Hi, I'm John McEnore and you're listening to the tennis podcast. Hi, I'm Luis Grigor de Mietrof and you're listening to tennis podcast.

Hi, I'm Matt Vylander and you're listening to the tennis podcast.

Well, hello and welcome to the tennis podcast. We promised you on Twitter and in the last podcast that Catherine Wittigoo would be coming live from Monte Carlo this week, didn't we?

Well, couldn't really get much more different to that because it's me, David Law, sitting in London.

And I don't have Catherine Wittigoo alongside me. Yes, she is sunning it up in Monte Carlo, but is she doing a tennis podcast? Is she heck?

Well, she says that she's too busy, that she's got lots of other commitments this week.

So I've had to find somebody else to speak to. Fortunately, I've got somebody far better than Catherine Wittigoo to speak to because the format British number one Jeremy Bates is here.

Jeremy, how are you doing? I'm very good, David. Yeah, this is a very fine introduction. I'm flattered.

Let me make it better. Former World number 54 reached the last 16 of Wimbledon, won mixed doubles titles at Wimbledon and the Australian Open alongside Joe Jury.

Being a captain of the Davis Cup team in Great Britain, I mean, it just goes on and on, doesn't it?

And also, Jeremy, these days you're part of the British tennis scene once more. What is your role these days?

I'm part of the coaching team and then performance coaching team working in Women's tennis. I've been now on the sort of WTA ITF tour for the best part of five years and started off with Anne-Kyothavong, spent a good couple of years with her and spent six months or so with Heather while she was returning to the tour after Realness.

And then the last couple of years, mainly been trying to help some of the younger girls who are sort of aspiring, coming out of Juniors, going on to the pro tour, aspiring to be good professionals, working with them as a team, traveling to the 10Ks, 15Ks, 25s, what have you?

I spent a fair amount of time doing that and also at some of the high performance centres working with the players.

And it's been a process of trying to also identify some of the players from a young age and that's what I need to spend more time on now, trying to look to see the younger ones coming through sort of 13, 14, that type of an age, who have aspirations to be tennis players.

And just basically it's sort of trying to assist, support, influence, help, whatever word you want to say, coaches in their individual programs working with the players.

And it's a very tough journey, isn't it? You don't see many players on their own on the tour these days and there's an awful lot to learn.

There's one thing sort of putting all the work in if you like at base, but then when you start going out into big wide world, it's a different conversation.

And so that's the majority of my time, obviously, also here at the NTC, there are camps which are run on a week by week basis for the girls across all different ages and it's good to get a wide spectrum of talented youngsters together.

And so it's a combination of a lot of things.

You mentioned Ankiyothovong in Heather Watson and it's one thing to travel with those players to some of the some of the nicer spots I suppose, not always nice spots on the WTA circuit.

And it's a different Kepler fish, isn't it? When you're trying to help players make that transition, I suppose, whether it's from the junior ranks to the seniors, whether it's from the outskirts of the Challenger circuit or the future circuit onto the main tour.

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