Exclusive interview ‘I battled depression in the US but looking back I was so lucky’

Former Wimbledon doyenne Sue Barker opens up about her playing career and offers advice to today’s British No 1

In the mind of the average British tennis fan, the sun is always shining at Wimbledon. It is a delusion that owes much to the upbeat personality of Sue Barker, one of life’s natural mood-enhancers.

Whatever direction the BBC goes in next summer, there can be no replacing Barker’s infectious giggle, which provided the soundtrack to the tournament for almost three decades until her retirement in July.

Here is a woman who can cast any experience in a positive light. In her new autobiography, Calling The Shots, Barker even positions her own agonising defeats on Centre Court as a long-term boon. “If I’d won the semi-final [against Betty Stove in 1977] and maybe won Wimbledon… I might never have ventured into television. And of course, that’s opened up the most amazing 30 years.”

Barker’s glass is more than halffull. It is brimming over. And yet, when she began delving in her family archive last year, she was surprised to discover a trove of long-forgotten heartache.

“When I read the letters I wrote from America, I thought, ‘Oh my word’,” says Barker, 66, who was a golden-haired ingenue when she exchanged life in Paignton for the genuine sunshine of Newport Beach, California, in 1974. “In my head, I had this image that I’d just loved every minute. But I found that I’d been writing about how lonely I was, how depressed I was, and how my game had gone off.”

Barker might never have left the UK if she had fitted more neatly into the system. But she had an unusual game, based around a closed-grip forehand that was at least a decade ahead of its time. A report from a 1969 national training camp ruled that she needed to remodel that forehand

– which would one day

be considered the best on the tour – because she hit it with “a bent elbow close to her body”. Had Barker taken this advice, we can be confident that she would never have won the French Open in 1976, nor risen to world No3, behind the immortal duo of Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert. Fortunately, her coach, Arthur Roberts, was a maverick in his own right. Having spotted Barker at 11 in a Pe-class knockabout, he thought her a talent to rank alongside Virginia Wade. So when that missive arrived about her forehand, he quit the Lawn Tennis Association in protest. Roberts would remain Barker’s coach throughout her 19-year career. Her book – which

ends with the words “God bless you, Arthur” – often feels like a platonic love letter from pupil to teacher.

One of Roberts’s many eccentricities was that he would not travel from his base in Torquay, which is how Barker found herself flying solo in the United States, only a year into Billie Jean King’s Women’s Tennis Association revolution.

“There were actually two WTA tours at that stage,” Barker recalls. “If you reached a semi-final on the Futures level, you earned a fortnight with the big girls on the Champions tour. And trust me: when I went up, I was out on the Monday or Tuesday. I would be facing Evonne [Goolagong], Billie Jean, Margaret [Court], Virginia. Then you’re not playing again for a week.

“Those weeks were lonely, but it was still extremely exciting to be part of the tour, because women’s tennis really took off at that time. Previously, there had been a few ice-skaters and Nancy Lopez in golf, maybe a couple of runners. Then,

suddenly, Chrissie and Martina came along.”

For Barker, who never strayed far from Roberts’s common-sense advice, it is hard to conceive of burning through coaches at the rate of two or three a season – the paradigm for Emma Raducanu’s short career to date. “I feel she needs one person that she really trusts and believes in,” Barker says. “Every coach comes in with a different mindset and a different way of teaching. To me, that would be totally confusing. But I also feel that the pressure she’s been put under has just been immense.

“For me, the happiest years of my career were when I was learning the game. Even though I was writing my sad letters from America, I remember my big wins: beating Margaret Court and Evonne and then playing Chrissie in the final at Madison Square Garden. I felt like I’d arrived. But I’d also been building up gradually, whereas Emma won a major in the fifth tournament she played. So

she missed out on the fun things. Now that her ranking has dropped, she can get on with just winning a few matches.

“She’s got the game and she’s shown she’s got the mindset and physically she’s fabulous. Now she’s got to learn how to win and maybe how to enjoy it.”

Enjoyment was certainly the key for Barker. There is a passage in her book in which, in the mid-1980s, she spots Steffi Graf dining with her entourage at a table for eight in Wimbledon village. “I thought, ‘How sad, there is not one person her age with her’.” Barker laughs when I bring this up. “I’m sure Steffi was perfectly happy, but I wouldn’t change the era I came up in. We all looked after each other and the friendships were deep and lasting. Whatever I might have moaned about to my parents at the time, I look back and think I was so, so lucky.”

Sue Barker’s theatre tour runs until Oct 21