Welcome to the next instalment in the SquashMind Podcast series. Today I'm being joined by Jenny Duncalf. Jenny is one of the greatest players that England has ever produced. She reached world number two in December 2019. She's won ten professional tour titles. She's got 112 caps for England, which is phenomenal. She's also managed to get three silver medals at the Commonwealth Games, only being stopped on most occasions by Nicol David. She was in a generation where Nicol David was playing and arguably Nicol David was one of the greatest players to play the game. So for Jenny to become world number two and be slightly behind Nicol David, is nothing to be sniffed at. As a junior, she was the European Junior champion and she won two individual European titled as a senior as well. She managed to get two British National titles and was also part of the winning England Ladies team at the World Team Championships in 2016. She had a real good period and we talk about it in the podcast a little bit more. In 2009, she won three big titles back to back, which ultimately got her to world number two, the Soho Square Open in Egypt, the US Open and the Qatar Classic. She lost in in the World Open final in 2011 to her nemesis Nicol David. We go into quite a cool discussion about her trying to compete with Nicol and how this was. The conversation is really broad, really wide ranging and one that I think you'll find super insightful. It's so great to hear how she opens up. She is very honest about the mental side of the game, and we go into a lot of discussion around what it was like and her environment, growing up, and being coached by her father in law David Pearson, who was also the national coach in England and was the coach who produced Nick Matthew, Laura Masara, Peter Nicol also. So, you know, having someone like David as your father in law is going to put you in a good place to start a career. It's just such a cool conversation we got on really well and lots of little tips to take from what she has done in her career. She is currently the master of ceremonies for the PSA and she comes across brilliantly. She has been really well received in that. And she's also the junior Australian coach. She lives in Australia, in Brisbane, in particular with her partner, Rachel Grinham, who herself was a world number one. And we have a little discussion around how that was competing with someone you are in a relationship with and her philosophy around the junior squash in regard to Australia is insightful, really opening the mind and really got me to think a little bit about my philosophies and how things are going with the way I coach as well. She has such a wealth of knowledge being world number two, being playing for 17 years on the pro tour, winning loads of junior titles, number one in her age group, all the way through her junior ranks. And it's just a fun conversation. You can tell the passion and enthusiasm in her voice. She enjoys what she does massively and I hope you'll find a lot of takeaways and a lot of nuggets from this really insightful chat between myself and Jenny Duncalf. One small caveat, the sound recording is not great on this in the first 15 minutes of the podcast. There was quite a long delay. She was in Brisbane and I'm not sure if the distance had anything to do with it, but it gets a little bit easier as the podcast progresses, so hopefully you can stick with it because it's really insightful of what we talk about.

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