On court Hutchins wasn't explosive like Andy Murray, his close friend since meeting in an under-10s match in Scotland in the early 1990s. Nor was he showy or swaggery; he described himself as more like Pat Rafter or Stefan Edberg, 'quiet and focused'.
Hutchins's life changed on December 27 2012. He had finally gone for tests after a physiotherapist flagged up the possibility of kidney problems, and that morning he received the results: Hodgkin lymphoma, cancer of the blood. It was stage four, the most advanced – the cancer had spread to his body organs, including the lungs and spleen, and his back (hence the pain).
About 1,800 people a year in the UK are diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, and it accounts for 0.2 per cent of all male deaths from cancer.
'I knew it was cancer,' Hutchins says. 'I'd seen so many specialists, so many doctors, had so many scans and biopsies. And the way they were talking, it was obvious they didn't want to tell me, but they were preparing to say it was quite serious. So I was upset for literally two seconds and then, fine.'
Last January Hutchins exchanged the tennis court for the cancer ward. He spent every other Thursday lying on a hospital bed in the Royal Marsden Hospital, Sutton, having chemotherapy drugs pumped into a vein in his right arm.
That month, Andy Murray dedicated his win in the Brisbane International to 'one of my closest friends, who is back home watching… you are going to get through it.'
And he did. Hutchins was given the all-clear in August and is now rededicating himself to tennis. His recovery has been nothing short of miraculous.
Undergoing treatment for Hodgkin lymphoma in hospital PHOTO: Getty
'Sometimes after chemotherapy I couldn't face eating. I'd have a plate like this' – Hutchins points to his chicken and avocado salad – 'and would only eat this much.' He holds up a tiny forkful of chicken. We are having lunch in the members' restaurant at the Queen's Club in west London.
Founded in 1886, and named after its first patron, Queen Victoria, it is one of the jewels in the crown of the British grass-court season as every June it hosts the Aegon Championships, which serve as a warm-up for Wimbledon.
We have met here because Hutchins was recently appointed tournament director of the championships, a first for a current tour player (although he will not be allowed to compete at Queen's). 'A lot of tennis players don't want other things on their plate, but that is the opposite of what I'm like. I like to keep busy,' he says.
He has already shown me around – the 28 outdoor and eight indoor courts – and throughout the tour he has been greeted warmly by staff and members alike. Hutchins himself looks as though he has stepped out from a watch ad – handsome, 6ft 3in tall, broad shoulders. His clothes – elegant jacket, check shirt, teal tie – are by Ted Baker, for which he recently became a brand ambassador.
His face is tanned from playing in a tournament in California. When we sat down he ordered sparkling water and blackcurrant cordial, just about the only sugar he permits himself now.
He has a polite and charming air that belies his grit, and behaves so professionally both on and off the court that it is hard to realise that he is still only 29. He sees himself as 'a normal guy, down to earth'. Before his new role with Ted Baker, he says, 'I would have probably turned up to this in a tracksuit.'
He looks so healthy it is hard to imagine how he was a year ago. 'I lost most of my hair,' he says. 'The first time it happened I woke up in the morning and turned over and there was a stash of hair on the pillow. I thought I was going to go completely bald.'
He dropped four kilos – he was 87kg (13st 10lb) before he became ill – but forced himself to eat so when he finished his treatment he was only one kilo shy of his original weight. 'I wanted to be close to the same person I was when I started,' he explains.
He knows the cancer could return, but for now he is consolidating his remarkable recovery with frantic activity. The day we met he was up at 6am to go for a 30-minute run near his home in Wimbledon. He is playing with Fleming again – earlier this month they reached the final of the BMW Open in Munich.
Hutchins was approached by the Aegon Championships' managing director, Stephen Farrow, in January. 'He asked if I'd consider the role and I said it would be absolutely fantastic. I didn't think about it for a second. I've been playing at tournaments for six or seven years and know what it takes to run one.'
His role includes looking after the players, the media and on-site activities, such as a players' lounge, plus overseeing transport, hotels, players' food and physiotherapy treatment. 'He has a big job on his hands now with playing and also being a tournament director,' Andy Murray tells me via email, 'but often players do make the best tournament directors because they know what works.'
Among the comforts Hutchins plans to provide is a grooming room, where players can receive complimentary manicures and pedicures. 'We have the best players in the world coming to our tournament, let's look after them,' he says.
His association with Queen's runs deep. This was the club where, in 2007, at the age of 22, he had his first win in an Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) World Tour match when he partnered Jamie Delgado on centre court in front of 7,500 spectators (they had been due to play on one of the back courts, but were upgraded after another player pulled out). It was Hutchins's first match with a speed gun. 'I could see how fast I was serving!'
This is also the place where he would come, despite feeling weak from chemotherapy, to organise Rally Against Cancer, a charity match held after the final of the Aegon Championships last year, which featured Boris Johnson, Jonathan Ross, Andy Murray and Ivan Lendl and raised more than £350,000 for the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity.
At the Rally Against Cancer Charity Match, flanked by Boris Johnson, Jonathan Ross, Jimmy Carr, Andy Murray, Tim Henman, Sir Richard Branson, Eddie Redmayne and Michael McIntrye PHOTO: Getty
Rally Against Cancer was the idea of Chris Kermode, then the Aegon tournament director, and now the CEO and chairman of the ATP World Tour. 'Chris called me in January, probably 10 days after my chemotherapy started and said, how would you like to put on a charity event this year at Queen's? And I said, I'd love to. I don't know what state I'll be in, how healthy I'll be, but let's go for it.'
'It was inspirational,' Kermode says. 'He was so committed to making sure that it was the best that it could be. He was clearly exhausted but never, ever complained, never really mentioned it, unless asked. It was quite extraordinary.' Hutchins says the experience 'gave me a lot of belief that I could get over the line and come back to court'.
He maintains that the chief factor in his recovery was his background as a tennis player. Not only was he physically fit – 'that helped with dealing with the chemotherapy; I was physically more able to take on toxins' – but he also had a mental edge tempered by years on the competitive circuit.
He decided to treat the cancer as an opponent. 'If you have bad results in tennis, you have to do things that are uncomfortable to make yourself comfortable again. So you train harder, spend longer in the gym, spend more hours studying opponents, and that is what I did with this. I did a lot of research.' His strategy was to focus on diet, lifestyle and 'keeping my mind busy'.
His fiancée, Lindsay Woods, a lawyer, whom he met at a house party when he was 16, took a year off work to look after him. She did a lot of research into what he should be eating. The diet of elite athletes is abstemious, and before he was ill Hutchins typically allowed himself two cups of coffee a week; a glass of red wine once a fortnight; Lindt milk chocolate as a treat.
But he liked sandwiches and pasta and ate a lot of red meat to build up muscle. Woods, a vegetarian, suggested he eliminate caffeine, red meat, dairy, shellfish and all bread, apart from that made with spelt flour. She made spelt pizzas with tomato sauce and vegetables, and brown rice sushi with vegetables. He also had beetroot and orange juice every morning and evening. 'Even when I was feeling really ill, I made sure I nailed eight beetroots a day,' he says.
His treatment routine was a blood test at Sutton every other Wednesday, then chemotherapy every other Thursday for five hours. Not that he would rest in between treatments. 'A lot of the time I'd be working on the computer, writing, doing projects,' he says. One of these projects was working as a tactician for the British Davis Cup team.
'Fridays were tough. But I made sure I got out of the house and did things with family and friends. And then Sunday I would generally start to feel better. I'd arrange meetings on Monday morning no matter what; whether I was ill or wanted to lie in bed, I knew I had to get up on Monday morning.'
Hutchins incorporated elements of positive thinking into his treatment. 'Psychology was crucial for me,' he explains. 'The goal was to get healthy again, back on court again and to have CT scans that showed no cancer. I always had that sight firmly in my mind.' He goes on, 'I'd talk to Colin about "when we're playing again next year we need to do this", always talking in a positive way about when we're back on court together. That mindset was very big for me.'
But positivity doesn't always help, I say. Elena Baltacha, the former British number one, died of liver cancer at the age of 30 only a few days before we met. 'Elena had the most positive mindset you could possibly have,' Hutchins says. 'She would have hit cancer with everything she could have hit it with and never given up.
'But sometimes cancer does get the better of people and it's not a question of who has the stronger mental powers or anything.' (On finals day at Queen's, Hutchins and Murray will be taking part in Rally for Bally, a series of exhibition matches to raise money in Baltacha's memory.)
PHOTO: Getty
Ross Hutchins was born into a world of tennis. His father, Paul, is a former British Davis Cup player and captain, and now runs national club league tournaments with Ross's mother, Shali, who is Sri-Lankan born of Malaysian descent. Ross grew up in Wimbledon, the third of four children, and started playing aged five (his siblings – brother, Blake, and two sisters, Romy and Lauren – all played to national level).
From the age of seven he went to King's College School, Wimbledon, where academically he was 'middle of the road', and he left with seven GCSEs in 2001 to pursue a tennis career. He turned pro in 2002 and played Junior Wimbledon in 2002 and 2003.
Ill health has dogged his career. In 2004 he blacked out and collapsed after a heavy practice session in Colombo, Sri Lanka. 'I had cramping and kidney problems,' he says. The cause was dehydration. In hot conditions he can't replace quickly enough the amount of fluid and sodium that he loses.
'It happened a lot. I was probably hospitalised 20 times and put on drips. It's not something I've talked about much. It was one of the reasons why I gave up singles.'
He turned to doubles in 2007 and started playing with Fleming in 2010. 'There aren't such long rallies in doubles, less movement for every point, so it's less taxing on the body.'
Hutchins says the cancer was something else entirely, but now recognises the mental advantage in having already faced his body's vulnerability. When he was diagnosed, 'I didn't feel let down by my body, just realistic that bad things can happen.'
As soon as he was given the all-clear last August he launched himself into getting back into shape. 'My oncologist told me the good news by phone one evening and the next morning I went to Wimbledon and hit some balls with my brother and my dad on the grass courts. It just felt right to be in a place that means so much to me and to be able to hit tennis balls cancer-free again.'
He discovered an almost physical craving to compete again. 'I wasn't happy with just hitting. I was, "All right, let's play points." I was getting destroyed by my brother and my dad and was hitting the ball atrociously, but loving the fact that I could play competitive points.'
Before the illness, a typical day's training was three hours of tennis, two hours in the gym. Hutchins chose to adopt a more fluid approach to getting fit. 'I said to myself that whenever I felt like hitting, I'd play. So if it was five hours a day, I'd play five hours and if it was half an hour, I'd play half an hour.'
He also dedicated himself to weight training. 'I don't usually use machines, I do a lot of free weights. But it was basically anything to get strong.'
He admits to overdoing it at first. 'I'd be falling asleep at five o'clock on some days. Literally mid-conversation falling asleep. But that was good, that showed I was working hard, and then from September I started to be more specific [with my goals]. I said, I've got to be ready to go to Miami with Andy in November.'
For the previous five years, Hutchins had joined Murray in Miami for pre-season training. 'I knew that you can't coast when you're in the heat with such a fit person, and because I wanted to keep up with Andy that was my goal.' It worked. He was able to fly out and stayed for two and a half weeks.
Hutchins's comeback match with Fleming was against Jérémy Chardy and Grigor Dimitrov in the Brisbane International in January. They took the first set to love, but lost the second 6-4 and the deciding set to a tie-break. 'We came out absolutely on fire, playing really well and then my level dipped. We hadn't played matches for 15 months. I wasn't match-sharp.'
PHOTO: Getty
Although now fit, he says his body has changed. 'It doesn't recover as quickly. I can lift the same weights but I tire quicker. I'd be silly to think it's only because of the chemotherapy. It's being older.'
When not playing tennis he lives quietly with Woods, who now works in the offices of the All England Club, and his labrador, Sammy. 'We go to the cinema, go out for breakfast from time to time. We don't go on many holidays but I like going away for the weekend, whether Kent or Bath or the New Forest.' They are getting married at the end of the year.
He still forsakes alcohol, dairy, sugar and caffeine, although now allows himself a steak every three weeks and has relaxed the 'spelt flour rule'. His idea of a treat is afternoon tea at the Savoy. 'I told you I like sandwiches,' he says, grinning.
'If the cancer returns, then so be it,' he says, 'I'll tackle it head-on again. But if it doesn't, then I'll keep enjoying playing tennis and keep striving to be a better player and become the person and athlete I want to be.'
The Aegon Championships start on Monday, June 9 (aegonchampionships.com). To donate to Rally for Bally go to justgiving.com/RallyForBally
Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568612/s/3b053ceb/sc/39/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Csport0Ctennis0C10A8637210CRoss0EHutchins0Einterview0EI0Eknew0Eit0Ewas0Ecancer0Bhtml/story01.htm
