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By Jamie Baker

June 2005:

AFTER six long, gruelling weeks in South America, I allowed myself six nights in my own bed to recover before packing my bags again. Along with Keith, my coach, and Tom (another player and pupil of Keith’s), Turkey was the destination. So for the first time this year, I was travelling as part of a mini-squad.

Our three-week trip included one week in Ankara and two weeks in Istanbul, all three tournaments being $10,000 (about £5,500) Futures events. The day before my first round in Ankara just so happened to be the same day as the French Open final. Watching Rafael Nadal win the title definitely throws me into a few moments of thought. I am the same age as Nadal and have beaten him on two occasions in junior doubles matches. Yet here I am, ranked No 530, sitting in a tennis club in Ankara watching him lift the crown at Roland Garros on a television screen! I could take one of two attitudes.

I could compare myself to him, which could dent anyone’s confidence, or I could use it as an inspiration. I fall firmly into the latter. Let’s face it, to compare myself to him would not be very smart. Who can match a French Open title at the age of 19? Once in a while an Agassi, a Sampras, a Chang or a Nadal comes along and you just have to enjoy their supreme talents.

The moment passes and I come back down to reality and refocus on my task in hand. A task that has gone well so far this year and has seen me rise 150 places in the rankings in six months.

It’s the middle of summer and time for the traditional grass-court season in England. One might ask why on Earth I am playing in Turkey when I could be playing at home on the grass, especially when I have done so much travelling. The answer is that I had to make a professional decision based on what I thought was best for my tennis.

About 70 per cent of the grass-court events during this period are of a standard that my ranking says I have not quite reached. This means that I would be relying on wild-card entries to get into most of the tournaments rather than being accepted with my ranking.

On the other hand, in Turkey, my ranking is in the top ten entries of all three tournaments. I felt I would be a genuine threat in the later stages and it was important to establish myself further at this level.

By coincidence, only my second tournament on clay this year was in Ankara, after Nadal’s inspirational win in Paris. I definitely found my inspiration from somewhere as I came through three rounds to reach my first clay-court semi-final. Unfortunately, I then lost to the eventual winner, Victor Crivoi, of Romania, 6-1, 6-2. I was happy to leave our oven-baked hotel room (with no air-conditioning), and my daily 4am wake-up call from the dog outside our bedroom window, for Istanbul.

To read the full article go to : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,175-1668218,00.html