A day with Judy Murray: Super Mum with super service

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  • Super Mum: Judy Murray.

    She is the most famous mother in professional tennis and has played a huge role in helping her two sons become Wimbledon champions – Andy in singles and Jamie in mixed doubles.

    Judy Murray is a regular figure in the spotlight and it’s not just because of her recent stint on BBC’s dance competition show ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. She is Great Britain’s Fed Cup captain and recently launched a programme to get more girls involved in tennis.

    Sport360° caught up with the 55-year-old in Abu Dhabi, where she took part in a clinic for UAE coaches at Zayed Sports City. 

    – Kareem Allaf is Andy Murray's MWTC hitting partner

    We’ve had world-class tennis events in the UAE now for almost two decades yet the country hasn’t been able to produce any top players. What do you think needs to be done?

    The big events are great because it obviously gives people the chance to see the top players. Any sport needs role models and needs big events to stimulate an interest. 
    But the strength of your sport is only as good as its grassroots. So you need to make your sport attractive to start with. But then make it as accessible as you can to as many as you can.

    How would you describe your coaching philosophy?

    For me, tennis is a complex coordination sport. You’ve got a piece of equipment, you’ve got a moving ball, you’ve got a net, you’ve got white lines and you’ve got an opponent. So for me in tennis, it is all about getting kids well-coordinated first. Because if they’re well-coordinated then actually they can probably pick up any sport quite well. And you can develop coordination skills by playing actively at home. The problem nowadays is that so many of the things that are trendy for kids to play with involve sitting on their butt and fiddling with their thumbs and fingers. So it’s about coordination first, and then it’s getting to love the sport so there has to be a lot of fun involved. 

    We know Andy loves his video games. Were him and Jamie like that when they were young, or was it easy to get them to be active outdoors?

    They played video games but not all the time. They did loads of sports. They tried every sport under the sun except skiing. But because me and their dad and their grandparents, we’re all sporty, so we played actively with them all the time. Doesn’t mean we were coaching them to do anything. We were just playing football or basketball or table tennis. Whatever it was, we were always playing with them. They liked PlayStation as well, Andy more than Jamie. In Scotland the weather is terrible, so these things are great as indoor entertainment. 

    We’ve seen parents who have coached their kids and it created a strain in their relationship. How did you manage to navigate that successfully while coaching your own children when they were younger?

    It probably helped me a lot that I was the Scottish national coach for about nine or 10 years when my kids were young and developing. And because tennis was such a small sport in Scotland, we had one indoor centre with four courts, which happened to be very close to where we lived, which also was a big reason why Jamie and Andy and some of the others managed to become good players. 

    Whenever we travelled to other tournaments it wasn’t about me and my kids always, sometimes it was, but most of the time I’d be driving a minibus and I had 10, 14, 16 kids to look after. Or certainly a car full of them. I think I didn’t get so caught up in my kids because I always had so many others to look out for. And I also think that when they got to a certain age I decided it was more important to be a mum than a coach, then for me it was all about finding the right people to work with them. 

    When Andy hired Amelie Mauresmo as his coach, it created a lot of attention with her being the first female to coach a top player. What was your reaction?

    I think it’s great. I think it’s got nothing to do with her being female. I think it’s all about finding the right fit for you. It shouldn’t be about gender. It just is the case that the men’s tour and the women’s tour is populated almost entirely by male coaches. 

    I hope that that might make other players, male and female, think that there are female coach options. I think she was such a skilful player herself, she was world No1. I loved the way she played the game, I loved the variety and the feel she had for the game and I think she can appreciate the things that Andy can do with the ball and help him hopefully to maximise what he’s got and get back on track. He’s enjoyed it very much so far and that’s the most important thing.

    There’s always these jokes and stories of keeping track of Andy’s results when you’re in attendance, and his results when you’re not. Do you think your presence affects Andy’s performances?

    I don’t think so. I think for all top players,  the biggest events are where they need the most emotional support. And virtually all the top players will have family members with them there. So I try to go to the slams to support. I hate watching it on the television. I think he likes it when I am there, but he doesn’t really need me to do anything for him.

    You’ve been captain of the Great Britain Fed Cup team for a while now, how is the experience going for you?

    I really enjoy the Fed Cup because I love team competition, I always have. The problem for Great Britain in the Fed Cup and for many other nations is that we’re in one of these big zones where there are 16 teams, we play over four days in February, usually somewhere quite obscure where next to nobody is watching. There is very little media coverage of it because it’s the week after the Australian Open and no journalists travel. So it doesn’t have the profile that Davis Cup has for example. 

    The Davis Cup format is totally different to Fed Cup, everybody has home and away ties which means the governing body of your nation is able to use the ties and the team to stimulate fan base, interest, media profile, excitement. And it’s hard for us to do that with Fed Cup in the zone that we’re in. So basically for us if we play in February and we don’t get out, there isn’t anything else until the following February.

    I think I would really like to see Fed Cup having the same format as the Davis Cup and allowing home and away ties because we need to build women’s tennis and I think team competition is one of the best ways to do it.

    You’re focused on developing tennis amongst females at home. How do you plan to do that?

    What I’ve done with Fed Cup is to look at how do can become a stronger women’s tennis nation. And we have had to work very hard to make tennis more attractive to little girls and to build a stronger female coaching workforce because I really believe that more female coaches will keep more girls in the game. 

    In August I launched a programme called the Miss-Hits. Which is six animated characters that each represent a tennis shot and it’s a 12-week programme for girls aged 5-8, backed up by a website and an app which teaches them how to keep the score and how to play a fun competition.

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