Petchey started playing tennis at the age of eight. At eleven he won a junior title for the first time. He won several national singles and doubles titles as a teenager before becoming a professional tennis player in 1988. In 1991 he won his first individual title on the ATP Challenger Tour . Two years later he was able to win two more Challenger singles titles. In 1994 he reached the quarter-finals of an ATP tournament three times , with a first round win over Michael Stich in Sun City . In the same year he also achieved his greatest success in singles, participation in the semifinals in Newport , where he was defeated by David Wheaton in three sets . In doubles he could not celebrate a title win on the ATP Tour, together with Danny Sapsford he won the title in Nottingham . There were also eight double titles on the ATP Challenger Tour, alongside Jeremy Bates and Tim Henman , among others . He reached his highest ranking in the tennis world rankings in 1994 with position 80 in singles and in 1996 with position 104 in doubles.
His best individual result in a Grand Slam tournament was reaching the third round of Wimbledon in 1997. After the second round win against Tommy Haas, he was clearly defeated by Boris Becker in three sets. In the doubles competition, he reached the second round of Wimbledon three times and the second round of the Australian Open twice . In mixed he was in the quarterfinals of Wimbledon in 1995.
Petchey played ten singles and seven doubles games for the British Davis Cup team between 1991 and 1997 . He could only win one of his individual games; this was his very first appearance in the Davis Cup, in which he was victorious in the game against Austria against Thomas Muster . His second game against Thomas Buchmayer was canceled when the score was 6: 6 and not counted as Great Britain had already been determined as the winner.
Due to an injury, Petchey resigned from professional sports in 1998 and initially worked as a sports commentator at Eurosport . He worked for the Lawn Tennis Association between 2003 and 2005 . Between July 2005 and April 2006 he was Andy Murray's coach. He then worked as a tennis expert for the BBC, among others .