December Q&A

01 January, 2010 | 19:01

First things first, how is the training going?

Well It’s a shame not going to Miami, but that’s just the way it worked out because of this slight injury I picked up in my quadricep. I’ve been able to train here, it’s just a bit thin on good beaches! I've been down here at the NTC working on the court, and that's been good.

It’s also been good to start Bikram Yoga. I’d heard a lot about it – none of it good haha – but I enjoyed the session I went to. Maybe it’s because of the cold weather, but it didn’t feel too hot, and I wasn’t clock watching like people warned me I might. I’m going to make that part of my programme.

I go back to Scotland for five or six days, then we’re aiming to go out to Brazil for the first week of the year, so the off-season is over really quick. I’ll be back at the NTC for a few days when I get back from Scotland, I'll do a few Bikram sessions, then we go.

How do you reflect on 2009?

Well, not too many great memories! Frustrating I guess as far as the tennis goes. But me and Jonny played some good tennis towards the end of the season, and that’s something to be positive about. We compliment each other on the court I think, and we’ve shown we can play some good tennis. He’s a really nice guy too, so it’s been a good partnership for us.

Have you got any targets for next year?

At the end of the year I wrote quite a lot down of things: where I wanted to go with my tennis, and what I needed to do to get there. Just to clarify in my mind what I needed to do and how best to go about it.

I think certainly I should serve better for my height, and being a lefty. I think if I work a lot on that next year I can really start to do it justice. I think that’s going to be a huge thing. Right now I don’t get enough free points, or serve big enough into the right spots. It’s nice to be able to rely on a good, consistent serve.

As a partnership we have our goals – we’ve talked about our goals for what we want to do, where we want to be at certain times of the year; what sort of tournaments we need to be aiming for, and be consistently getting into.

You need to put in your weeks too. In doubles now, you can’t just play 20 or 25 weeks a year. It’s 30, maybe more. Especially at the level we’re at just now. Maybe when we get higher we can cut back a bit, but now we need to get out there, and get results on the board.

What can you tell us about the schedule for next year?

Me and Jonny are going to play in Sao Paulo then a Challenger in Ecuador, and hopefully if we do well in either of those it’ll be enough to get us into one or two of the Tour events in South America. So hopefully the first four or five weeks of the year we’ll be in South America enjoying the sun, playing some good tennis. If things don’t go so well, we’ll head back to Europe because we won’t get into the Tour events down there.

If you were building the perfect doubles player, who would make up the composite parts?

Wow, tough! I think nowadays with the way the scoring is going it’s so important to have a good returner in the team. More and more with the way game is going I think it’s more important to be a returner than a server. So guys like Mike Bryan and Kevin Ullyett - even though he’s retired - they’re very good. You tend to find the Eastern European’s are very strong on the returns.

Check back tomorrow for the rest of Jamie's perfect player, and much more...