‘It’s easier when you’re playing and in control’
Jeremy Bates, coach of Katie Boulter, on the Wimbledon cauldron – and why it is worse watching from the sidelines
What does Jeremy Bates – the man now coaching Katie Boulter – remember about his own run to the fourth round of Wimbledon, 30 years ago? “I remember having match point [against Guy Forget],” Bates replied. “And I remember the c--p serve I hit on match point.”
Back in those days, before the advent of Tim Henman, Wimbledon was a far less patriotic business than it is today. Bates – the world No113 on the day he nearly upset Forget – was the leader of a moderate cast list that also included Chris Wilkinson, Mark Petchey and a fading Jo Durie. Opportunities to wave a Union flag were rare; and even when they arose, there was an old-school reluctance to express too much enthusiasm.
It is a curious feeling for Bates, then, to return to the Wimbledon front line in these more demonstrative, overwrought times. He will be sitting in the stands today on Court No2 when Katie Boulter – the player he has coached for the best part of a decade – takes on Harmony Tan.
“It’s a very different experience,” said Bates. “It’s easier when you’re playing and you’re in control of what’s going on. Now, I’m sitting there watching with the same amount of emotion and passion, but I can’t control anything. And that is far worse. It’s exhausting. You live and die with your player.”
Now 60, Bates looks at least 10 years younger. He is a keen runner and turns out regularly for his local tennis club in Oxshott, Surrey. One recent opponent said that “Oxshott thrashed us when we played them, with Roger Draper [the former chief executive of the Lawn Tennis Association] giving it full effort, aggression and fist-pumping. Jeremy was also too good for us but he was much more of a gentleman about it”.
A true tennis lifer, Bates now derives most of his sporting stimulation from coaching. “I do love the accountability of it,” he said. “It’s like football management. You’re only as good as your last result.”
Bates has rated Boulter since her junior days – when she was ranked among the 10 best global prospects in her age group – and has stuck with her through thick and thin. More thin than thick, to be truthful, because of the long list of ailments that have stifled her senior career.
Chronic fatigue syndrome wiped out all of Boulter’s first full season in 2015. Then she was laid low by two stress fractures – one in her spine in 2019, the other in her elbow the following year. Recent months have served up an irritating issue with a bone in a foot. “She’s had an enormous number of setbacks,” Bates explained. “There’s a point where, if it keeps happening, you’re going to say, ‘I just can’t do it anymore’. But she has always got on with it. There’s never a day where she doesn’t train. And that’s what it comes down to. You either want to do it or you don’t.
“The fundamental thing is that Katie loves competing. When she got her ranking to its highest point [No82 in February 2019], she was leading the WTA Tour in matches won after losing the first set.”
Boulter’s return to the big time is a happy plot twist after a couple of wilderness years, but she has not yet been followed to the bank by the paparazzi, as Bates was on the eve of his 1992 meeting with Forget.
Because of the lack of alternative prospects to cheer for (he and Wilkinson were the only Britons to reach the fourth round between 1984 and Henman’s first visit in 1996), the attention was suffocating.
After his five-set loss, Bates was asked by one reporter: “What sort of example do you feel you’ve set this week?” His reply was typically deadpan. “The example I’ve set,” he said, “is that the whole thing is mental.”