Dave began his career as an assistant at Christopher Hull Sport in Tonbridge. Racket’s professional Chris Hull would string the rackets for Tonbridge boys in his sports shop in the mornings and coach at the School in the afternoon. Chris persuaded Dave to play his first game of rackets at the age of 19 and could instantly tell that Dave was a natural. Headmaster, Christopher Everett, agreed that the School could employ an assistant coach, and after an interview with the headmaster, and David Kemp, Dave was recruited. Following his first 18 months as an assistant under Chris Hull, Dave spent the next 18 months training under the top rackets professional coach, Ron Hughes at Malvern College. This then led to Dave becoming Tonbridge School’s full time rackets coach in 1983 when Chris Hull retired. Ten years later, Dave reached a world ranking of six, won the US Open Doubles, and reached the Professional Singles Finals another six times, twice in the USA and four times in England. Extraordinarily, in 2012, at the age of 52, Dave was still ranked 16 in the world.

Dave is largely responsible for Tonbridge’s reputation as one of the best rackets schools in the country and has seen many excellent players through the School in his 43 years in post, not least Sam Seecharan (OH5) who won the Foster Cup at Queen’s last month. Special mention must also go to another of Dave’s students, Jonny Longley (WW 82-87), the only school boy in history to have won every cup in both singles and doubles at Queen’s between 1984 and 1987, and never dropped a match.

Dave continues to coach boys to excellence in this sport.