Early Life
I’ve always enjoyed sport – playing, watching, reading and writing about it. As a boy it was an obsession and at 10 I represented South London at football and cricket. In my late teens I played in the English Amateur Snooker Championships.
The headmaster interviewing me as an 11 year old for a place at Alleyn’s School, Dulwich, seemed unimpressed that I wanted to become a professional cricketer. Sense of humour must have prevailed and he let me in. As well as sport the school fostered an interest in chess, music and literature, although the music and English teachers would have curled up in disbelief at my saying that.
I spent school holidays playing in junior tennis tournaments and reached the semi-finals of the national junior championships played at Wimbledon.
Later
In those pre 1968, amateur years, tennis was different from now. There were no ranking points to play for and no prize money. The prize for winning the men’s singles at Wimbledon was a silver cup. We survived on expenses and had such a good time I’m unsure how I managed to play at Wimbledon 6 times. This tennis life of fun is evoked best by Gordon Forbes in his hilarious and lyrical ‘A Handful of Summers’ – surely the best sports book of them all.
The 60s, youth and a freewheeling tennis life left their mark on many. But my old school had done its work, just. An Alleynian epiphany at 16 somehow kept me to the straight and almost narrow. ‘The crow makes wing to the rooky wood,’ in a formal English class, and Beethoven’s Waldstein, played by an end of his tether music teacher in a riotous class, were the words and music that did it. They moved me. Alleyns had come up trumps. There was more to life than balls.
Eventually I moved to Eastbourne to teach tennis and combine it with freelancing as a journalist. Tennis coaching became my main occupation and I enjoyed working with promising young players. A few pupils went on to become top British players. I have been the private coach to 8 British junior champions. I also held a position as a national trainer and was responsible for the leading players under 12 in the country. For two years Tim Henman was in that group. I coach tennis now at the David Lloyd Club, Eastbourne and at Meads L.T.C.
Writing
During my tournament tennis years I wrote a weekly column in the Croydon Advertiser, monthly features for the American magazine World Tennis and the British magazine, Lawn Tennis. I also wrote tennis reports for the national press. When I took up tennis coaching I continued to write features for magazines and newspapers. Not all were about tennis. I now write about anything that interests and inspires me. My work has appeared in The Times, The Sunday Telegraph and The Guardian. Magazines I have contributed to include Country Life, Choice, Maxim, Mens’ Fitness, Father’s Quarterly and Living France.