His heroes were Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg but Chris Skinner has someone nearer to home to thank for his career in tennis.
The 41 year old inaugural winner of the Herefordshire & Worcestershire coach of the year award was a promising Droitwich teenager who merely loved playing the game until county stalwart Jayne Poynder collared him to take a coaching course.
It sparked a passion for coaching and 20 years later he is now a big part of the set up at Manor Park Club in Malvern, ironically working closely with Poynder, in helping drive a thriving club.
“I studied politics at university in Portsmouth but going into my final year I knew I was going to go into coaching,” he said.
“I’m quite lucky at Manor Park because there is a big programme. I enjoy the diversity and I’m involved in all aspects of the club including the business side. I sit on all the committees and we have four full time coaches with a very busy and varied programme.”
Skinner’s award is the culmination of outstanding efforts at the club and across the community where he is a regular face in schools as he strives to bring in new generations of tennis players.
His motto is simple ‘get them good as they can be and keep them loving the game’ and with a broad range of programmes at Manor Park is doing that with ages ranging from four to 70.
There is one age range however that is proving difficult to target – the 18 -30 bracket.
“There seems to be a black hole in this age range but the club is trying different memberships to attract more numbers.”
For the past 12 years he has been full time at Manor Park and previously ran coaching sessions across the county at clubs like Bewdley, Belbroughton and Droitwich.
While Andy Murray’s success on the international stage has attracted national headlines, Skinner also believes there have been many positive changes in his nearly two decades of coaching.
“The clubs are very different to when I first started.
“Back then the clubs all had junior nights, often with parents running it but that was about it. Now every club has got a coach who, if not full time is reasonably full time, and the clubs will all have coaching programmes for juniors, beginners and adults. Clubs are miles better than they were.
“The standard of play by the kids is amazing too, unfortunately the standard in the rest of the world is also going up. For any children that want to reach the very top it is a huge commitment and they have to spend a lot of hours on court and fit school around that too so it’s quite a leap of faith if you want a shot at competing on the world stage.”
Skinner’s bread and butter though is bringing players in to the sport and ensuring they develop a lifelong love of the game.
In a career that has brought representative honours for his county including captaining Hereford & Worcester Over 35s in the national league, one of his highlights was coaching Manor Park’s Ben Marks and helping him land a tennis scholarship at university in America where he is still based, coaching in a John McEnroe Centre in Long Island.
“We want players to get as good as they can but we always want to make sure that they enjoy it and still love the game. There is always the worry that they give up.”
With Chris at the helm you suspect that isn’t going to happen any time soon at Manor Park.