How to spot a grand-slam champion at 12, by the travelling tennis guru

“It’s not just a job. It’s a lifestyle — a wonderful lifestyle. I’ve got the best job in the world, to get paid to go and watch tennis.”

There is “no cookie-cutter approach” to identifying players who will become elite when they are essentially still children. They come from an increasingly wide array of backgrounds, they mature at different speeds, and there is no one set physique. But Coleman believes there are six shots that girls have mastered technically and can produce regularly by the age of 12.

“Without going into too much detail, it’s their groundstrokes,” he says. “If the serve is pushy, it doesn’t matter. We can fix that at a later stage. If they don’t volley, that’s fine, but they’ve got to be solid off the ground: cross-court and down the line.”

On that evidence alone, along with sensing a player’s compulsive desire to win, Coleman says it already “starts to become plausible to think they will get in the top 100”, but, for the boys, it is trickier to make a judgment so early. “There are about 15 shots they need, and they might not physically be able to play half of those yet,” he says.

Coleman cannot pinpoint exactly why he has such a great eye for talent. Although he captained England’s over-35s team, he was never a professional and was coaching at Totteridge Tennis Club, in London, when he decided to partner with John Morris, who is now an influential agent, and head into the player management business.

To get their foot in the door, they initially worked for free on behalf of doubles players so they could get accredited at the grand-slam events and watch the junior competitions. Their big breakthrough came in 2010 in the form of an unheralded 14-year-old Nick Kyrgios, who had been entered as a wild card into the boys’ competition at the Australian Open. “I thought he was unbelievably talented and we took a chance,” Coleman says.

Four years later, on his Wimbledon main-draw debut, Kyrgios stunned Rafael Nadal, who was then the world No1, to reach the quarter-finals. “That kind of launched us,” Coleman adds. “I don’t know how to describe it other than eight years of complete pandemonium. I need to put on record that John took 99 per cent of the hassle. He was doing the day-to-day, and every day something happened.

“You only seemed to be 40 minutes from the next catastrophe, so it was very hard to relax. I love Nick; he is the kindest, nicest person. When he got on court, I think it was just nerves.”

Did Kyrgios fulfil the potential that Coleman first spotted? “He got to the final of a grand slam [Wimbledon in 2022]. We’ve got to remember that. His body let him down a lot. Nick often got quite good results and then got niggles. We talk about the mental side of it — should he have done this and that — but his body wasn’t helping him along that road.

“There are a lot of aspects to talent: hard work, luck, your body. Nick could do things with a tennis ball I’d never seen before. If you’re talking about talent in that respect, he is the best I’ve ever seen. In retrospect, he achieved what he could.”

The competition — not just among agencies, but clothing and equipment brands too — means that following the grand-slam events, and even the five ITF Grade A junior tournaments that sit just below them, is no longer enough. Coleman knew Andreeva, now the world No8, was extraordinary the moment he first saw her at a Tennis Europe Junior Tour event in Moscow aged 11. Mboko, the world No10 from Canada, who beat Andreeva in the final of the Masters 1000 event in Doha this month, left a similar impression at a competition in Bolton when she was 12.

Agents now even flock to the Smrikva Bowl, an under-tens tournament in Croatia. Noticing the growing competition, Coleman resolved to find an edge. One of the first players he scouted was Wu Yibing, who was 14 at the time, and went on to become the first Chinese player to win an ATP Tour-level final in the open era. Coleman was convinced there was still a wealth of untapped talent in Asia that remained overlooked because players did not often travel to international tournaments, and so he crammed full a single backpack and bought a one-way ticket.

“I flew to Japan, then to Korea, five different places in China, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, and just worked my way down through Vietnam to Indonesia. I went to every club. I can’t go to Singapore every week, but if there’s a player, I will know about them, because you’re building those relationships,” he says.

“Lost in the middle of Korea was not a good place to be. I don’t know where to start with [the number of] flights [I had] cancelled. In Cambodia it was a bit frightening because I took a wrong turn and suddenly there were all these people around me, and I was having to run pretty quickly to get out of the way. I’ve had a few [scary experiences], but fortunately most of the time tennis is in pretty nice places.”

Manas Dhamne (18, India), Hruthik Katakam (15, India) and Xinran Sun (15, China) are three of the players Coleman has high hopes for, while Coleman Wong (21, Hong Kong) is now on the cusp of the top 100.

Possessing talent at a young age is one thing, but developing it is an even greater challenge. “The most important skill is to create an environment where the child is happy, but you’re still introducing them to that next level,” Coleman says. Many of the players he discovers will move full-time to the IMG Academy in Florida, but others prefer the culture in Europe or limit themselves to two-week stints away from home.

Mohamed Genidy, a 14-year-old who grew up near the Suez Canal owing to his father’s work in marine biology, did not have access to top practice partners in Egypt and now trains with Carlos Rodríguez in Barcelona. Eala, whom Coleman was adamant about signing after watching her in junior qualifying for the French Open in 2019, joined the Rafa Nadal Academy in Mallorca. Dhamne and Katakam, who grew up in Hyderabad and Pune respectively, immediately felt at home with Riccardo Piatti in Bordighera, Italy.

It is not an exact science, and the upheaval of recruiting and uprooting children inevitably raises ethical concerns. In football, the FA does not allow players under the age of 16 to sign with an agent, whereas IMG hosts Future Stars, a tournament for the best under-12s in the world at the exclusive Tatoi Club in Greece. The players’ parents must pay for their own flights, but virtually all other expenses are covered.

Coleman accepts that question should be asked, but points out that a legal contract with a minor holds little weight and that finding elite coaching and sponsorships are giving talented players the best chance of succeeding in an individual and expensive sport.

“Does it put pressure on them being signed? Probably. Do they then come down very quickly [if it doesn’t work out]? There’s a risk in that,” he admits. “I think the important thing is you just keep focusing on getting them to become better tennis players. That’s all I try to do. Provided you’ve got the correct care programme and intent, which I know I have, then I don’t feel a problem with that. If it doesn’t work out, we shake hands and say goodbye.”

Coleman is still optimistic about the British talent coming through but points out that, despite the LTA’s “very good” infrastructure, tennis remains an extracurricular sport here, unlike in nations such as the Czech Republic. Despite having a population nearly seven times smaller than the UK, there are eight Czech players inside the top 50 in the WTA rankings, compared with just one Briton: Emma Raducanu.

“It’s not the way they are teaching the serve,” Coleman says. “If Roger [Draper, the former LTA chief executive] hadn’t put a racket in his hand, Jack [Roger’s son, the British men’s No1] would probably be playing for Tottenham Hotspur and have not gone into tennis.”

Beyond the highly regarded trio of Mimi Xu, Hannah Klugman and Mika Stojsavljevic, Coleman highlights Megan Knight, the 15-year-old daughter of the former England cricketer Nick Knight, as a promising talent. Among the boys, he enthuses about Max Hodkinson, who won the Carlos Moyá Under-12s tournament in November. “He’s probably the best I’ve seen since Kyle [Edmund],” Coleman says. “He’s the most exciting we’ve had for years coming through.”

IMG is, of course, backing Coleman with a view to making a handsome cut on future commercial deals. He is hardly naive to that, but says the most rewarding part of his far-reaching quest is seeing a player, whose talent he first spotted, realise their potential.

After Andreescu won the US Open in 2019, she told Coleman: “You were the first person to tell me [I could win a grand slam] and I never forgot it. Everyone laughed when I said I was going to win. You went, ‘I think you will.’ ”

“For me personally, I thought that was pretty special,” Coleman says.

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