Hi, I'm John McAnon, you're listening to the tennis podcast. Hi, I'm Luis Grigor de Mietro for you listening to tennis podcast.

Hi, I'm Matt Svillander and you are listening to the tennis podcast.

Hello and welcome to the tennis podcast. I'm Catherine Whitaker and I'm not joined by David Law. In David's ever-sadellicate words

I've found someone better to talk to and that man is James Blake. James, thank you very much for joining us on the tennis podcast.

Pleasure to be here, thanks.

Thanks to Joinys on the Champions Talks, you've played your first ever event here in Delray Beach this week. How's it been?

It's been a lot of fun. I had a great time, didn't exactly know what to expect but these guys are really good players and the guys I've watched and seen some of the great triumphs on the ATP tour

and now to get to play against them in a slightly less pressure-filled environment but still competitors, so it's still some close matches.

And you've been completely away from tennis pretty much or so it seems from the outside for the past 18 months. Can you talk me through a little bit what life's been like for you?

Life's been much more hectic since I left the tour with two little girls that makes it so that no two days are the same and no two days are not exhausting.

They're all a lot of fun and extremely enjoyable and rewarding but I'm definitely more tired at the end of those days than I ever was training.

And what now I know you have a role on the board of the USDA but I think you're sort of reaching a bit of a cross-raise aren't you in terms of deciding what to do going forward?

Yeah, I'm lucky enough to have had this time off where I get to spend it with my family and now I'm still feeling like I need to make a decision at some point if I'm going to stay in tennis or get completely out of tennis.

I mean, tennis has been so great to me and I've enjoyed so much of it. There's a chance I'll stay in it and hopefully maybe have a role with the USDA but if not start something new and have a different reason to get up in the morning and something new to learn and to get better at, which is possibly in the finance world.

And that would definitely interest me and get me excited about learning again.

What is it in particular about finance that appeals to you? That's obviously a complete fork in the road for you.

Yeah, it's totally different and that's really what interests me is that I have to start at Square One and I've just been fortunate enough to meet a lot of great people in that world that are willing to help and get me started.

So I just feel like it's something that I was always pretty good with numbers and not as good with the writing papers and stuff so it'd be a chance to use the skills that I feel like are more to my liking.

And in terms of your role with the USDA and your views on developing young players, different people and different retired players have very different views on that.

I was speaking to Pat Rafter in Australia a couple of years, a couple of weeks ago and he's taken on this new role with tennis Australia in player development.

And he was saying the key for him is education and kids having a life outside of tennis. Kids not having to dedicate themselves to tennis at a young age at the expense of everything else.

You went to college yourself, you had a more diverse childhood in life probably before tennis than a lot of kids did. Is that a philosophy that you share?

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