Development of Scottish tennis

and maybe felt like my drive had slipped a little bit. There is also the family situation at home. I have two great kids now [Rose and Alex], it is really busy and I want to be at home seeing them. Tennis has given me lots of friends, lots of good times and I wouldn’t have stopped if it wasn’t the right opportunity. This is it. I am really excited to get started.”

Fleming has been inundated with congratulations from his peers on the tennis tour, and has already had a lengthy discussion about the role with Jamie Murray. While he had started lending a hand with some of Scotland’s most talented teenagers already – hitting occasionally with the likes of Ewen and Maia Lumsden, Aidan McHugh and Ali Collins – he plans to pick the brains of the likes of Andy and Jamie, Louis Cayer, Judy Murray and Leon Smith on a regular basis. He hopes to display the same zeal for the position which Judy once did.

“Obviously I have some relationships with the top nationalsupported players already and I plan to be on court a bit with them, supporting them and supporting their coaches as well,” said Fleming. “But there is a huge job of work beyond that, in terms of the base of players we have got coming through. Making sure we have got a strong pathway in place to ensure we have a strong base of players at the bottom, bringing them into performance tennis and developing them with the ultimate aim of producing more professional tennis players. It is a really exciting time to be getting on board.

“Being a high-level player doesn’t guarantee in any sport that you are going to be a successful coach, but I have been really fortunate in my career to work with some really brilliant coaches,” he added. “The one which springs to mind right away is Louis Cayer, who I worked with for seven of eight years, so I have a good understanding of what world class coaching is all about.

“One thing Judy has in abundance is passion and energy for Scottish tennis. She still does and I like to think I have got something similar to that. I am going to be getting on the road as much as I can, and doing everything I can to make myself a success.”

Fleming will have to be a self-starter in the role, but so too was Judy, a point she recently relayed to me, by way of recounting a discussion with Fleming’s father Martin.

“I was talking to Colin Fleming’s dad at the O2 and he said, ‘could you ever have imagined it would turn out this way?’,” recalled Judy. “I said, ‘no, because I didn’t really know what I was doing’. He said ‘you did know what you were doing, or you always gave the impression that you knew what you were doing’. I said ‘well that’s good, because you definitely need to give that impression’.”

Tennis has given me lots of friends, lots of good times and I wouldn’t have stopped if it wasn’t the right opportunity. This is it. I am really excited to get started