My mom, she's from Ireland, coached tennis in Nigeria when she was a missionary and turned me on to it when I was young.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Well, my mum's been a tennis coach - she coached me till I was 12.
I was a keen sportsman, and became school captain in soccer and cricket.
And it was where I learned how to play tennis and eventually became captain of the tennis team at the school and was on the Junior Davis Cup in New York City.
My first career was as a coach and a teacher.
I wanted to emulate my parents - Mum captained India in basketball, and Dad won a bronze in hockey in 1972 Olympics. My focus has always been to achieve excellence whether in the field of tennis, in the corporate field, in the art of acting or in motivating youngsters.
My mother wanted very much to play tennis; she wanted, most of all, to be a singer and play the piano.
I started when I was six years old. My first coach was my granny, she was the best player in Slovakia.
My mother was English. My parents met in Oxford in the '50s, and my mother moved to Nigeria and lived there. She was five foot two, very feisty and very English.
My parents wanted me and my siblings to practice some sports outside school. And since we lived next to a tennis club, we decided to play tennis. I didn't have an idol, so to speak, but I always enjoyed watching Pete Sampras and Alex Corretja.
It was my mother who got me involved in gymnastics, sending me to classes when I was six just to stop me doing back flips on the couch and destroying the furniture.