John Lloyd - Dear John

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2022

Pitch Publishing

A2 Yeoman Gate

Yeoman Way

Durrington

BN13 3QZ

www.pitchpublishing.co.uk

John Lloyd with Phil Jones, 2022

Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.

Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.

A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library

Print ISBN 9781801501095

eBook ISBN 9781801502733

--

eBook Conversion by www.eBookPartnership.com

My book dedication is to my children Aiden and Hayley.

You were wonderful children, and now you are amazing adults.

I am so proud of you.

Every day I think of you and every day you make me smile.

Love you always,

Dad.

I AM happy to finally have this book in my hands.

It will bring back so many memories and I hope everyone will enjoy it as much as me.

John and I have been friends for 50 years.

It is time to go back to Memory Lane ...

Bjorn

Legendary Swedish player Bjorn Borg won 11 Grand Slam singles titles, including Wimbledon five times in a row from 1976.

TO THE Lloyd family and all my nieces and nephews, thank you for all your love and support.

To Phil Jones, thank you for your unwavering belief in our project despite the many bumps in the road. Your writing skills are incredible, and I have so enjoyed our time together collaborating on our book.

Thanks to all my colleagues that I have worked with at HBO and BBC. I have been so fortunate to have spent time with so many talented and wonderful people.

Thanks to my fellow competitors from all over the world who I either partnered or played against on the tour.

I have been so fortunate to have so many incredible friends in my life. To all of you, I am extremely thankful and grateful.

Many thanks to everyone from Pitch Publishing who had faith in our book.

A letter from the John Lloyd of today to his former self as he embarks on life in the green blazer of Southend High School for Boys.

Dear John,

Get an education. The dream is to become a professional tennis player. Its one you have had since you were five, when batting a ball against a tiny wall in the backyard was the daily ritual.

You believe you have the talent to succeed and you certainly have parents to back you all the way. But the chances of making it to the top are slim. Plus, one serious injury and it can all be taken away from you in a heartbeat.

Without an education, there will be nothing to fall back on. So, dont skip school on a whim. Your sore rear end will thank you for it. Attend and learn. Pass your exams. Then, when the worst befalls you at the start of your tennis career, you will have options and not just the worry of potentially shattered dreams. Just get an education.

John

MY MOTHER and father were amazingly selfless people. Many parents are, of course. The best mums and dads always put their children first. But the sacrifices my parents made werent so they could proudly wave their children off to university, with the promise of careers as city professionals. No, they gave up so much in their lives to keep their boys sporting dreams alive. Elder brother David, younger brother Tony and myself all wanted to make it as professional tennis players. We all dreamed of playing in the Wimbledon Championships. Thanks to Mum and Dad, those dreams came true for all of us.

My father Dennis was from a wealthy background in the south of England, while my mother Doris grew up in a mining family of 12 in the north-east. She lost one of her brothers in a mining accident: a terrible tragedy amid an early life of hardship.

We used to visit my grandmother in the old terrace Mum had grown up in. How so many people squeezed into that tiny brick house I could never understand. The streets resembled those used in the film Billy Elliot, about the child dancer from mining stock. The only bathroom and its big old tub was downstairs, the toilet was outside. There was a coal fire and no heating anywhere else in the house. Tony and me had to share with Gran. Even in winter, she would have the window open and just a single sheet to cover her in bed. It was bloody freezing. But they were made of sterner stuff in that mining community, fuelled no doubt by liberal mounds of suet pudding made in a handkerchief and drizzled with Lyles Golden Syrup. I loved it. But I would be so full and bloated afterwards. This must be what it feels like to eat a football, whole.

It was rough up there, but the locals were great people, so warm and welcoming. They were tough, though. By virtue of her upbringing and surroundings, so was Mum.

Doris met and fell in love with Dennis during the Second World War. My father was from money in Essex: big mansion of a house in Chingford, complete with its own tennis court, and all. The contrast to their respective lives in their formative years could not have been greater. Mum must have thought she had hit the jackpot when she married into that kind of wealth, with the promise of a life of luxury. Unfortunately for her, thats not how it panned out. Luxury, in Mums case, was not for life.

When my grandfather on my Dads side died of lung cancer, he left everything in two equal measures to his two children. My father was suddenly a very wealthy man. He decided to plough all his money into a retail clothes business in London. I was too young to know what was happening in Dads work life. I just remember we had it good back then. The business was an apparent success.

Unfortunately, my father was too trusting of people. He was probably too nice for his own good. When a partner persuaded him to open up another arm of the business in Birmingham, it was the beginning of the end. He was, to put it bluntly, screwed out of his fortune. He lost everything and was left with massive debts.

What he did next was a wonderful life lesson for me. He didnt go bankrupt and carry the stigma of that through life. He took two jobs and paid all his creditors back in full, penny by penny. It took him 25 years, but he was never declared bankrupt. I always admired Dad for that. He told me: If you make a deal, you honour it. Its that simple. That line about honour has always stayed with me.

Our family of six Mum, Dad, sister Ann, brothers David and Tony and me downsized into a three-up, two-down house on Woodfield Road in Leigh-on-Sea, which is a borough of Southend-on-Sea just to the north of the Thames Estuary. It wasnt much bigger than the house my mother grew up in and there was still an outside loo. That was an experience and a half in the middle of winter, I can tell you. Using the toilet for the first time and sitting on what felt like a large doughnut of ice, with the passing rag n bone man shouting any old iron, is a memory never to fade.