Calling the Shots
Description
The instant Sunday Times bestseller
'A life of two wonderfully entertaining halves' Sunday Times
Rewind to 1971, and Sue Barker's coach is sending his 15-year-old tennis protégée to a junior championship in France, alone, with a one-way ticket, telling her she'll have to win the money to pay for her return fare. Sue hides in the grounds of the hosting tennis club overnight, to avoid paying for a hotel. The next day, she walks onto court and smashes it. Five years later, and she's Britain's No 1.
The same combination of grit, grace and talent took her to the top of live Sports TV. And now, after four decades on camera encouraging other legends to share their stories, she is telling her own.
Going all in for her once-only autobiography, Sue takes us inside the showbizzy world of 70s and early 80s tennis. She reveals the battles she fought for hard-won success in two careers and gives us a ringside seat on the nation's biggest sporting dramas, and a fascinating insider's understanding of competitors under pressure.
This is the remarkable life story of a tennis champion, an award-winning broadcaster who has brought sporting history into our living rooms for decades, and a trail-blazing woman who has always called the shots.
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Person
As a broadcaster, in 2001 she became the first woman to win the Royal Television Society's best sports presenter award. She led the BBC's reporting on the Olympics for over a decade, including London 2012. She anchored SPOTY for 19 years, was quizmaster on A Question of Sport for 24 years and fronted coverage of Wimbledon for three decades.
In 2020, she won The Sunday Times Sportswomen of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award.
Wimbledon: A personal history is her second Sunday Times bestselling book, following her autobiography, Calling the Shots, published in 2022. Sue lives in the Cotswolds with her husband Lance.