Peter, Terese, nine-year-old Alex and seven-year-old Sophie made West Sussex their home, and were pleased they did.

“Where we stayed was only about three quarters of an hour from London and around 20 minutes from Brighton,” Peter said.

“Our residence was in Hayward’s Heath, which was one of the wealthier areas as many people commute to London for work.

“The location was great for both my coaching and schooling for Alex and Sophie.

“We were very fortunate to find a school nearby in a little village, Scaynes Hill, only five minutes away from our home. The children loved it and made some great friends”.

This is not the first time Peter had the inkling to teach tennis in England.

“I often look at the Tennis Australia website to see what is happening and jokingly said to Terese last year about going overseas to coach and she thought it was a great idea,” he said.

“This year I worked for a company, Service Line Management who specialise in coaching in schools and have affiliated businesses that run holiday camps and resort coaching throughout Europe.

“Service Line Management had 10 tennis coaches working for them at the time with several of us being from various parts of the world,” Peter added.

“There was some difference in the structure of coaching to here, I taught at six private schools, one public as well as club courts and private lessons.”

“Usually I would teach at three schools a day and would travel up to 500 miles a week.”

“The furthest I had to travel was 40 minutes to Lancing College which has approximately 800 students.”

“My coaching in schools was for children aged anywhere from four years to 18 years of age.”

Coaching in England took in six days a week, in all weather conditions.

“The average summer temperature was around 16-18 degrees, which was really good. I only lost a couple of hours on the court (due to rain) for the whole five months of coaching.

“During the summer school holidays we had five weeks of coaching camps which were conducted by Match Point Tennis, this company holds regular camps throughout Europe. “The five day camps were for the elite end of coaching,” Peter said.

Full story in Nov 19 Advocate...