MARTINA HINGIS THE SWISS MISS

In 2005 Martina Hingis decided to make a come-back to professional tennis.  Martina had walked away from tennis in 2002 after a career that saw her rise to number 1 in the rankings and stay there for a total of 206 weeks. She captured 15 Grand Slam titles which included 5 singles, 9 women’s doubles and 1 mixed doubles titles.

Martina’s first match back was going to be the Pattaya Women’s Open, held annually in the seaside resort town of Pattaya, Thailand.  The tournament is owned and run by an old friend of mine Geoffrey Rowe.  Geoffrey has been running women’s events in Thailand for many years and Thai tennis owes him a huge debt of thanks.  It was his wild card into the Pattaya Women’s Open that gave Tamarine Tanasugarn her big opportunity to break into the WTA Tour.  Ironically “Tami” under-performed in Pattaya for many years after her break through there, perhaps due to the pressure of playing in front of her Thai fans.

Each year Geoffrey asked me to help with sparring partners for the women participants.  Hingis was scheduled to arrive into Pattaya 10 days early in order to prepare. 

I took two male players with me to Pattaya, Alex Korch, a Canadian who had been training with me for the past few months, and Anuwat Dalodom, a Thai player who was in his last year as a junior.

The first training session certainly made it clear this was not going to be like any other training session we had done before.  There were television crews all the way from Europe filming her every move. Throughout the week we changed courts often and everywhere we went in Pattaya there were crowds of spectators watching our practise. 

I had also allowed my daughter, Isabella, to sit and watch at courtside. Early into the practice Isabella had made a noise that drew the attention of Martina’s mother Melanie. Melanie Molitorova was on-court for every session and she made it clear that there was to be no distractions at courtside during practice sessions. 

On-court Martina was the consummate professional, focused and hard working.  It was a great opportunity for me to see her game up close and to talk to her about her game.  It was obvious that Martina’s mother had a big part to play in getting her to the top.

Martina was drawn to play the German, Marlene Weingartner in a first round evening match of the tournament and a capacity crowd gathered to watch.  

When the match started Martina was clearly the better player and raced away to a handy lead in the first set.  What happened next was one of the most bizarre incidents I have ever witnessed in my many years of watching tennis.  

During a point Weingartner popped up a high defensive lob and Martina hit a confident smash to finish the point.  However the smash hit the courtside scoreboard, sending the metal letters and numbers flying in all directions.  

Play stopped while the young Thai ball-boy replaced the metal plates on which the letters are painted.  Unfortunately the ball boy began struggling with the surname Weingartner and made several failed attempts to get the name right, much to the amusement of the large crowd.  By the time the ball-boy had made his fifth attempt at Weingartner  (without success), the crowd were hooting with laughter.

The only person not laughing was Marlene Weingartner.  She was being beaten badly in the match by Martina Hingis and now even her name was receiving ridicule from the crowd. She must have felt very disrespected!

When the match finally resumed Weingartner began to go for her shots.  She was hitting everything as hard as she could and everything was going in.  She seemed to have overcome her slow, hesitant start and was now playing like someone who not only thought she was worthy to be on the same court as Martine, but should also win the match!

Marlene Weingartner went on to win the set and the match thanks to some old fashioned controlled aggressive anger.  The Hingis come-back had suffered a major set back.

Despite her loss in the Pattaya Women’s Open Hingis did go on to win 3 more singles titles before retiring again a few years later.  Alex, Anuwat and I were privileged to spend time with her on and off court during her time in Pattaya. 

THE TIN MAN AND TENNIS ON MAUI

A swim and lunch between lessons on Maui, HI 1986

One of my favorite teaching experiences was the time I taught on Maui in 1986.  There is something magical about Maui.  I was based at The Royal Lahaina Hotel, an older, well established property that had a superb tennis facility, including 7 hard courts and a centre court.  The main hotel building was situated down near the beach, with the tennis courts set back towards the main road.  As the “new boy” at the resort I worked hard with the few students that took lessons in the beginning and within a short time as that number grew, I was comfortable with the number of lessons that came my way and began to explore the island more.

After morning sessions I would join another pro from the resort and go snorkeling around the rocks and boats moored in the picturesque bays.  In the evenings we would do the rounds of the hotel nightclubs.  I watched as the other tennis pros would engage in conversation with the young single women and produce their business cards stating that they were the Tennis Pro at a nearby resort.  This inevitably had a positive effect on the young ladies!

This time spent at The Royal Lahaina during my early days as a tennis professional was invaluable. It gave me a chance to gain experience and to hone my skills on a wide variety of students.  I got to observe more experienced professionals working with players and watched how they analyzed each player and the drills they used to work on solutions. 

One day the word went out that Dick Sargent and his wife were arriving into the resort and that they usually liked to play some tennis during their previous stays.  Dick had been Peter Ueberroth’s right hand man during the organization and running of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics .

After a few days of tennis at the resort Dick called two friends back in LA to join him on Maui for tennis.  I was given the job of coaching the new guests during their stay.  Jack Haley Junior was a Director and Producer from Hollywood and his father, also named Jack Haley, had played the part of the Tin Man in the iconic movie “The Wizard of Oz”. I was told the lesson had to be tailored so that it didn’t involve too much movement as both the Haley’s were part time players at best.

I decided to work with them on developing feel for contact. After a short warm-up to establish their level I began by feeding balls to them and instructing them to either hit the ball late or early.   Once a player has felt the two extreme contact points of late and early, everything in-between is easier. They have an enhanced awareness of how to direct the ball down the line and crosscourt. It was still tough getting the results I was looking for but I put that down to their inexperience.

I felt the lesson went well but the next day I was called to the office of the Head Pro, Sandy Hastings, and asked what I had worked on with the Haley’s?  Sandy had joined the Haley’s for dinner the night before and had asked them how the lesson with Paul had gone.  It seems they were delighted and had nothing but praise for the lesson.  There was however one thing that had confused them at the time… I had kept asking them to hit the ball lighter.  Lighter, lighter I kept repeating.  It suddenly dawned on me that while I had been asking them to hit the ball LATER, my Kiwi accent had sounded to them like I was asking them to hit LIGHTER!

I was the butt of many jokes around the hotel for the remainder of my stay on Maui but I took it in good spirits and still fondly remember my lesson with the son of the Tin Man and my time on Maui.

TUTU FROM ASSAM, INDIA

Anirban Baruah playing at Wimbledon 1993

Anirban Baruah was a member of the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Scheme (BAT) back in the 1990’s.  His nickname was Tutu and when I arrived in Madras in 1990 to coach the team he had already been in the team for one year. Tutu was very focused on being a great player and at 15 years old had already gained 5 computer points on the men’s rankings.  Another extremely dedicated player in the team at that time was Leander Paes who is still a top ranked doubles player today.  Together Tutu and Leander would wake at 3:30am and go through a routine of sit-ups and press-ups by candle light, after which they would  return to bed for a brief sleep, before waking again for morning practice at 5:30am.

Tutu had many quirks that made him unique.  He would not eat on Tuesdays, something that caused him physical problems during our training.  But nothing would stop him from giving 100% in every practice session and he was one of the hardest working players I have ever coached. At one tournament in Brunei, Tutu had a particularly long match at the hottest time of the day.  After the match we were walking to the bus for the ride home when Tutu began cramping.  His whole body was locked in a terrible knot and stayed that way for several hours.

This work ethic and determination paid off.  Tutu began to do very well in the ITF tournaments throughout Asia and eventually reached a ranking of 25 in the world.  This meant he could compete in Grand Slams and the first Grand Slam he played was the Australian Open. I was a bit disappointed that he lost in the first round that year and when he returned I asked him what had happened.  He replied that his opponent was very good and began to describe his opponent as a left hander with a pony tail.  He had played Marcelo Rios in the first round but I hadn’t heard of Rios at that time and bluntly told Tutu that in the future he needed to find a way to win.

Our relationship became very close.  I was able to give Tutu tactics for matches knowing that Tutu would follow them to the letter.  A well known story around the junior circuit during that time concerned an ITF trip we both made to Singapore.  After a match I asked Tutu to go for a run on the running track next to the tennis complex.  Much later, when it was time to leave the courts I couldn’t find Tutu.  I looked everywhere and eventually went across to the running track to see if he was still there.  With much effort I was able to spot him still running around the track in the darkness.  I should have known that if I asked Tutu to run I would need to also tell him to stop!

He later gained a tennis scholarship and has since settled in the U.S.  He still calls me from time to time and we talk about our trips together and the matches he played. Tutu was one of those special players whose commitment and willingness to improve inspired me to be a better coach.

INTREPID & TENNIS WITH THE KING OF THAILAND

I had turned up early in the morning at the Siam Inter-Continental partly because I wanted to be mentally prepared before starting the Volvo Tennis Clinic and partly because the gardens at the back of the hotel were a peaceful oasis in the heart of Bangkok.  This morning seemed like all the others, but I wasn’t to know that it had the potential to be a life changer.

On this particular morning I was approached by an elderly foreign man who I had noticed watching the clinics with great interest each morning.  He was a guest in the hotel and we quickly struck up a conversation.  He explained that he was in Thailand as a guest of the King of Thailand and was gathering information in preparation to write a book on the Kings many projects throughout Thailand. He explained that he would usually stay in the palace grounds whenever he visited Thailand as a guest of the King and Queen but on this occasion was staying at the hotel.   

The man’s name was William Stevenson and he had already written several very successful books, the most well known of them being “A Man Called Intrepid” which was published in 1976 and was later made into a movie of the same name. I also met his wife Monika Jensen-Stevenson a former producer of the CBS current affairs television program “60 Minutes”. 

Each morning we would talk, either before the clinic started or after I had finished and each evening he would have dinner with the King and Queen of Thailand.  One morning he said that he had mentioned my tennis clinics to the King the previous evening and that the King was very interested in our project that took tennis to hundreds of Thai children each year.  Then, almost as an afterthought he asked me if I would be interested in hitting some balls with the King!  If you have ever visited Thailand you would know that the King of Thailand is treated with enormous respect and has an almost god-like stature throughout the country.  I think my reply was something like “you tell the King that if he wants to hit some balls I’ll be there”.  That day I floated home in a daze, William Stevenson was going to ask the King if he wanted to hit balls with me in the Palace!

The next morning William Stevenson was down at the courts early. As we talked I waited for a hint as to whether the topic of me hitting with the King had been mentioned at dinner the previous evening.  It had, and the King wanted to thank me for the offer but had to follow Palace protocol which made it virtually impossible for him to have direct contact with someone from outside the Palace.

Although I never got the opportunity to meet the King on a tennis court, William Stevenson had made sure that he was aware of whom I was and the work I was doing.  I was very grateful to have met William and to be the topic of conversation at the Kings dinning table for a short time.

THE ADVENTURES OF AN ALIEN IN CHINA: 1988

 In 1988 China was a very different place to what you encounter today.  Many mainland Chinese had never seen a foreign person before and merely walking the street created a minor public disturbance.  I was invited to coach the Chinese National Junior Team in 1988 and the program required me to train a selected group of 4 boys and 4 girls within China, and later take them to ITF tournaments in Jakarta, Hong Kong and finish back in China.

I trained the players for 4 weeks just a few miles inside the border from Macao.  Two wealthy Hong Kong businessmen had built a golf course on the outskirts of Zhongshan and we trained on the tennis courts at the Zhongshan Hotsprings Resort. 

The players also traveled to Wuhan and represented their provinces over one week of competition.  I traveled with them and watched them compete against many of the best players in China.  I had to stay in a separate hotel and walked to the courts each day.  Those short walks to the courts would attract a group of followers, sometimes as many as 10 people.  On one occasion I had to enter an electrical shop to escape the followers.  It was a little intimidating when the followers came into the shop also!

For someone like me who likes their privacy China back then was tough.  The team and I had traveled to Guangzhou and arrived after midnight.  We stayed in what seemed like an old university, very much like Harry Potters’ Hogwarts School.  In the morning we came down to the main dinning hall for breakfast and there must have been 300 athletes from a variety of sports all seated at long tables.  As soon as I came into the hall everyone stopped eating.  Every head turned to look at the strange foreigner. When I sat down people on the far side of the hall began to stand in order to get a better view.  I had only just begun to master eating with chopsticks and I was really put to the test that morning under the watchful eye of those Chinese athletes.

I was sitting outside a train station during a break on a trip back from Wuhan when I felt someone watching me.  I looked up from my book at a mother and her small son watching me intently. The small boy was holding a can of Coke.  Suddenly, and without warning the child threw the can at me, hitting me on the shoulder.  I looked at the mother, waiting for her reaction.  None came; I was the monkey at the zoo!

When we toured to Jakarta and Hong Kong we created quite a stir within the local Chinese communities in each city. Many of the elderly Chinese businessmen who had fled China when they were young would invite us to dinner in the evenings where we had to endure 10 course meals.  Eventually I had to decline these invitations as the players where beginning to gain weight from those dinners and the “all you can eat” buffets at our hotel we were staying.

During our ITF tour a Chinese government official was sent with us to make sure the players didn’t defect.  He would hand out the passports to players before going through immigration, and collected them again on the other side.  One day during our stay in Jakarta he disappeared for 8 hours, nobody knew where he had gone or when he would be back.  Late in the evening he returned to the hotel, obviously distressed and looking as if he had been walking the whole day.  I’m sure he had attempted to defect himself but after hours of walking had realized it wasn’t going to be that easy.

I really enjoyed my experience with the Chinese team and can look back with pride that I was one of the first overseas coaches of any sport to have the opportunity to work there.  Within the next 20 years China will be a real force on the professional tennis scene and I will have been part of the early development.

NONG AND THE DELICIOUS CURRY PUFFS

“Nong” was a Thai boy named Anuwat Dalodom and he trained and traveled to tournaments with me for two years.  Nong (Pictured wearing cap) came from a well to do family, which in Thailand meant that he would be pampered and would not have to do much for himself.  However he had the biggest, most generous heart and we became very close.

Its worth noting that in Nongs training group there were 4 players whose names were Nong, Dong, Dton and Dtong which, when pronounced correctly in Thai also meant I had to use 4  different tones.  If that wasn’t tough enough for a foreigner Dton and Dtong were identical twins!

Nong also became a very good player. He had an ITF Junior world ranking of 74, was tall for a Thai and had a calm disposition which helped him under pressure.  When Martina Hingis decided to make her comeback to tennis after two years in retirement, her first tournament was in Pattaya, Thailand.  For about 10 days before the tournament Nong and I helped her prepare.  We practiced morning and evening and Nong was the perfect sparring partner, hardly missing a ball and feeding her a consistent pace throughout.

On trips Nong would pack his tennis clothes and equipment but inevitably there would be one bag full of snacks.  This snack bag would contain cartons of dry noodles and packets of chewy dried squid strips.  Nong could live for weeks on noodles and “Squidy” and finding him sitting on his bed bent over a cup of steaming hot noodles was common. He also had a curious habit of taking his mouth to the fork rather than fork to his mouth that I could never correct.

At one tournament in New Delhi, India it was winter time.  The sky in the mornings would be clear, but with the sun only just making it over the distant buildings, temperatures before the matches started were as low as 9 degrees Celsius.  Many of the competitors would assemble near the courts in the morning before the matches, often drinking a hot cup of tea just to keep warm.  Nong and I were staying in the accommodation attached to the stadium so it was a short walk to reach the courts.  On the first morning I had arrived at the courts early and when Nong eventually came up the pathway to the courts I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  Nong had just showered and his hair was still dripping wet.  He was wearing a light T-shirt, shorts and sandals, hardly suitable for winter mornings!  As we stood together the cold would begin to counter that warm feeling you have after a hot shower and within a short time Nongs’ teeth would be chattering and his lips trembling uncontrollably.  Each morning I would warn him of the risk of catching a cold but he would never listen.

He had started to really enjoy the curry puffs at the small canteen under the stands.  They tasted great and Nong would eat 3-4 curry puffs each morning.  One morning I was waiting near the courts when I noticed an old bicycle propped against a tree. The bicycle had two grubby satchels slung over the back which caught my attention.  To my horror I saw that the satchels contained Nongs Curry Puffs, all jammed together and wrapped individually in a small piece of waxed paper.  The bicycle obviously made its way through the streets of Delhi each morning, through the dust and exhaust fumes, all the way to the tennis stadium… and to Nong.

When Nong arrived that morning I asked him to take a peep inside the satchels on the bicycle and after seeing his beloved Curry Puffs in that condition he never had another Curry Puff on that trip or any subsequent trips. 

THE KILLER CALLED DOI SUTHEP: CHIANG MAI

Running up Doi Suthep Mountain with the Thai Davis Cup Team

Whenever the Thai tennis teams trained for an important event, we often traveled to the northern Thai province of Chiang Mai.  It helped to focus the players by getting away from the distractions of Bangkok and was also ideal because of the opportunity to run up Doi Suthep, the mountain that overlooks Chiang Mai.  It’s a daunting run but always meant that my players were in the best possible shape when competition time came around.

Apart from the regular on-court sessions in Chiang Mai we would conduct an early morning run before breakfast, either a lap of the city or a 5k run part way up Doi Suthep. These morning runs were always competitive and although I would be first on the runs at the beginning of our stints in Chiang Mai, soon the players would be running past me and I would be finishing back in the pack!

Running Doi Suthep was one of the toughest runs I have ever done.  Marina Beach in Chennai, India was difficult because of the length of the beach and the soft sand that made it difficult to get a good footing, but Doi Suthep was tougher.  As you climbed higher up Doi Suthep the air became thinner and the incline steeper.  It was every bit as much a test of character as it was a test of fitness.

I can honestly say that I remember my runs in the various countries I visited with better recall than the matches played there. While in Tel Aviv, Israel I went running through the streets with a woman I was coaching on the tour.  We eventually got lost and as darkness began to fall she began to panic, fearing that we would be stranded miles from our hotel with no way to find our way back. After many wrong turns and numerous stops to ask for directions we eventually did make it back! 

While I was still playing competitive tennis I had a regular Sunday run from the township of Bluff at the southern most tip of New Zealand, to Invercargill.  Someone would drive me to Bluff on a Sunday morning and I would run the 15 miles back home. It seemed to always be either cold, wet or windy, and often all three conditions on the same day was the norm. 

I must have run around Lumpini Park in the centre of Bangkok several hundred times.  It was never boring as the thousands of people in the park kept you motivated with their running styles, unusual running attire and crazy warm up routines.  You had to plan your run so that you finished before 8:00am or started after 6:00pm so that the Thai National Anthem didn’t break your run. The whole park would stand still in respect for the 2-3 minutes and then snap back into action once the music had finished. This ritual is repeated at the same time in parks and government buildings every day throughout Thailand.

But for sheer difficulty Doi Suthep was the toughest. I’m glad I don’t have to do that run anymore.

MY FIRST TRIP TO LONDON 1979

Back in 1979 I had several interests that kept me going.  Tennis of course was my priority but art was a close second.  I was painting oils well enough to be accepted at exhibitions in my province and had exhibited several times.  I was also very keen on learning about the great masters and had a library of books on art which kept me well informed.  I was able to identify artists at a glance and tell the school of painting they belonged to and I still retain that knowledge until today.

So keen was my interest in painting that I decided to travel to England and visit the major galleries in London.  So, during Christmas 1979 I set out for Europe on a flight that would take me first to LA, and onto London.

I spent two nights in LA and stayed at a hotel across the road from the Forum, home of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team.  It was also overlooking Hollywood Park Raceway (horse racing).  I think it was the first night there that I went across the road to watch the Lakers play the Portland Trail Blazers.  I don’t remember much about the game, I was so far up in the cheap seats that the court was the size of a matchbox; however the goings on around me were enough to entertain.  I do know that the Lakers at that time included Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Magic Johnson

The flight across the Atlantic from LA took the regulation time but by the time the plane got near London’s Heathrow Airport we were told that snow had created a backlog of flights and we had to divert up the Scotland, eventually landing at Penrith Airport and sitting on the runway for close to 3 hours.  Three hours doesn’t sound that much time but coming on the end of a flight from LA most of the passengers were exhausted.  Finally we were given the all clear to take off for London’s Heathrow and once we arrived still had to circle for quite sometime.  The details are fuzzy now, probably because of my tired state at the time but there then came another 3-4 hours of waiting for our bags which according to the airport authorities were delayed because the baggage compartment on the plane was frozen and couldn’t be opened.

When the bags were finally in my hands the next problem was finding transportation into the city, as all transportation was closed due to the weather.  There were no trains running and with the backlog of people trying to get into London from the airport I was in trouble. 

Finally I was able to jump into a private van commuting people into London for cash.  I already had a hotel booking before I left New Zealand and the guy seemed to know where the hotel was.  At last we arrived at the hotel, I paid the van driver and wearily walked up the steps to the front door only to see a notice taped to the window announcing that they had changed address!  My night was just beginning.

I remember standing at the top of the stairs, snow was softly falling and of course it was bitterly cold.  The body however seems to have reserves for times like this and I felt a charge of energy run through my body as I decided to find the new address given on the door and walk through London to find it.  Hell, I was young and this was an adventure!

With the help of my trusty map of London I began the journey and quickly realized that even if I wanted to hail a cab they were all busy taking people to New Years Eve parties and, I imagined, warm homes where their families were waiting.  It soon became apparent that I needed to break my journey in half and try to find the hotel the next day.  For tonight I needed rest badly and started going into every hotel I passed.  Every hotel was full; I couldn’t have landed in London on a worst night!  Finally one hotel took pity on me, the lady behind the counter obviously saw I was in a state, after all I had been on a plane for 33 hours continuously and then spent several more hours getting into London and walking the streets.  I must have looked a sight!

She told me they had one room that was under repair, a window was broken and hadn’t been fixed yet.  I was keen to sleep and convinced her that the room sounded fantastic.  That night I remember turning the TV on and watching a few minutes of England celebrating the New Year, a refreshing breeze swirling over the bed (and the odd snow flake).  When I woke in the morning the TV was still on and the room was even colder than ever but I was in London and my adventure had just begun.  I couldn’t wait!

STORIES AS A DAVIS CUP CAPTAIN

As a tennis coach there can be few experiences that equal sitting in the court as a Davis Cup Captain. You’re an integral part of the drama and at the core of the excitement is the fact that you are communicating directly with the player and therefore participating in the match.

The conditions we experienced in the different countries varied greatly. We were drawn to play Kuwait in an early round of the 1990 Competition during the time of Ramadan, a month of fasting for Muslims around the world.  During the daylight hours you are expected to abstain from drinking and eating which would have been fine if we didn’t have to play the best of five sets in the hot desert sun.  The tie was broadcast locally live on TV and during the changeovers the camera would discreetly pan away from the players and into the crowd, allowing players from both countries to drink water! The timing of our return home was fortunately two weeks before Kuwait was invaded by neighboring Iraq, or we may have been trapped there during the hostilities.

In Iran one year the Thai team was jogging around the tennis complex before a practice session when a horrified grounds man came running to tell us to cover our legs.  It seems it was improper for men to display their legs in public, even playing sport.  On a similar topic we were later shown a far hill with seating for about 6 people, which was the seating used by women to watch the tennis.  It was at least 200 meters up the hill and I guess had something to do with naked men’s legs again.

Crowds play a big part in Davis Cup ties, none more so than in our tie against Sri Lanka also in 1990 when I was lucky to get off the court in one piece.  During the weekend there were 14 over-rules from the local umpire, all going against Thailand! On each overrule I got out of my seat to protest to the neutral ITF referee.  Sometimes the protest was brief but many times a full dispute developed.  In the middle of one particularly heated dispute, with the Sri Lankan crowd chanting obscenities at me, I happened to look up at the Thai section in the crowd and caught the eye of the President of the Thai Tennis Association.  His look was one of “I’m glad you’re out there and not me”!

Having an input in the eventual result of some matches was thrilling; it was like captain and player competing as a duo.  I would use my tactical knowledge and the players would use their physical and technical skills.  Danai Udomchoke was playing an Iranian in Teheran during an opening singles match several years ago.  The local player was built like a bull, huge legs and incredible power in his shots.  Danai on the other-hand could have been mistaken for one of the ball boys.  Despite his small stature Danai was later to reach #79 on the ATP world rankings and is a great player.

I guess the Iranian saw Danai enter the court and could smell victory, after-all his opponent was so small and he had a large group of friends in attendance to witness what would be a comprehensive victory.  The first 2 games went by real fast with the Iranian blasting winners left and right.  Danai looked over at me wondering how to stem the flow of winners.  It also didn’t help that on every winner from the Iranian his friends would bang the tin fence surrounding the centre court in approval. The place was going nuts!

What I did next changed the match almost immediately.  At the next changeover I stood up from my courtside chair and applauded the Iranian as he came to sit down.  This guy was playing the match of his life, in Davis Cup competition and with his friends and family watching on from the stands.  He was literally playing on rocket fuel and now the opposition Captain was acknowledging his superiority! When they returned to the court the Iranian attacked the ball again, only the half-court forehand on the first point completely missed the court hitting the back fence with a loud bang.  On the next point he hit a backhand passing shot into the bottom of the net.  The tide had turned and Danai stormed back to win easily.  For the rest of the match the friends who had been so supportive in the beginning stopped banging the tin fence and fell silent. 

Overall I Captained Thailand 13 times in Davis Cup Competition.  I also Captained Thailand in Federation Cup, Asian Games and South East Asian Games competitions.  But it was the Davis Cup which was special to me and from where many of my best memories come from.

OUR WEEK IN TRIVANDRUM, INDIA

Many of my stories come from the trips I have taken to tennis tournaments around the world.  I have traveled to 24 different countries with a whole range of players.  Each country is different and some really funny things happen on these trips.

My time at the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Scheme also took me to many towns and cities within India.  I particularly enjoyed one trip to the city of Trivandrum in the state of Kerala. Kerala is located in south India and has a wonderful climate and a very peaceful feel about it.  I had made this trip to Trivandrum with a team of 6 boys from our training base in Madras.  We traveled by train and arrived quite late at night.  Anyone who has traveled on trains in India knows the chaos when you arrive at your destination.  Dozens of bag carrier’s hassle for the opportunity to carry your bags for the few rupees you must pay.  Some of these guys balance 2-3 large bags on top of their heads and walk through swarms of people, carts and the inevitable stairways before getting outside the station.

More chaos develops outside the station when you now negotiate for transportation to your hotel.  The difficulty is that you are negotiating a transport fee to a hotel you have never been to before and have no idea the exact distance it is from the station.

When you do finally make it to your hotel you can still be told that there are no rooms available and you must continue to look around the city for other accommodation. Trivandrum was no different on this trip and it was about 1:00am in the morning when we finally got to our two rooms and prepared to get some much needed sleep.

On this occasion I was sharing a room with Bhaskar Chowdury and Anirban Baruah.  We quickly organized our bags, got into bed and turned the light off. What followed next I will remember forever and it has become the source of much laughter whenever our old team gets together.  Laying there in the dark, after a long train journey from Madras we each took our turn saying our goodnights.  When we had finished saying goodnight I let out a audible sigh and said “aah, bed at last”! Suddenly a deafening bang shook the small room and gave each of us a huge fright.  The noise had come from outside and we rushed to our window to see what had happened outside.  We stood looking out the window in disbelief.  Our hotel backed onto the local railway station but not only that, we were directly outside the area where the carriages were shunted together in preparation for their journey. Every ten minutes this enormous collision of carriages took place just outside our window!

After Trivandrum whenever I reached my destination I always checked the view outside my window to see who my neighbors were for the coming week. 

THE SRICHAPHAN FAMILY OF THAILAND

Talking with Paradorn during the filming of "Asian Ace"

When I first arrived in Asia at the start of my tennis coaching career very few Asian players featured on the world tennis scene.  Michael Chang was about to emerge as a top player but he was never really considered a product of Asia.  His parents had left Taiwan for the US many years before and he developed his tennis in the US.  South East Asian countries like Thailand, Indonesia and The Philippines had talented players back then but none that could earn a living on the main tour. 

Within my first few weeks of living in Thailand I remember going to the local tennis centre and watching the Thailand National Championships.  The final was between two eighteen year olds, Woraphol Thongkamchu and Thanakorn Srichaphan.  I was surprised how talented both these guys were. This early exposure to Thai tennis probably planted the seed in my mind that I would one day coach the Thai National teams.  I eventually had a long association with Thai tennis and captained the Thai Davis Cup and Federation Cup teams for several years.

The Srichaphan family was already a prominent feature at local tournaments.  Thanakorn the eldest brother played singles in the Thai Davis Cup Team and was ranked 1 or 2 in the country for many years.  Narathorn the middle brother was already a top ten junior in the world and eventually reached the quarter-finals at junior Wimbledon in 1990.  As Davis Cup Captain I would inevitably select the two Srichaphan brothers for our ties against the other countries.

Paradorn Srichaphan was only six years old when I arrived in Thailand but I followed his progress in the local junior tournaments and he was obviously going to be as successful as his two older brothers. 

Behind the scenes was their father Chanachai Srichaphan who took his three sons to the court every morning before school started.  Chanachai was a tough task master who believed that hard work took you places in life.  He had been a bank clerk in Khon Khaen, nine hours drive north of Bangkok when his eldest son began to have some success in local junior tournaments.  Based on that success he moved his entire family to Bangkok to pursue the tennis dream.  They lived for many years in a hut beside a volley wall at the Bangna Tennis Club.  Somehow Chanachai, his wife, three growing sons and their grandmother lived in that one room hut.  It can’t have been easy but Chanachai had a dream and each son would later invest in that same dream.

I was privileged to watch Paradorn climb the tennis rankings until he became the 9^th ranked player in the world.  Perhaps my favourite memory however is watching Paradorn beat Andre Agassi on centre court at Wimbledon.  Paradorn out-hit Agassi from the baseline that day and thoroughly deserved his win, but it was his father in the players box that stole the show for me.  Here was a man who had risked all to pursue a dream that started many years earlier back in Khon Khaen.  He had sat in the famed players box of the most famous court in the world and watched his son beat the defending Wimbledon Champion and a legion of the game.  The dream had come true for Chanachai.

I have been able to stay in touch with the Srichaphan family since the boys retired from professional tennis.  Thanakorn and Narathorn now coach, Thanakorn back in his hometown and Narathorn in Bangkok.  Paradorn enjoys a life as a local celebrity and is involved in a wide variety of projects, including a small part in a Thai movie as an ancient Thai warrior.  He is known and respected throughout Asia.

I was privileged to meet them early in my coaching career.  They are an amazing family who were blessed to turn a dream into a reality.

GETTING SACKED AND THE HASBRO MAN

My days working at the Hilton Hotel in Bangkok as Head Tennis Coach were numbered when the new General Manager arrived.  New General Manager’s like to announce their arrival with acts of change, whether the change makes sense or not.  I have seen some new General Manager’s cut down trees, replace ponds, alter a lobby and change personnel, anything to demonstrate that they have arrived and they are the boss.

When I first arrived at the hotel in 1986, some 15 months earlier, I had made it my mission to increase the number of hotel guests that took lessons.  In the beginning 60% of lesson revenue came from local Bangkok residents and only 40% from guests staying in the hotel.  To do this I created a register of the guests who took lessons.  I would write to thank them once they left the hotel and returned to their home countries and if they were coming back to the hotel, I had a tennis greeting card under their door when they arrived.  This extra effort was appreciated and many guests began to come back just for the tennis.  Sometimes they would contact me instead of the hotel reservation office to book room nights!  This experience showed me that it was the small things that brought a guest back to your hotel and not the size of the room nor the standard of your restaurants, as these things don’t really vary that much from hotel to hotel.  The guests I made friends with during that time were glad to have someone they knew and could call a friend around the hotel, particularly after a long day of business meetings.

When I finally got the call to meet the new General Manager in his office I knew what to expect.  His wife and son were keen tennis players and I was using the courts more and more as the number of lessons kept growing.  I was told that the contract would be terminated because nobody (from his family) could get on the courts. 

Initially I was disappointed that he had not looked closer at the effort I was putting in to create repeat business but soon realized that I needed to move on with my career also.  I did however want to teach him a lesson.

I began to notify all my contacts that my contract with the hotel had been terminated and that I would be leaving.  This I could have done after leaving but by informing them beforehand I knew a storm of protest would develop.  Sure enough the GM began to get letters (this was pre-email) from disgruntled guests saying that the tennis facility was the only reason they kept coming back and that without the tennis they would change hotels on future visits.  The General Manager was furious but I simply said that I was informing my “friends” that I was moving on.

The best of these protest letters arrived about 3am in the morning.  The phone rang in my room and a well spoken woman informed me that she was Mr. Alan Hasenfeld’s secretary and that he was sending a letter to the Hilton General Manager; would I mind listening to the letter before she sent it?  She proceeded to read the letter which outlined how many room nights Alan’s company, Hasbro Toys, had spent at the Hilton and that if Paul Dale left they would consider changing to another hotel in Bangkok.  Alan Hasenfeld was the president of Hasbro Toys and had a personal wealth of 400 million dollars.  We had become close friends during his many stays at the Hilton Bangkok and he was letting the Hilton know that he was ready to change if his tennis was taken away.

I did eventually leave the Hilton and later that same General Manager left the Hilton to work for a rival hotel chain.  That hotel chain was Four Seasons Hotel Group and through another close friend, I recommended to the owner that he be sacked, which he was.  Revenge was sweet.

MEETING THAILAND'S SUPREME PATRIARCH

After living in Thailand for about 8 years I became very serious about entering the monkhood.  Several people knew this and one day a parent of one of the players asked me if I was interested in meeting the Supreme Patriarch, Thailand’s senior monk.  I had seen the Supreme Patriarch in newspapers and magazines, always at the most important Buddhist ceremonies and mostly presiding over traditional ceremonies with the King of Thailand. This was an opportunity available to very few!

Finally the day came when I was to travel to the temple and meet the Supreme Patriarch.  I had dressed in collared shirt and blazer and was eagerly anticipating the meeting.  Prior to meeting the Supreme Patriarch you are taken into a separate room and taught protocol, to wai 3 times to Buddha statues in his study and general rules associated with meeting him.  The excitement began to mount.

When I was finally escorted into his study I got down on my knees and shuffled towards the first Buddha image, waied three times and then shuffled across to the 2^nd image.  I remember not being that graceful with my movement, rather tough for a foreigner wearing business slacks and a blazer!

At last I was in front of him and sat uncomfortably as he sat looking at me.  It took him several minutes to speak, all the time he was eyeing me up and down with a very benign look on his face, what sort of man was this I wondered?  Finally he spoke to asking “what is the difference between a coach and a teacher?”  He spoke softly, kindly, but I thought “this was going to be harder than I thought”

The talk actually turned out to be great, we got on really well.  He encouraged me to stay in tennis, saying “Buddhism is not a religion but a science of life, a way of living”, meaning that getting more involved in Buddhism and spirituality in general could take place during my normal daily activities.  The older and more experienced I get I have found this to be the truth.  It’s how you live and act day to day and not what or where you worship.

But of course this story has a twist in the tail as all my stories seem to have…  After about 40 minutes of talking, one of his assistants came to whisper something in his ear and he immediately thanked me for coming and apologized to me saying he needed to break our meeting off.

After reversing out of his study on my knees, again performing 3 wai’s to each Buddha image, I made my way outside and climbed into the special van for the journey home.  Unfortunately the exit out of the temple was blocked and the road outside was blocked for a VIP.  We were directed over to the side of the temple lane and eventually the next visitor came along.  It was the King of Thailand and he was the Supreme Patriarch’s next guest!

TRAINING THE S***T OUT OF THEM: THE BAT TRIALS

Marina Beach, Chennai, India

Every year at the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Scheme (BAT) we conducted trials to find new trainees for the coming year.  The tennis program had the lofty goal of producing India’s next crop of Davis Cup players and some boys from the previous year either couldn’t handle the level of training we put them through or their tournament results were not good enough.  This meant that each year we looked at other prospects. Vijay Amritraj usually came in from the US to help with selections and it became a big occasion for boys from throughout India who would turn up with their parents for the 2 day trials.

We had often picked boys who later could not handle the high level of physical training we put them through. Leander Paes, still one of the best doubles specialists in the world today was a BAT boy who thrived on the work load.  Many however could not.  Indian boys tend to be more spoilt and allowed to get their own way.  This leads to laziness and many Indian boys are overweight.

It was for this reason that I decided that the trials should be tougher physically so that we could see the level of commitment of each boy and hopefully avoid some of our previous mistakes with our selections. I decided that we would include our traditional run on Marina Beach in Chennai, something the BAT boys did 2-3 times every week.  Marina Beach is the worlds 2^nd longest beach and the sand is quite soft, making it hard to gain traction.  It’s a killer on the legs!

This particular year we had around 50 boys show up for trials.  We put them through the usual hitting sessions to gauge their on-court ability.

Finally the time came for the notorious beach run and we loaded as many players, parents, sisters and grandmothers in our small van as possible and traveled to Marina Beach to begin the run.  We had to make 3 trips that morning just to get everyone there.  I organized the first running group of about 15 boys and started to explain the run.  We would run the entire length of the beach, touch a fence at the far end, turn around and run back.  I pointed to a distant lighthouse just barely visible on the horizon and asked “everyone see that lighthouse”?  They all nodded in unison.  “Well that’s half way to the fence” I said, looking at the group and sensing that none of the runners understood the enormity of the task ahead of them. 

When everyone was ready I called “Go” and off they sprinted.  Sprinting this early in the run was ill-advised but I guess they were trying to impress!  I remember watching a few boys sprinting off down the beach at the start of what would be a 45 minute run and thinking these boys have probably never run like this before, they were that green.

I ran with the boys that day so no one got lost and remember waiting at the fence at the half way point of the run and directing each boy to turn around and run the exact same distance back.  Several thought I was joking and looked forlornly towards the roadside for the van.  There was no van.  Most of the boys were now walking while the best of them would jog some distance and then walk to recover.  They were spread out the entire distance of Marina Beach.  I ran ahead again and waited at the finish point. Eventually the boys began to come in totally exhausted. 

The last few stragglers were arriving now but the last boy caught my eye.  He was running a few steps then stopping to hold his leg.  It seemed to me he had injured himself somehow so I went toward him to see what his problem was.  As I got closer I realized that he was not injured but had unfortunately had a bowel accident during the run.  His bowels had released and it was now running freely down his legs and into his socks!  As he finished the run his mother whisked him away down to the waterfront to wash him up.

The training at BAT was known to be extremely tough but I guess on this occasion it had proven too much for one of our prospective trainees.

THE BAT BOYS SURPRISE PHONE CALL

The boys who entered the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Scheme (BAT) were sometimes quite young.  They all came from good homes and as such were often a little naïve.  This was the case in most things but particularly when it came to girls.  When it came to girls our team of ferocious competitors were painfully shy.  One story helps to illustrate this.

It was quite late at night, I was getting ready for bed when a call came to our apartment.  It was one of the boys, breathless and obviously very excited.  “Sir, you must come, something terrible has happened”.  I asked what it was but kept getting “Sir, just come, just come”.  Robert Smith, my fellow coach at the program, and I couldn’t work out what could have caused such a reaction.  The boys were not allowed to use the phone without permission, and certainly not at this time of night.  Was it related to a boy’s health?  But if that was the case why couldn’t they explain that over the phone?  What could have happened to create such a reaction?

Rob and I walked the 10 minute walk to the BAT House where the boys lived.  We were trying to imagine during the walk what all this could be about and thinking that perhaps a flying saucer had landed on the BAT House roof!

When we rounded the corner on their street, two of the boys starting running towards us.  Faces white from shock and still unable to answer the question we asked “What was going on”?  Again the reply, “Just come Sir, just come”.  We entered the house.  The younger boys stood off from us, mouths open, eyes staring, breaths panting, we had never seen them like this.  One of the older boys said to us “You will never believe this Sir, you will never believe this” and led us to the back of the house to a locked room used by the house maids.  They had a table wedged against the door which they were also using to look through a small glass window high above the door.  “There Sir, look”!  Again, the whole thing was becoming a bigger mystery by the minute but we were getting closer to finding out what had disturbed the boys so much.  I got up onto the table top to peer in.  The boys had locked the door to the room so this was the only way to discover the mystery inside.  There inside the room, sitting on the bed was the BAT driver and a maid, looking thoroughly bored having been locked inside for what must have been the past 1 hour.  I was confused, “so what’s the problem”? I asked.  “See Sir, see, we caught them inside together”!

It was starting to become clearer.  Perhaps there was a romance going on between the Driver and the Maid.  They had been together in the room and one of the boys had discovered this.  To young Indian boys from a sheltered up-bringing this was tantamount to a wild orgy; this was a male in a room with a female, alone!

We assembled the boys upstairs for a talk.  It was difficult to decide whether the talk was to be a “Birds & Bees” talk or a “well done, you’ve caught the rascals” type of talk.  I think Rob and I decided on telling them that these sorts of things happen sometimes, we would handle it in the morning. 

The mystery had been solved and it was time for bed.  Another day in the BAT program was coming to a close!