We are thrilled to announce the launch of The Barge, a new community forum just for Friends of The Tennis Podcast. Over the past couple of years, we have frequently received emails from listeners who told us they love tennis but don’t have many, if any friends who like to talk about the sport. It will sit on our Friends of The Tennis Podcast platform, alongside the excellent new monthly tennis column written by Hannah Wilks, and Hannah will spend plenty of time on The Barge, along with Catherine, David, Matt and hopefully many of you.

Catherine, David and Matt are at Indian Wells for the first time as a trio, as The Tennis Podcast, but it is a tournament that evokes lots of memories for them from attending, working at and watching from afar for the last couple of decades (and more in David’s case). Here, they write about some of their favourite Indian Wells memories.

In 1997, David Law's dream of a job in tennis came true, working as a link between tennis players and the media at The Queen's Club. What he didn't know was what it would involve. How do you convince a player who has just lost 7-6 in the third set to come to a press conference to talk about it when it’s the last thing he feels like doing? What do you say when you are the first person to speak to him? This is the story of how David learned the job, on the job.

The first new podcast for listeners who subscribe to Friends of The Tennis Podcast is called ‘My First Wimbledon’. In it, David Law, Catherine Whitaker and Matt Roberts detail memories of the first time they watched, visited and worked at Wimbledon. For David, a student in the mid-90’s, his first visit led to a bylined piece in the Daily Telegraph. It isn’t available online any more. But he found it in the depths of his hard drive.