Biography

12 November, 2007 | 19:11

Hi Guys

My Biography, AKA 'the early years'

I was born on the 13th February 1986, in Glasgow, Scotland Glasgow. I've always had it...

Don’t remember the early years too much, but started playing tennis when I was pretty young. Decent racquet huh?




Me and my brother were pretty active kids I guess. Played a lot of tennis at home, down at the Dunblane Sports Club. They had four artificial grass courts and we’d wind the nets down and knock some balls around.

I was six when I played my first tournament, which was a Round Robin thing for under-10’s. Your attention span’s pretty low at six, so the sets were short, and the older kids did the scoreboard.

Have some vague memories of playing football in the park across the road, and water-bomb fights. Decent.



I do remember going to Wimbledon for the first time, when I was eight I think. Growing up in Scotland, Wimbledon’s a pretty big deal and all I remember is watching as much of the tennis as I could, unlike Andy, who just wanted to get as many autographs as possible.

Being a stylish kind of guy, I managed to get myself the full Wimbledon Official clothing line: socks, t-shirt and shorts.

They didn’t have a slip over in my size, so I had to go for a small men’s size. It looked like I was wearing a dress, but I worked it. Not looking forward to that picture appearing in here, but it probably will.

My first overseas tournament was in Rouen when I was ten. Beat Gael Monfils 6-0 6-1 in the final, and picked up the doubles title with Andy. Solid effort.

I was a pretty decent junior player: Rafael Nadal, Richard Gasquet and me were the top three juniors in Europe at under-12 level, and no shame that I lost finals to both of them in that year-group.

September of 1998 I moved to the LTA academy in Cambridge, and just a couple of months later I made the final of the Orange Bowl 12 and unders. Lost to some Korean guy with the longest name in the world.

Cambridge didn’t work well for me, so I was back up to Scotland soon after – that was at the start of 1999. February or March I think.

In July, I came third in the European under-13 championships in Annecy, and after that I kind of drifted in and out of tennis for a while, although I played for GB in the European and World 14 and under team championships in 2000. Andy was in that team too.

So, concentrated on school for a change. Sat my Highers and passed them in 2003. Won the dubs at the British Junior Champs that year too.

I was playing a bit of golf around that time - got my handicap down to a 3, and made final of the Dunblane Golf Club junior championships.

After that, I kind of drifted back into tennis again. I spent some time at Bob Brett’s academy in Paris, and finished my final year as a junior ranked around 40 in singles and eleventh in the world for doubles.



Made the semis of US Open juniors with Andy and had a lot of American colleges chasing me to take a tennis scholarship. Might have worked but I just wanted to get out there and join the circuit.

Spent a couple of years grinding it out on the Futures tour. Focusing on doubles seemed the right way to go, and it’s paid-off so far with titles at San Jose, Memphis, Nottingham, Delray Beach and Wimbledon.

That’s it from me as far as this goes, the rest is a work in progress huh?

Jamie