MURRY IN SPAIN

Some of you probably know that Rafael Nadal and I have been competitors and good friends since our teenage years, but you may not realise he was a major influence in my decision to leave home at 15 to move to Spain.

As juniors, our countries used to play against each other in team competitions such as the European Winter Cup, though I never actually had to play him as I was a year younger and played No 2 for Britain while he led the Spanish team. But we weren't holding tennis racquets when he said something that led to me moving to Barcelona.

Instead, we were part of a group of guys playing racquetball.

I was asking all the guys in this group who they were practising with and when Nadal said Carlos Moya, it was a big wake-up call.

Back home, because we never had the opportunity to play sport in school - something I think should change given there are great opportunities for people to make a living out of sport - I could only practise for 90 minutes, four days a week with my coach. Yet here was a rival hitting with one of the world's best players and training four or five hours a day for five days a week.

I realised I was not doing enough and knew I had to move. It wasn't something I wanted to do and I knew it would be tough because my older brother, Jamie, had moved to an academy at Cambridge when he was 12 but it didn't really work out for him. He got homesick and wanted to come home. I know my mum and dad were a bit worried about my decisions because they just wanted us to be happy, but after deciding I wanted to play tennis instead of football I needed to give it everything I had.

The hardest time was the first few meals I had when I arrived at the academy in Spain. It was a bit of a culture shock.

I knew only one other guy there - and not that well - so I was walking into the canteen and sitting down alone. And it wasn't even great food. No paella unfortunately! We were just fed pasta and salads. The biggest change, though, was the time we would eat dinner and when we would go to bed. In the UK, most people have dinner at 6pm and I was used to going to bed about nine o'clock. In Spain, people don't eat till then. It was all a bit different, but being able to do school and sport at the same time, instead of just school, was great for me.