How did you get started playing tennis?
Funnily enough, my father when I was five was trying to teach my mother how to play tennis, because he wanted to be a coach himself. He’s actually an accountant, but it was his hobby. Apparently I kept running on the court and disrupting things, so my mum got fed up and my dad had a new guinea pig to experiment on.

I played at Wimbledon, got to No 9 in the UK, and 420 in the world singles. I played for a number of years professionally. It was amazing – probably in retrospect it’s easier to appreciate it, because you’re in the middle of it. I got to practise with a lot of the top guys – Lendl, McEnroe and Chang – because I got knocked out of the tournament so early, I had all this time for the rest of the week. And because the way I play is quite nice for people to practise against, which is probably why I kept getting beaten, I was quite popular as a practice partner. So I learnt a lot actually playing, training with these people who I probably wouldn’t get to meet in the tournament.

So this tennis thing, is it hard?
People can pick it up – it can be as hard as you make it. It’s not an easy sport, if it was we’d all be wonderful at it. But so long as you understand the fundamentals, you can improve quickly. It’s important to be patient. I’ve seen an awful lot of people show up and they’ve seen it on TV, they’ve seen Federer and Nadal, but you’re probably not going to get there in an hour. Be patient, be realistic, but the most important thing is to have fun. It’s supposed to be fun. It’s a challenge, they’re trying to learn a skill. The other thing is it’s something you can do until you’re 80, you’re 90, there’s no age limit. I was teaching in America, and the No 1 85-year-old in the world, she started when she was 37. You don’t have to be 25 and a chunk of muscle: you can make it what you want to make it.

So you’re saying it’s easy?
I think a lot of people maybe think that – same with any discipline or any skill. Because when you see people who are really good at it, they make it look easy. That’s why we all think we can be great rock guitarists and Formula One drivers.

We’ve attempted this before and the results have been comical.
The first thing is really ball awareness. Making people aware of where they are in relation to the ball. And it doesn’t really matter what age. I can stand opposite you and throw you the ball, and you will position yourself to catch it in a way that’s comfortable and then throw it back. That’s the very basic. And then you look at forehand, backhand. Because as soon as people experience success, they’re more likely to improve. So you want to show them immediately that they can do this. The amount of people who come and say, ‘I would book a tennis lesson, but I’m no good’, and I sort of look at them and say, ‘Yeah, that’s really probably why you need to have a lesson, then.’ I don’t get the fully formed perfect player.

How do you build the perfect player, then?
The way that we teach it is to keep it simple. Because I think most people try to overcomplicate it. The way we look at it is there are five dimensions to the game. The most important thing is get the ball in. Once you can do that, think about direction. When you can direct the ball, you can start thinking about depth. And then you’re looking at spin, and the last thing you should be worrying about is power and speed. Generally, what you find is people put that at the top of their list, which is why you see sometimes a lack of control. Very much the way I look at it and PBI looks at it, is you need to get the control first. The power is the easy bit – anyone can hit it hard. That’s why the key thing with tennis is really the control.

Any other tips? We would really like to get good at this.
The angle of the racquet face is very important. Something that’s largely overlooked is the use of the opposite hand. Now you see a lot of people when they’re paying tennis stand facing the net, arms out, and they have a big old swing and hope it’s going to go somewhere near the court. It’s very underrated how important that opposite hand is. We talk about using the left hand as a third eye – being aware of the angle of the racquet without having to look at it. And don’t try to do too much. Get it in first, and then we’ll go from there.

What’s the biggest thing you try to teach people when they have a lesson with you?
We train people to coach themselves because ultimately they need to be able to play without us around. So if they can understand why they made a mistake, they can self correct. So in other words, let’s say you’re playing tennis and the ball keeps going up in the air, chances are the racquet face is open. So the trick is to make sure the racquet face is less open, more closed, and the ball will go down more. If the ball is going in the net, it’s the opposite. It’s keeping it simple, then you find the ball is going where you want it to go. Then as you get better and you develop more control, you can fine tune. But ultimately it’s getting
people to understand why and how they made errors, and then correcting them, rather than just having a coach standing there yelling and screaming.

Tennis lessons at Four Seasons Doha (4494 8888) cost QR215 per hour for members, from 7am-10pm. PBI provides tennis coaching around the world, see www.pbitennis.com