in your rackets start breaking regularly, maybe three or four times a week, and you have to buy more rackets so you can play a match and still have one without broken strings by the end of it, and your tennis shoes wear out every couple of weeks, not to mention membership fees of tennis clubs; and before you know it you are spending 10k a year on tennis, that’s each, for me and my sister, in the 80s, and in ten years you’ve spent 200k on tennis. That’s not cheap. That’s nuts. You could buy a couple of Ferraris for that. And you can’t know it at the start. Because it’s cheap at the start. You are like a frog in a pan of cold water with the heat being turned up so gradually, you don’t notice you are being boiled alive. Compare it to the cost of running a family car, compared to the cost of running a formula one car. Half a million pounds in today’s money. “Anyone for Tennis?”
Practicing after school when there is still daylight, is the way to go when you live in the sticks, far from London. Bedfordshire was not awash with tennis facilities. The courts at Linslade Tennis Club were adequate, but had little room behind the baseline. If you weren’t careful you would catch your racket on the back fence. The tarmac had faded grey, the lines were thin and worn, but we made the best of it.
When I say we, I mean me and mum. She was a club player, good enough to feed me forehands and backhands, volleys and smashes. My dad was pretty good too. They were members of Berkhampsted Lawn Tennis Club. The town famous for its Norman Castle where England was signed over to William the Conqueror after the battle of Hastings. We lived in three consecutive houses in Berkhampsted, and moved to Linslade when I was 7. Dad’s friend Hartley, who drove an orange Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, often found parked on the High Street, outside the offices of the Berkhampsted Gazette where he was editor, was a keen club player and had a serve so hard, before each service, he would swish his Head Arthur Ashe racket around while bouncing the ball and jest, “which hospital you would like to go to Jeremy?”
My favourite stroke to practice was the serve, because mum put a can of ribena in the service box, as my target. If I hit the can, I won it, and got to drink it, on the spot. I was a perfectionist with a short temper whenever my shots were off the mark. And I broke thirteen or fourteen rackets over my junior tennis career. There were evergreen conifer trees at the back of one of the courts. One fit of rage ended with me hurling my white David Lloyd branded tennis racket, high into one of the conifer trees, with mum resolving to climb the tree, to retrieve it. My perfectionism led me to break a brand new yellow Volkl racket, that I’d only had for eight days. I play with one now, due to that self inflicted trauma. At Berkhampsted Sports they recommended a Dunlop Max 200G, with a plastic shell, injection moulded with graphite, making it unbreakable. I didn’t get on with it. I preferred rackets I could break.
I had a bad experience with my first coach Adam, a “Fonz” of tennis, whose hair stuck up like the plume on a centurion’s helmet. He walked bolt upright, with an expression on his face like he’d just stepped on a rake. During one of our lessons the heavens opened and as we sheltered from the storm, he flew into a rage about his failed tennis career. All due to a “frozen” shoulder injury. Like a high school football quarterback who never made it to the big leagues, he was bitter. The chip on his shoulder was bigger than his racket bag. Somehow, the way mum supported my dedication to tennis had opened a painful wound. Being stuck there alone with him, while he vented his frustrations on me, was traumatising. The experience left me shaken and I didn’t go back for more.
We found out about a county sift happening at Linslade Tennis Club, with those chosen given county training by Bedfordshire LTA. I took part, but later we heard I had been turned down, because I wasn’t good enough. Unlikely in hindsight, because the following year, I would go on to win the Bedfordshire County Championships. Mum called the head of Beds LTA in protest. Bad idea. My tennis career never recovered from that telephone conversation. The decision to question the authority of an LTA official, followed me wherever I went. From then on, we had the tennis establishment against us.