One to watch: Sussex tennis ace who’s doubled up for title after title

Julian Cash in action at Wimbledon, 2022 | Picture: Offside Sports Photography

Mid Sussex tennis ace Julian Cash had a 2022 to savour on the court – is aiming for a repeat showing in 2023. With a number of doubles partners, most recently Henry Patten, he has won numerous silverware and shot up the rankings. So we asked Cash to talk us through how he got started in tennis, his early years on the court, his tennis idols and his success so far.

Cash was born in Brighton and lived in Fulking until he was 18 when he moved to Burgess Hill.

The former pupil of Handcross Park School, Haywards Heath, spent his junior years playing at Pavillion and Avenue LTC in Hove before moving to the Virgin Active in Falmer.

He is now based at the NTC in London and uses The Training Base which runs out of Sussex University, run by Barry Fulcher. He spends some time at Loughborough University too.

Julian Cash and Henry Patten at the Rothesay Open at Nottingham Tennis Centre in 2022 (Photo by Nathan Stirk/Getty Images for LTA)

The Mid Sussex Times and sussexworld.co.uk has reported on Cash’s successes regularly in recent years.

We featured Cash and Patten in June last year when they beat Aleksandr Nedovyesov and Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi to claim the LTA Surbiton Trophy title.

Only a last-minute wild card had given them the opportunity to play but it was just one of a string of victories they chalked up in 2022.

Cash tells up his story in his own words...

When I was younger, I had a lot of energy and played a whole range of sports – rugby, football, cricket … tennis just being another.

I was fortunate to live about two minutes away from our local club and so I would go down there at the weekends and join their junior squad sessions.

In my younger years I played for GB a couple of times, at under-12/ under-14 age.

I also competed for Sussex almost every year in my junior days, up until I turned 17 and left for American college.

I was also on scholarship at Bedes School in East Sussex though my GCSE years and competed for the school team there as well.

I was fortunate to always have good people around me – starting with my family, but also my coaches and other players to train with.

That whole system really drove me to be better each week and having a really good group of older players to train with week in week out was great.

In terms of my biggest role model, I always liked Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

I loved how he played the game; I saw parts of my own game in his and I loved his demeanour on and off the court.

He was extremely relaxed, got the crowd going, but worked as hard as anyone and was always humble.

From a young age, maybe 10 or 11, I started to realise that I had some talent – and that was definitely part of why I enjoyed tennis so much.

I would improve different areas of my game quite quickly and that was always really rewarding.

In terms of deciding to go after tennis as a career path, I would say it was a few years after that.

Once I'd had a bit of success on the international stage, it opened my eyes to the potential possibilities for me in the sport.

I'd done fairly well at some Tennis Europe events at the under-14 level and from there really began to push on and give tennis my all, in the hope that it would one day become my job.

I've always been quite lucky that my game has translated to doubles quite well.

I've always played aggressively and have a good serve and volley too.

When I was young, I always had quite a good feel in terms of positioning on a doubles court and this helped me enjoy it from an early age.

Over the years these skills have developed quite naturally, and the more I've practiced these skills, specifically over this past year, I've gotten better and better.

In 2021 I won a number of titles with different partners – in Greece, Tunisia and two in Doha.

Then last year I won titles in Loughborough, India and Greece with different partners.

Then, with Henry Patten last year, we won three titles at Nottingham and others at Roehampton, Surbiton, Ilkley, Granby Canada, Columbus, Fairfield, Las Vegas, Charlottesville, Drummondville Canada, Andria Italy, Maia Portugal.

Many were ATP Challenger events, which is where our record of 10 titles in a season is from.

As for 2023, we have had a very solid start to the year.

We made the semi-final of the ATP250 event in Pune in India, which was our first main tour event.

Then we went over to Melbourne to play in the Australian Open, where we won our first round match.

Now we’re about to head to Dallas and Delray for two more ATP 250 events.

Beyond those, it’s hard to say exactly what's next for us.

It's hard for us to plan too much long-term as it will depend on our rankings and the cuts each week.

We'll definitely try to play as many events on the main tour as we can and see if we can get to a position where we can play every week. We are looking forward to it.