HOME AND AWAY DAVE MILEY: Johnny Wattersontalks to the director of development with the International Tennis Federation

DAVE MILEY was one of those teenagers who fell in love. Got bitten hard. Nothing could shake his mind off the object of his affection for the one thing that infatuated him for much of his adolescence. But he was honourable and righteous. He thought about it but never once did he actually sleep with his tennis equipment. He was, as he says himself, "a bit of tennis nut as a teenager . . . I practically slept with my racquet".

The game and endless days spent in Monkstown, Dublin, hitting a ball over the nets in De Vesci square was a natural progression and true to the family name. His grandfather, Jack Miley, lived in De Vesci square and played in Wimbledon in 1927, having become the first Irish Davis Cup captain in 1923. He lost in the first round but still, it was quite an act for the grandson to try to follow.

Tennis was the life and now tennis is also the job of the director of development with the International Tennis Federation. Miley is based in London but travels all over the world for most of the year, while the two youngest of his three children, Hugo (14) and Thirza (16) attend Wesley College in Dublin. "I have travelled 130 days a year for 17 years to some of the most distant and rugged places as well as to some of the greatest tournaments in the nicest cities including, of course, Roland Garros each year," he says.

"Paris in early June. I just love that tournament, where every match is a war. I have been lucky to see live 15 men's and women's singles Wimbledon singles finals. I still sometimes have to pinch myself that this is my life."

An Irish doubles champion at Fitzwilliam as well as other domestic wins was enough for Miley to start a business degree in UCD and then put it on ice for a place in Lander College in South Carolina, where he travelled on a tennis scholarship. It was for one year and he loved it. But arriving back to his home in Malahide and busing it to UCD each day throughout an Irish winter was misery. He got through the year but was soon back in the US, where he played college tennis with the Bryan brothers, the most successful doubles act in the game.

"At 22 I came back to Ireland and finished my B Comm - six years in university, three degrees but again the important thing was I was beating some of the top Irish players from time to time, winning the odd title, doing better in the doubles. I didn't want to live at home so while I played the tournaments and did a poor impression of a diligent student, I made quite a good living coaching and stringing racquets. What a great time. Money in my pocket, a top-floor flat in Fitzwilliam Street, a car. Not a bad set-up for a 22-year-old tennis-playing student."

Miley now lives about a mile away from the All England Club in south west London and is essentially in charge of all non-professional areas within the ITF. His main function is to assist member nations with their tennis programs. His department has 46 people, with 20 of those spread around the world. They also pick up on young individual talents, many of whom come from countries where there is a poorly developed tennis structure.

Prior to that, he was involved in a variety of tennis ventures and at one stage travelled as coach to the Irish players on the circuit. More coaching followed with the Lawn Tennis Association and in 1991 the ITF asked him to work for them just as the Soviet Unions was breaking up. "The Soviet Union and the former Yugoslav Republic had just broken up and 21 new countries joined the ITF," he says. "In my first five years I visited all 16 former Soviet republics and the five Yugoslav countries as well as Albania, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia.

"The main part of my job is to assist the ITF member nations to develop tennis. It is a very open brief . . . Some of the players we helped with over the years include Marcos Baghdatis, Jarko Niemenen of Finland, Gustavo Kuerten of Brazil, Victoria Azarenka of Belarus and Cara Black of Zimbabwe. I actually had Cara in training camp in Botswana in 1993 at the age of 12. The projects are jointly funded by ITF and the Grand Slam nations and it's a way of bigger tennis nations giving back to smaller ones and ensuring top tennis remains international."

On arrival back from the US Open last month, he had just a few days in London before flying to Beijing for five days followed by a week in El Salvador. This month and next take him to Dakar, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Qatar and then Spain, Miami and Ghana in December. "In a way it's like a mini United Nations," he says. "I think we Irish are quite good with people, we're pretty open to other cultures."