Exclusive
Leon Smith: the inside story behind Britain’s doubles success
Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares after winning the 2021 Great Ocean Road Open
In the second of a new series of exclusive columns written for Advantage only, Great Britain’s Davis Cup Captain Leon Smith gives an insight into how British doubles tennis has improved dramatically over the past ten years.
At this year’s Australian Open there were a record nine British entrants in the men’s doubles draw – breaking an 115-year record.
This reflects a huge change in British men’s doubles over the last decade. In 2010 there was only one British player in the world’s top 62 (at No.50), compared to seven at the end of 2020, including three within the top 30.
Here Leon explains the driving force behind these significant statistical improvements in recent years.
British doubles has changed over the past decade because of one person
British doubles tennis has been vastly shaped by one man. He’s called Louis Cayer, and for me he’s one of the world’s greatest coaches – both in doubles and singles.
Louis was first brought to my attention by Judy Murray in 2007. She had asked him to assess her son Jamie, as he was looking to get into doubles. Simply put, she was blown away by him. His coaching was so specific and detailed towards the art of doubles – it was like nothing she’d ever seen before.
Louis had also had a tonne of success – he’d coached Grand Slam and Olympic champions, and had captained Canada in the Davis Cup. She went to Roger Draper, who at the time was the Chief Executive of the LTA, and asked if we could take him on. So he did, and that was when the journey started with Louis starting to work on a specialist doubles programme, back in 2008.
We should be proud of the fact that we chose to embark on a doubles programme. There was scepticism at first – some questioned why we weren’t solely focused on singles – but I think we’ve taken doubles to another level because we’ve stuck with it. It shows that if something works well and has success, and if you keep investing in it over time, you’ll reap the rewards. Louis’s system has been running for 13 years now and we’re really seeing that paying off.
Why Louis Cayer is the world’s best doubles coach
Louis is as good a singles coach as he is a doubles coach – one of the world’s greatest. He’s had a huge amount of success in doubles, though, because he has a clear vision and system. In a nutshell, what’s so important about doubles play is positioning and territory; Louis is so good at dealing with these two issues because his understanding of space management is remarkable.
He runs these amazing sessions - the first he’d do with any player - where he just gets you to stand in different positions on the court, and uses ropes to demonstrate as a visual the territories that you and your partner should be positioned in. No focus on how you hit the ball, he just uses these ropes to move each player in a way that they’re always connected and holding the correct position depending on where the ball is. That’s the biggest thing in doubles – understanding the geometry of the court – and Louis teaches that better than anyone else in the world.
From there you can add more layers, like patterns of where to play depending on where you are on the court, or who you’re playing against. For example, playing against a couple of clay court specialists who keep hitting huge forehands to the back of the court is very different from playing against a doubles team like the Bryan brothers who were always looking to come into the net.
Louis has taught our players systems so that they can take on other doubles pairings in any situation. The doubles system is defined around four roles on the court: server, service partner; returner, returner’s partner. Getting a deep understanding of each of those individual roles, while also knowing how to move together as a team, is the key.
Changing attitudes towards doubles
Because of the success of what players like Jamie Murray, Colin Fleming, Jonny Marray and Joe Salisbury have achieved, we’re seeing more British players choosing doubles as a career.
Doubles players are able to earn prize money reasonably well whilst also being able to play on Tour for a long time – traditionally they have longer tennis careers than singles players. Players will always play singles when they’re younger, no doubt, but doubles should and does play a significant role in junior player development . American universities, for example, will normally look at a junior player’s singles record before offering them a tennis scholarship, but, as the journey goes on, a top international junior or transitioning pro can find that their mentality, or their game, is more suited to doubles and it’s at that stage now we’re seeing players making the transition to doubles.
Players who are in their early to mid-twenties are thinking: ‘I reckon doubles could suit me’, whereas before they may have just stayed on the singles circuit without making the necessary ranking progress to reach the main tour. More recently we’ve seen guys like Luke Bambridge and Jonny O’Mara move over from singles to doubles pretty early on in their careers, and break into the top 50 in the world quickly too. I think this is the biggest change – British players are looking up to guys like Jamie and Joe and thinking they can follow in their footsteps. That, plus the expertise of Louis, has been the catalyst behind the rise in world-class British doubles players.
What the future of British doubles will look like
I have no doubt Louis’ legacy will be vast - he’s now worked with so many British players at the highest level of the game, so once they’ve finished playing they’ll become huge assets if they stay in tennis. Some will become coaches – Colin Fleming is part of the Billie Jean King Cup team and works at our academy in Scotland. Jonny Marray has also become a coach. But others will go on to get involved in organising tournaments, or work in administrative or managerial roles, and whatever it might be they’ll have a big impact in the sport with their experience.
Louis is also having an impact on the current crop of coaches – people like Rob Morgan who works with Joe Salisbury and Alan MacDonald who works with Jamie Murray. They’re getting all of this information from one of the best in the world and they can take that on and become leaders in doubles coaching as well.
We’ve also tasked Louis with working to help national, regional and academy coaches too and it is important other coaches have the opportunity to hear and learn about his methods and gain from his knowledge. I hope Louis keeps coaching at the elite end of British tennis for many more years to come but of course there will come a time when he will want to wind down somewhat and when that does happen we will never be able to replace him, but what we can do is try to get as much information from him as possible and take that far and wide throughout British tennis. Hopefully the success we’ve had in doubles over the past decade is just the beginning of what’s to come.