I do like to give people credit for things that make a difference to tennis. I was very lucky at the ITF to have good people around me. As Steve Jobs said …you hire good people to challenge you and to tell you what to do.
I had the pleasure to meet up in Melbourne with Brenden Sharpe. “Sharpee” got involved with the ITF in 2002 when he helped me to put together a website related to the ITN that we were developing at the ITF as the first global rating system for tennis.
Brenden was able at that time to advise me about where technology was going. At that time I was the Fred Flinstone of technology!
On the basis of his recommendations, the development department started to look at distance learning as a coach education tool. Following a meeting in Stockholm in 2006, I approved the development of the Tennis iCoach platform.
The Tennis iCoach was launched in 2007 and was the first of its kind among the International Sports Federations. All of my colleagues at the ITF, supported by the ITF coach commission and other experts drove the content. But Brenden was the key to the success and I know that we could not have developed the project with such a relatively small budget without his practical expertise and advice in those years 2005 to 2011.
