The jokes were already flying when the Great Britain team walked into the press conference room on the eve of their opening Billie Jean King Cup Finals tie in Málaga.
While Heather Watson and Olivia Nicholls, the team’s resident comics, were loudly sounding out their best Australian accents, Katie Boulter, Harriet Dart and Emma Raducanu cracked up at their inside jokes. Alongside serious tennis topics, they discussed birthday banners, chocolate cakes and all the recent team bonding that had brought them closer together.
On Tuesday Great Britain will face Slovakia in their second semi-final in three years. Their success is certainly a reflection of the sheer quality provided by Boulter and Raducanu, but the camaraderie built within the team is also driving them. “Each person does their own individual practices, but we work really well as a team and when we come together at the dinner table,” said Raducanu. “We’re always laughing and reflecting on the day and we have a few inside jokes kind of running through the team, so that’s keeping us going.”
This congenial culture between players who are rivals most weeks on the tour has been deliberately fostered by the team captain, Anne Keothavong, after her own experiences in her playing career as part of Great Britain’s leading duo alongside Elena Baltacha, who died from liver cancer aged 30 in 2014.
Baltacha and Keothavong were born just a month apart and their longtime rivalry led to significant tension between them on their respective journeys to becoming top-50 players. In the latter stages of their careers, however, they forged a great friendship.
“I don’t think it’s any secret, when I was back playing, myself and Elena Baltacha had our ups and downs, but towards the end, we were pretty tight,” said Keothavong. “As adults, because we were a bit older, more mature, we were able to reflect on how we could have been better, but also the people around us that influence us: who are the right people to listen to, who should we have just ignored?
“I think when she passed away, you just kind of think: ‘Well, all of that … what was that?’ It was just such a waste to spend so much time being angry and pissed off at each other and it was so totally unnecessary. I’m pleased that before we both hung up our rackets we were able to really talk about all of that and during the last couple of years of our careers, we were very tight.”
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Since she became captain in 2017, the 41-year-old Keothavong has commanded respect and authority, demanding high standards and ambition from her players, but she can also be found cracking jokes with them. On Tuesday her team will attempt to take Great Britain to the final of this competition for the first time since 1981.
“It’s wonderful to see when you’ve got your top two players genuinely getting on, and there’s a huge amount of respect for each other,” said Keothavong. “What’s important for me in this competition is that the girls find a way to gel and get on. From my previous experience as a player, that wasn’t always the case, so it’s always been important for me as captain that we do our best, and shape things up to make sure that the girls do walk away with good experience and good memories.”
