Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Cream For Me by Virginia Wade Cream For Me by Virginia Wade. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Cloudflare Ray ID: 660999d12ba14ec8 • Your IP : 116.202.236.252 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. Billionaire Kink Author: Virginia Wade. After I returned from running a successful Family Free clinic in Honduras, I was determined to obtain the funding I needed to do the same at home. Health care should be a right, not a privilege, and, with this in mind, I began to lobby the richest corporations, asking…begging that they fund my initiative. Two years later, and living off the last dregs of my mother’s estate, I found myself on the edge of giving up. I’d lobbied JSG BioPort Labs yesterday, standing in their conference room with my PowerPoint presentation and staring at a table full of disinterested male faces, knowing that this was my last chance. In the end, I’d walked out, holding my head high, knowing I had failed. Or at least I thought I had. To my utter shock, I had received a phone call from the company’s CEO, James Gordon, requesting a private meeting. Mr. Gordon was a billionaire visionary, who had revolutionized the industry by spearheading advances in drug formulations, medical devices, and research. I was slightly intimidated to meet the man who had developed Demetril, which was a new breast cancer drug, with an eighty percent success rate. I got dressed, wearing pantyhose, a gray pencil skirt, and a brown and black blouse. I usually downplayed my looks, but instinct told me I would need them today, so I took my time applying makeup and styling my shoulder length, chestnut hair. Sliding into black, sling back heels, I appraised myself in the mirror, satisfied with the overall result. As I left the apartment, nervous bundles of energy pricked me, adding an anxious spring to my step. My briefcase contained a business prospective, which I had agonized over. A nonprofit organization was a hard sell, because it went against the grain of what a business model should look like, since there was no clear projection of growth and revenue. It was entirely reliant on donations, and those were hard to come by in this economic environment. If my meeting with Mr. Gordon proved unsuccessful, I would have to get a job immediately. He was my last chance. I took a cab to a restaurant near the Steppenwolf Theatre in downtown Chicago, checking my face in a compact and applying more lipstick. Then I fussed with my hair, which looked perfectly fine. This isn’t a date! Actually, I hadn’t been on a date in months; the last experience was a disaster. I had moved out of Peter’s apartment more than a year ago, our relationship having run its course. My luck with the opposite sex was legendary; the horrors were too numerous to count, although, if I had any skill at writing, I could pen a humorous memoire of my misadventures. It would probably be a best seller. I paid the cabbie and took the stairs, entering an elegantly decorated reception area, which was furnished with comfortable looking sofas and muted lighting. “I’m Gretchen Fox. Mr. Gordon is expecting me.” “Yes, of course. Right this way,” said a woman dressed in black pants and a crisp white shirt. I followed her through the restaurant, noting the yellow-beige walls, darkly framed mirrors, and rows of neatly stacked glasses on shelves. I’d never dined here, because it was pricy and my meager budget left little for frivolous spending. I saw myself in passing, noting a tall woman with an anxious expression. Wipe that scowl off your face! You’re never going to charm his socks off and get the funding you need looking like that, Gretchen. I took a deep breath and tried to relax my mouth, moving my jaw from side to side. The maître d' led me to a table occupied by a dark-haired man. Introductions weren’t necessary, since I had been reading about Mr. Gordon all week in preparation of my proposal. He was a graduate of Columbia University, obtaining his masters in business from Harvard. He’d worked his way up the corporate ladder, rescuing one company after another, until acquiring the wealth to buy his own. He stood, gesturing to a chair. “I’m sorry,” he said, his tone deep and velvety. “I don’t shake hands. I’m glad you could make it, Ms. Fox.” His smile caught me off guard, my stomach flipping over. “Mr. Gordon. I’m surprised you wanted to see me.” He doesn’t shake hands? Is he Howard Hughes weird or something? I placed the napkin in my lap. “We’ll have the Chateau Latour,” he said to the waiter. I left the briefcase near my foot. “I have the prospectus, if you want to see it. The details were covered in the presentation, but I don’t think you were at the meeting.” “I wasn’t. Your document isn’t necessary.” That was odd. “Then why am I here?” “I want to know about Honduras. You opened a clinic with your sister.” “Yes, in Santa Rita. It’s mostly self-supporting, although the drugs aren’t cheap.” “How are you paying for that?” “My mother left us money. We get the medications from Mexico and Canada. The trust fund is still solvent…for a while.” “I see.” Our wine arrived, and the server poured the burgundy fluid into rounded glasses. I would have the Tuscan kale salad with glazed duck, and Mr. Gordon ordered the seafood salad and smoked mackerel. His look was assessing. “Why did you leave?” “I helped set up the clinic. Emily’s the Florence Nightingale of the family. I’m like Donald Trump. Someone has to manage the business. We immunized thirteen hundred people in six months. What I’m most proud of is persuading a surgeon friend of mine to help for a few days. Ten kids don’t have their cleft palates anymore.” I took a sip of wine, enjoying the richness of the flavor. He held his glass to his nose, sniffing delicately. I had downed my drink, as if I were sitting at a bar. The wine probably cost a fortune. He stared at the table thoughtfully. I took the opportunity to appraise him, noting the handsomeness of his face, his surprising youth, and the understated timepiece around his wrist. I didn’t see a wedding band. He was an intensely private man, and besides his educational and business history, I knew nothing else about him. “Mr. Gordon, I’m really impressed with Demetril. I wish…I wish they had it available for my mother. She died of breast cancer six years ago.” “I know. I’m sorry for your loss.” “It could’ve saved her.” I stared at a couple sitting at the next table, not really seeing them. “You’re performing miracles in people’s lives. I love that. It’s what I try to do. It’s what I want to continue to do. There’s no reason why these kids can’t get antibiotics or asthma medication. It’s senseless seeing someone die from an infection that can be treated.” I glanced at him. “How did you know about my mother?” Cream For Me by Virginia Wade. B&P Benefits Solutions is a Richmond, Virginia based company specializing in innovative solutions for individuals and business owners alike. With more then 50 years combined experience, our staff uses its knowledge of the marketplace to offer comprehensive and personal service. We have learned from our customers, that placing the client first, results in a long term and successful relationship. Our Mission Statement: To provide our customers with personal and effective service to develop value oriented solutions for today's healthcare and insurance market. In 2001, Steven transitioned to the broker side of the insurance business and spent four years with a primary agency in the Central Virginia Region. Steven's decision to start B & P Benefits Solutions evolved from a desire to fill a critical void he recognized in the industry, providing superior service, education, and support for his client's Human Resource Departments. Steven is a Certified Compliance Broker, a Chartered Benefit Consultant, and is also a member of the National Association of Health Underwriters. A graduate of Mary Washington College, Kimberly has her Bachelor of Science in Biology. She has lived in Virginia the majority of her life; and in Richmond since 1995. Kimberly is an active member of the National Association of Insurance & Financial Advisors, and serves as Chairman of the Ambassador Committee with The Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce. Her passion for helping people also includes serving on the Development Advisory Committee with the Children's Miracle Network. Wade brings a unique understanding to the business because of his vast experience, which enables him to assess the personal and business needs of his clients. His commitment is to bring value to each client by assisting with comprehensive long term financial planning. Wade is a Registered Financial Consultant and has achieved this designation based on education, experience, licensing, character, business conduct, and commitment to continued professional education. Steven Parent, CCB, CBC - President Kimberly Hitchens, Vice President Wade Belote, Consultant Lesley Rowland, Senior Account Executive Nary Sze, Account Executive. 4900 Cox Road, Suite 170 Glen Allen, VA 23060 804.237.8011 Phone 804.612.2814 Fax Directions ›› Wade, Virginia (1945—) Wimbledon tennis champion, known for her aggressive play and ability to recover from mistakes, who brought a sense of high drama to the court and was tremendously popular with fans . Born Sarah Virginia Wade on July 10, 1945, in Bournemouth, England; daughter of an Anglican cleric. Learned to play tennis in South Africa, where her family moved when she was a child; first qualified for Wimbledon (1962); finally won the Wimbledon singles championship (1977); by the time she retired from professional play (1987), was third in world rankings for number of titles won, including singles titles at Wimbledon and the U.S. and Australian opens; inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame (1989). Little disturbed the quiet neighborhood of Durban, South Africa, around the Anglican Church of St. Paul's. It was, in those pre-apartheid days, solidly British, its rows of neatly kept houses and fastidiously trimmed lawns comfortably settled in suburban tranquility. There was only one slight annoyance to break the spell—the nearly constant thwack of tennis ball against racquet, followed by the inevitable plock of the ball hitting the pristine white paint of the Wade home, the two-stroke sequence monotonously repeating itself for hours on end. "Tennis was an obsession," Virginia Wade once said of her childhood passion, so much so that her father complained about the black marks spattered over the white facade of the house and forced Virginia to practice against the more secluded garage. She had always been an energetic child, following in the footsteps of her older siblings—two brothers and a sister—who all excelled at athletic pursuits and who carried their enthusiasms with them to South Africa from Bournemouth, England, where Virginia had been born on July 10, 1945. She was barely a year old when her father, an Anglican cleric, accepted a position in a parish in Cape Town, South Africa, just after the end of World War II. Four years later, he was appointed the archdeacon of St. Paul's in Durban. "I was so energetic I don't know how Daddy kept me quiet long enough to concentrate on his sermons," Wade said. But that was before she discovered a long-forgotten tennis racquet hidden away in the junk closet she had been assigned to clean one day when she was nine years old. "I loved the quick and visible results when the ball and racquet connected," she said, "and I was tantalised by the idea that there was something very exact about it." It was not unusual for a young white girl of comfortable means growing up in South Africa in the 1950s to take up tennis, a popular leisure time activity for the middle and upper classes and one that could be pursued year round thanks to the country's mild climate. All the Wade children played tennis at one time or another, but only Virginia became obsessed with the game because, she later claimed, "I cared more about it than the others did." Wade was soon playing in local junior tournaments and advanced to open tournament play, but presently found herself bored with the level of competition she was facing. Her frustration became apparent when what few players she could find at her level complained she was slamming the ball too often and without reason. Virginia admitted her play was becoming tinged with anger. "I was angry with myself at my mistakes," she said of a growing reputation for emotional volatility. "It was an unfortunate signature to be stuck with." Her future in tennis seemed doomed when her father announced in 1956 that the family would be moving back to England, where she knew the lack of a well-developed training system like South Africa's would mean fewer chances to find qualified teachers and more challenging opponents. But it was the elder Wade's opinion that racial divisions were worsening in South Africa to such an extent that his friendly relations with several black clerics might place his family in danger. Incredibly, he picked out a house in the one place in England where Virginia might feel most comfortable. "I had always thought Wimbledon was the name of the place where tennis was played," she once recalled, not realizing it was also a suburb of London. Her first months in Britain were not encouraging. "Winter was hideous," Wade later remembered of the family's arrival in Southampton on a dreary February day, a stark contrast to the semitropical warmth of South Africa. "My clothes were not remotely thick enough. The dream was over." But at least there was tennis at some of the local courts, and just down the road from her new home was Wimbledon itself, where Virginia would wait in line for hours for standing-room tickets to watch all her favorite players. Then, too, there was the Queen's Club, where much to her surprise Virginia found an active junior training program under the tutelage of an Australian coach named George Worthington. By 1962, Wade had qualified for an inter-school tournament to be played at Wimbledon itself, the first time she stepped onto that hallowed ground as a player rather than as a spectator. Even better, her team won the tournament thanks to Virginia's energetic, if still unfocused, play. By the end of that year, she had been seeded No. 1 in the British Junior ranks and was being called Britain's most promising junior player. But it was now that the temper for which she had become known in South Africa came back to haunt her. During a juniors match she played against an equally peppery opponent, the audience watched in shocked fascination as the two young women hurled insults at each other and threw racquets to the ground in alternating fits of pique. "It's a wonder we didn't blacken each other's eyes," Wade said of the match that would lead to her later characterization in the press as the "Wild Woman" of tennis. The fact that her game actually got worse when she tried to control her temper did not help matters. "Getting mad made me feel guilty, and suppressing myself scuttled my involvement in the match," she said. It would be a personality trait that would taint her entire career. Only Billie Jean King seemed to get through to Wade some years later by suggesting, "You never have time on the court to waste getting mad." New challenges awaited when Virginia entered Sussex University, which had no strong tradition of team sports and which made it even harder for Wade to keep up her practice schedule. She spent hours on slow, stuffy trains shuttling between Sussex and London for practice at the Queen's Club and played badly when she was picked for Britain's Wightman Cup team in 1964—the first of what would be a recordbreaking 21 consecutive years of Wightman Cup play. Court wags thought she was a powerful player, hitting the ball hard and racing to make difficult returns that would elude more timid players; but, they said, she had no control over the ball. Only Worthington remained convinced that "Ginny," as she was now universally called, had the makings of a world champion. "One day she'll prove I'm right," he confided to friends. Worthington's confidence was sorely tested in the next three years, as Virginia struggled to keep to her studies and advance in the rankings at the same time, at one point taking final exams in a room hired for her next to Wimbledon. So it was with some relief that Virginia finally took her degree in mathematics in 1966, looking back on three years of Wimbledon and Wightman Cup play with little to her credit. "Foolishly, I thought Wimbledon's galvanizing effect would be all I'd ever need to win," she said of those difficult years. "Success at Wimbledon requires virtually a twelve-month preparation. Somehow I thought that providence would see that it all just happened." She stubbornly continued to hold that view even after being freed from her studies, devoting nearly all her time to tennis, setting as her goal the U.S. Open and departing for America on her 21st birthday to begin play on the U.S. tennis circuit to qualify. Among her colleagues on the U.S. Tennis Association roster were a young Chris Evert, Evonne Goolagong and Martina Navratilova ; and signing up for the fledgling Virginia Slims circuit, she faced players like Billie Jean King, Rosie Casals , and Margaret Smith Court . There were a few victories, mostly in doubles play, but Wade returned to England at the end of the season with a lackluster singles record, no further toward her goal. There followed another round of international touring. Although her record improved only slightly, Wade felt her game was getting better. "My best tennis was better than it had been," she once recalled; but added, "My worst was still bad." The low point for her was a Caribbean tour, playing a grueling schedule in sweltering heat from Jamaica to Venezuela to Colombia and losing to a string of much lower seeded opponents. Returning. to England at the end of the tour, she played her way to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, which she considered some consolation after her first full year of non-stop tennis. But her patchwork record was attracting attention in the press, which used words like "tempestuous," "explosive" and "glowering" to describe her. In 1968, Wade decided to join the ranks of many of her peers and turn pro, although she had mixed feelings about the decision. "I was adamant that I shouldn't be a puppet of the professional promoter," she said. "If the money was there, that was fine. If not, I wasn't going to go out of my way to procure it." Her ambivalence became evident when she won her first Open tournament in her hometown of Bournemouth. She refused to accept the £800 in prize money, the amount, she said, being too much less than that awarded to the winner of the men's tournament. Despite the predictable press attention her announcement attracted, Wade felt that her 1968 win at Bournemouth justified another try at Wimbledon. I always felt I could get better. That's the whole incentive. —Virginia Wade. The accepted entry points for Wimbledon at the time were the Wightman Cup and the Davis Cup, both played on Wimbledon courts and both important tests for the bigger matches that lay ahead at the prestigious site. Wade had unsuccessfully competed on four Wightman Cup teams, but this time she rocketed to both the singles and doubles titles against the American team. Virginia faced the American Nancy Richey in the singles championships, a replay of a match between them two years before which Wade had lost in the third set. But this time, victory was hers; and this time, the press concentrated more on the game she had played than on her by now famous temper. "This was a performance as controlled, as disciplined, as intelligent as had ever been produced by this unpredictable player," one journalist wrote of the match with Richey. Now, Wimbledon lay ahead, barely a week after the Wightman Cup victory. But as Wade began play in her first match, on courts sodden with four days of rain, her winning streak quickly dissipated, and she was easily defeated by a Swedish player she had faced with success in past years. "It was an embarrassing nightmare," Wade said later. "This was the year my target was to reach the semifinals at least, and I was beaten in the first round." She had serious doubts about pressing on with her plans to travel to Forest Hills for the U.S. Open, but the chance to leave the constant sniping and gossip about her public play and private life in England proved irresistible. Seeded sixth for the tournament, Virginia managed to win her early matches, handily defeating the formidable Rosie Casals and Judy Tegart to arrive at the semifinals. Much to the surprise of the crowd, her victories had come without the expected displays of irritation and outright bad temper. "Only once had I winced at a bad bounce," Wade later boasted, "and then thought 'Shut up and get on with it.'" She maintained her newfound concentration and cool during her semifinal play against Ann Jones , an important rival for best player in Britain; and in 43 unruffled minutes, Wade played her way to a 7–5, 6–1 win to enter finals play against Billie Jean King. It was the most important final in which she had played so far in her career. This time, it took only 42 minutes to send King down to defeat at 6–4, 6–2 and capture her first U.S. Open title. Wade was the first British woman to do so since 1930. She returned to England as the toast of the sporting press, and the win at Forest Hills supplied her with more than just a title. The novel experience of playing an important match without losing her concentration to bad temper proved that her approach of past years—"wanting victory without the slogging," as Wade put it—had worked against her. "This is when you discover that instinct alone cannot sustain you," she said. "Improvisation isn't sufficient. You need mental technique. Being good isn't good enough. You have to know why and how." Wade worked on that technique for the next two years of nearly constant play, often without the professional guidance of the kind of coaching found in the United States. She played to the semifinals at Forest Hills in 1970, losing to Rosie Casals; became the Italian women's champion in 1971; and was confident of another victory at the U.S. Open that year when she slipped during play at a small tournament in New Jersey and badly sprained her ankle, putting her out of competition for the rest of the year. But in 1972, she fought back to capture the singles title at the Australian Open and could tell reporters: "I can honestly say that I am enjoying every moment on court." By 1975, after winning the U.S. Open, the Australian Open, and capturing the Italian title, Wade was telling friends that she had no doubt she would win Wimbledon; and it seemed her prediction was accurate when, at the last tournament leading up to that year's Wimbledon play, she defeated both Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King to take the tournament title. At Wimbledon itself, she played superbly to the semifinals to face Australia's Evonne Goolagong in what was generally conceded to be the best match of the entire tournament due to the precise control displayed by both women. But the victory went to Goolagong, who defeated Wade by just two points. In a display of her new self-confidence, however, Virginia decided to learn from the defeat instead of giving in to despair. "I wasn't going to be defeated twice in one day," she said. "What I had to do was correct my technical weaknesses and leave the press and public to sort out their image of me in whatever way they liked." Over the next year, she practiced relentlessly and learned, as she later explained, to recreate at will the mental focus on the court that would produce her best play, able to react to conditions fluidly. She compared it to an actor learning lines. "The first thing he has to do is get the words out of the way," she said. "On stage, his concentration is no longer on stringing them together or picking up his cues. Now he is free to create and spontaneously react to what is happening on stage. It's the creative process you take out on the court with you." Admitting for the first time that she couldn't win Wimbledon without professional guidance, she sought help from Jerry Teeguarden, who had coached Margaret Smith Court to world championship status. Teeguarden set to work on Wade's serve—called by the press "the best serve in women's tennis" but, as Teeguarden pointed out, one that took too much energy from the rest of her game. By the time the 1977 Wimbledon matches came around, Wade felt the goal was in reach as she defeated her old opponent and good friend Rosie Casals in the quarterfinals. Even when it became apparent that she would be facing Chris Evert in the semifinals, her confidence never wavered. Evert was at the time considered the world's best tennis player and virtually unbeatable. "I knew I could beat her," Wade later wrote. "I wanted to." She felt "fully rehearsed" for the match everyone was sure Evert would win. But it was Virginia who triumphed, battling back after losing the middle of three sets to advance to the finals. She faced Betty Stove , whom Wade had often played in past years and whom she had often defeated; and her training and newfound concentration carried the day as she quickly defeated Stove 4–6, 6–3, 6–1 to capture Wimbledon at last after 17 years of trying. To add even more significance to the victory, Queen Elizabeth II presented Wade with the prized Wimbledon trophy, it being the centennial year for the tournament, as the crowd broke into a joyful rendition of "For She's a Jolly Good Fellow." Wade's subsequent career could never surpass the personal triumph represented by her 1977 Wimbledon victory, although she returned to Wimbledon's Centre Court in the two subsequent years, during which she again faced Evert in semifinals play but this time lost to the American superstar. In succeeding years, she advanced only as far as the quarterfinals, in 1979 and in 1983. By the time of her retirement in 1987, she was 63rd in the international rankings; but she had played at Wimbledon for a record 28 years, had remained in the top-ten rankings for 13 straight years, from 1967 to 1980, and had placed second during 1968. In 1989, Wade was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. But it was Wimbledon in 1977 that would always remain the crowning achievement of her career and her voyage of self-discovery. "One has the right, which need never be surrendered, to graduate, to ascend," Virginia Wade wrote during that remarkable year. "To use every possible source of inspiration to confront the issues that separate you from what you want, is the spiritual inheritance of each of us." sources: Wade, Virginia, with Mary Lou Mellace. Courting Triumph. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1978. Norman Powers , writer-producer, Chelsea Lane Productions, New York, New York. Nice girls finish last. At 3.37 on Friday, when Elena Baltacha delivered a weak forehand service return on Centre Court to lose 6-4 6-4 to Jennifer Capriati, Britain's last representative in the women's singles was on her way home, having reached only the second round. The British women competed valiantly, of course. Anne Keothavong, Emily Webley-Smith, Jane O'Donoghue and Baltacha managed to trouble players hundreds of places above them in the world rankings, but the much-vaunted new generation of British women still could not begin to compete at the top level. Virginia Wade, Wimbledon champion in 1977, has witnessed many false dawns. Jo Durie being number five in the world in the mid-1980s, for example, or Annabel Croft and Sam Smith's top-100 rankings in the late 80s and 90s respectively, not to mention Sue Barker's Wimbledon semi- final appearance in the same year as Wade's success. So what does Wade think of the present generation's showing at Wimbledon? 'So much of this depends on the draw and there are lots of players the British girls could have beaten. They have made big strides and no one has played badly. It was very promising; we started with six and if next year we can have 10, then who knows, eventually we might do really well.' Despite her encouraging words, Wade believes that the malaise in British women's tennis, which so lacks a Tim Henman or even a Greg Rusedski, is a cultural thing. The British national characteristic of apologising when someone steps on our toes means that, although we are celebrated the world over for our good manners, we are regarded as an also-ran as a tennis nation. In short, we are too damned nice to win. 'I teach 10- and 11-year-olds and they are nice and shy and they wouldn't dream of making a fuss,' Wade says. 'I'm not saying that to achieve you need to lose your manners, but that hunger to win is essential and I'm not sure the two can coexist in the British psyche.' She believes it comes down to a particular British character trait. 'Young players are often unwilling to commit themselves, or are not prepared to put themselves on the line, because they are scared of failure. In the end, winning matches is about what opinion you have of yourself and whether you think you are good enough.' Of the present crop of young British players, a noticeable proportion come from immigrant backgrounds - Keothavong, Baltacha and, in the men's game, Alex Bogdanovich, and Wade herself spent much of her childhood in South Africa - so maybe they are not infected with the British disease of 'No, after you'. 'It does strike you, doesn't it?,' Wade says. 'Maybe Elena benefits from that Ukrainian thing of just go and do it. But the young Russians coming through are nearly all from tennis-playing or sports backgrounds, so is it nature or nurture? You do wonder. 'But I don't think we're lacking tennis genes in this country. It's social genes we're lacking. British people are too apologetic. People aren't prepared to stand up for themselves or demand higher standards. I suppose I'm talking about the American thing of if they're unhappy with something, they say they're unhappy. People should have patience, but we should also have the ethic of having to deliver.' So can young British players learn from Americans? 'In this respect, I'm not sure they can,' Wade says. 'They over-analyse everything and that's not us. We should be a bit more like Australians because, if it is a nature argument, they are more genetically like us. The perfect tennis players for me are the Rod Lavers and the Roy Emersons. They had superb natural talent and just got on and did it.' But compare the average young British teenage player with her American counterpart and you quickly see why Britons do not measure up. The American system hothouses players from as young as eight or nine and, while they receive a decent education on site at tennis academies, sport is everything. Wade says: 'I think there is this message that comes across that, in order to do well, you have to give up the rest of your life. I can't blame any teenager, particularly if they have brains and want to go to university, but I would always say try to achieve what you can now and then later you can enjoy your success and have fun.' A major problem is how old British girls are when they take up the sport seriously, which means they are always playing catch-up, as Wade puts it. British players are usually competing in satellite tournaments well into their twenties, but the average age at which players break into the top 100 is 14 or 15; the average age of the top 100 is 26. In other words, once they get into the top 100, they stay there, so the important thing is to get British players past the magic 100 barrier. But therein lies another problem. 'How would you feel if you were told your 14-year-old daughter could go to a Florida academy?' asks Wade. 'Parents don't want to take their child out of school and send them to the States because they don't know whether the sacrifices will be worth it. It's an incredibly difficult decision.' Wade also believes that, because the British game is rarely put in a realistic context (Keothavong, the British number one, has a world ranking of 188), there is unfair pressure on players to succeed, often beyond their true ability and especially at Wimbledon. 'It's hard to be on your own at the top because it's not easy to get any relative idea of where you are. It helped me enormously when Sue Barker came through because the pressure was off and I had someone to compare myself to.' Jeremy Bates, head of performance at the Lawn Tennis Association and captain of Great Britain's Davis Cup team, agrees with much of what Wade says about the British lack of confidence, but he is adamant that the LTA are making progress. 'You can't change a culture,' he says, 'but you can change the competition. What we are trying to do is vastly increase the level of competition our young players are involved in so they are always being pushed by others coming through. But I reject the notion that we're not a competitive nation.' One criticism often made of the LTA is that they focus on just a few dozen young players at any one time in their academies. 'It's not that we're focusing on too few, it's that there are too few to focus on,' says Bates. 'It's about maximising potential. Yes, we have five players in the top 350, but if we can get another 10 girls ranked 400 and another 20 girls ranked 500 and another 30 girls ranked 600, eventually someone is going to break through. 'And often it's a question of money. Ninety-five per cent of children in Spanish academies are privately funded, but in Britain everyone comes to us for funding and there is a limit to what we can do.' Money will always be an issue. Our closest tennis neighbour, France, has been given government money for 20 years and has seen the reward with a steady stream of top-100 players. In the UK, most of tennis's income comes from Wimbledon and sponsorship and only this year have the Government started part-funding LTA projects as one aspect of their campaign to reduce obesity in children. Wade is tennis ambassador for the insurance company Hastings Direct, the main sponsor of the pre-Wimbledon grasscourt tournament in Eastbourne. She advises the company about where to place sponsorship money; in Eastbourne, they announced that they would give £100,000 to any British female player to reach the fourth round at Wimbledon. Their money always looked safe, but Wade believes it is a move in the right direction. It's very good to reward people for success and this is a good carrot,' she says. 'I'd rather this than the easy opportunities like the wild cards they used to give British players for Wimbledon [there is now a wild-card play-off]. The free ride into Wimbledon gave players a false sense of where they are.' A tennis career can put pressure on mothers and fathers, too - the sport is littered with divorced parents. 'It's awful,' says Wade. 'It's so upsetting to see families argue over money, but that's what happens if the player becomes the breadwinner for the family.' For Wade, who coached for four years after she retired from playing and still takes tennis clinics, it always comes back to attitude. 'What I see and hear over and over when players are on the fringe of success is "I need a sponsor" and "I had an injury". They're mental crutches. You want someone to be thinking the right way and I say to parents the most valuable thing you could do is to get your child a sports psychologist.' Wade believes that the LTA, under director of performance David Felgate, are heading in the right direction. There has been a root-and-branch reform of the organisation in the past year and a massive increase in the number of young children picking up a racket for the first time under their programmes. The belief is, according to Bates, that if you get them young enough and make the sport 'sexy' enough, you will keep talented youngsters in the game. While acknowledging that the LTA are on the right track, Wade says that it will always ultimately come down to players believing in themselves. 'We need to get them to believe in a solid, modest way that they're capable of winning, but only if they put in the effort and commitment. You hear kids say, "I want to win Wimbledon." Well I say, "How about winning a small tournament first?" You have to win today and tomorrow and the day after before you can think of the big one.'