Tim Henman may not be there, but Oxfordshire does still have one important person at the Wimbledon Championships.

And, unlike the former British No 1, Ben Coomber has already been involved in two men's singles finals at the All England Club.

Tennis coach Coomber, 23, of The Paddocks, Yarnton, is a data collector for the IBM team at SW19, employed on the show courts each day of Wimbledon fortnight to record the speed of every serve, the shots played and length of the rallies.

The data, which is logged on a laptop from the court, goes on the Wimbledon and BBC websites, and is used for interactive coverage and by commentators.

It is also given to the players and coaches after the match so they can analyse their performance.

"This is the fifth year I've been working at Wimbledon and I enjoy it so much I keep going back," he smiled. "If you like tennis, it's a dream job."

He added: "I've been lucky in that the past couple of years I've done the Federer-Nadal final and last year's one, in particular, was a fantastic experience. It was extremely tense in parts."

Coomber has taken up a career in coaching and works at Oxford Sports Tennis Club and at White Horse Leisure & Tennis Centre in Abingdon under the Performance Programme, with Oliver Widdowson and Melanie Riste. He also coaches at Magdalen College and Oxford High schools.

"I've only been doing it for a year, but so far it's been good," he said.

Most of those he works with at Wimbledon are similarly young coaches or former top junior players.

"Many are ex-top juniors, so I know quite a lot of them," says Coomber, who used to be a talented young player, competing in tournaments around the UK, before he went to Brunel University in 2003.

"IBM get coaches to do the job because they find it's easier to teach the technical side of it to someone who really understands tennis than to teach tennis to a technical whizz kid."

So what's his typical day like during the Championships?

"We meet at 10 o'clock for a de-brief and are assigned either Centre Court, No 3 and No 13, or No 1, No 2 and 18, which are all the show courts.

"Sometimes the tournament referee will pop in to give us a pep talk. Alan Mills has done that in the past, though the referee now is Andrew Jarrett.

"One feature is speed of thought, so you've got to be quick inputting the data.

"It's done on a rota basis because it's quite intense. You do two hours on court, then have 40 minutes off, then are assigned to a different court. It's pot luck which matches you get.

"You have to turn the radar heads on when the players are about to serve, do a rally count, record whether the serve is out wide or into the body and so on."

On Centre Court, the scores and serve speed flashes up on the impressive new LCD screens, on show for the first time this year.

So who has the fastest serve at Wimbledon?

"For many years it's been Taylor Dent, who held the record after his 144mph serve at Wimbledon in 2001.

"But, along with Federer and Nadal, I like watching Andy Roddick. It's always nice when he's on because he serves around 140 and you know, any time he's on, he could send down a massive serve.

"I was hearing on the commentary from Queen's that the receiver has just 0.25 seconds to react when someone's serving that big. That's not a lot of time to react!"

Roddick holds the record for the fastest serve in tennis history.

The American set a new world record when he banged down a first serve at 155mph during the United States' Davis Cup tie against Austria in 2004.

Before that, he and Britain's Greg Rusedski shared the record for the fastest serve at 149mph, Roddick achieving that at Queen's, and Rusedski in Indian Wells.

At last year's Wimbledon, Roddick registered 225kph (140mph), but that was pipped by Ivo Karlovic, who recorded 226kph (140.4mph).

So what about this year, who would Coomber like to see triumph?

"I've always been a bit of a fan of Nadal and I've wanted to see him win it. But at the same time, I'd like Federer to set that sixth title in a row and beat Bjorn Borg's record.

"So I guess I'd like to see Federer win, and set that record, and then for Nadal to take over."

"I don't believe Andy Murray is a contender yet. He's capable of claiming a big scalp, but he's not at the level yet to win it."

Coomber added "It's just nice being around the top players. The first year I was a bit star-struck seeing someone like Federer walking past me, but now I barely blink an eye. Greg Rusedski chatted to me the other day.

"One of my favourite times is in the second week to go to some of the outside courts early in the morning, and watch them hit with their coaches. You are so close, you can hear what the coaches are saying to them, and pick up some useful tips.

"This week I've already done the Federer-Hrbaty match, and the Bogdanovic-Bolelli match on the first day, which was really close. Bogdanovic had so many chances, but every time he had a break point, Bolelli would fire down a huge serve.

"I'm just enjoying being here. And I get to see some fantastic matches . ... I wouldn't swap these two weeks with anybody!"