And necessary ones at that

And necessary ones at that.”Since Anna [Kournikova],” says Sears, “it’s gone crazy. There are these men out there old enough to be the girl’s father sending her gifts and letters… my son told me there are fan sites on the internet for Dani that have hate sections about me.” I ask him if it bothers Hantuchova and he says no, she’s just very careful.”There are some nutters out there,” says another top coach. “You can’t generalise; they’ve got different backgrounds, different motivations,” he adds.Yet for young female tennis players, many of them fresh-faced teenagers, there are a few commonly shared issues The first is the presence of parents who act as chaperones. “There are as many personalities in that locker room as there are out in the real world,” he says, nodding towards the players’ lounge at this year’s DFS Classic at the Edgbaston Priory Club in Birmingham.

Tennis is such a fundamental part of their identity, however, that few seem able to contemplate any other life.Yet the British coach Nigel Sears, who trains the 22-year-old Slovakian Daniela Hantuchova, ranked 22nd in the world, warns against seeing the girls as automatons. Instead her life is a constant quest to succeed in a cauldron of competitiveness that makes the Big Brother house look serene. One player, trying to explain the pressure to me, starts an earnest analogy along the lines of writing an important exam every other day, except there’s someone hanging over your shoulder as you write shouting “wrong!” at your every mistake – she then refuses to let me use her name in case her views are seen as a hint of weakness.Life on the professional tennis circuit roughly deconstructs as airport, hit balls, hotel, hit balls, play match, hit balls, airport.. it’s Tuesday so it must be Doha. The majority of women on the World Tennis Association tour live out of a suitcase 45 weeks a year and are seldom in one place for longer than a few days. But, in two weeks’ time, all the excitement and interest will fade and, once again, that same housewife won’t even be able to recall who is Britain’s number one female player (no, it’s not Sue Barker but the equally level-headed Elena Baltacha).
Baltacha, or Bally as she’s known by everyone around her, has a career which like the vast majority of tour professionals, does not revolve round the glamour of Grand Slam tournaments. Even as you read this, a middle-aged housewife in Luton is dusting off her Henman T-shirt and her Union Jack, and is about to join her friend Dorothy for a night in the ticket queue in leafy SW19.

Wimbledon starts tomorrow and once again we will go through our annual romance with tennis. Once we came from well behind to beat France in Paris, though, things fell into place.”We showed some real guts at Stade de France that day, and when you come out of a game like that with a result, it does wonders for your self-belief We will need that kind of belief in the weeks ahead.”. I think we stepped up our performance around the tackle area against Wellington, and while we’ve probably been guilty of failing to go through the phases as we would wish, I believe the continuity will come.”It’s a confidence thing as much as anything, as events proved with Wales in the Six Nations. We should have beaten South Africa and New Zealand in Cardiff last autumn, but came up just short in the psychology department.

I watched Rob as a kid and looked up to him, and it makes me proud to think I’ve made it on to a Lions tour, just as he did.”And New Zealand? How has he found the going thus far? “It’s as physical as it comes, the rugby down here,” he said “But we’re making progress, definitely. “He’s been brilliant in spending time with me, in helping with my game management and tactical appreciation as well as improving my skills. Doesn’t this make Jones something of a turncoat? After all, Llanelli and Swansea are, or at least were in the days before regionalisation, in “ne’er the twain shall meet” territory.”I don’t know about turncoat, but I’m glad he’s around,” Peel said. Interestingly, he spends a good deal of time working with Jones, the Swansea half-back who played so well – and fought so well, if memory serves – in helping the Lions to their watershed victory over the Wallabies in 1989. The boy was on his way.He is no bulldozer of a scrum-half, like Holmes or Edwards Peel is one of the quicksilver breed, like Jones and Howley. “I grew up in the west, I’m steeped in its ways and I always wanted to play for Llanelli I’ve been a Scarlets boy all my life.

I’m not sure I ever wanted to join anyone else, to be honest with you.”And of course, Llanelli wanted him as much as he wanted them. Gareth Jenkins, the long-serving coach at Stradey Park and the unifying force behind the Scarlets, duly secured Peel’s services and had no hesitation in giving him a first-team debut as a 17-year-old. A year or so later, Wales followed suit by playing him against Japan. “We’d heard about him from people down in Wales and asked him up for a trial,” Evans recalled. “His pass was enough for me, but we persuaded him to show us a box-kick anyway It was perfect. I was just in the middle of making him an offer there and then when he said, ‘Hang on, don’t you want me to do it off my left foot too?’ So he did, and it was perfect again.