UK Edition
Judy Murray: 'I get more of a kick from seeing Björn Borg than Roger Federer'
We asked the grande dame of British tennis, 58, what her younger self would make of her today...
When I was growing up in Dunblane you didn’t see being a sportsperson as a career option because, in those days, nobody was doing it. My dad had been a footballer before I was old enough to understand what was going on, but in that era you had a full-time job during the day and played matches at the weekend.
Being an athlete wasn’t really on the table, not in Scotland anyway, and not in the sports that I played; tennis and badminton. I played everything else at school, too, from hockey to netball to competitive swimming. There was no high school in Dunblane at the time, so my parents had decided to send me to a girls’ school in Crieff, which was about 40 minutes away by bus. That turned out to be a huge thing for me because, while you don’t realise this when you’re young, the opportunities for sport at a private school are so much greater than at a state school.
For me, being a tomboy and playing sport with my two younger brothers in the back garden, it was great. I think I would have got on with Jamie and Andy [her sons, both professional tennis players] quite well if we were the same age, because of being sporty. I always thought that I would be a PE teacher, and actually that’s what I ended up doing, much further down the line. I was a teacher of tennis, which wouldn’t have surprised the younger me in the slightest. Now I help to develop the game by building up tennis workshops and showing teachers, parents and coaches how to teach it well.
I don’t know if I’m the same person as that young girl. It’s been 47 years since I started secondary school, so it’s too long ago, but you still remember it – you still have that connection to your childhood. My boys grew up on the tennis circuit, and because they were playing people like Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal from the age of 10 or 11; those players are part of my world too. When I go to the US Open and see people like Björn Borg or Andre Agassi or John McEnroe, I get really excited because the child in me remembers watching them play when they were the biggest names. I get a bigger kick from rubbing shoulders with those people than I do from seeing someone like Roger Federer.
When I was a girl, that world was something you would see on the television but not ever think about being involved in. Now I’m travelling all the time, around the world, and I’m a much more confident person than I was even five years ago. I didn’t have much leisure time until recently, when I decided to take more time for myself. I’ve discovered that I love going to musicals, going to the spa, shopping, eating out – I didn’t know what any of those things were when I was 10.
I don’t think I’d ever have thought the “tiger mum” tag was fair. My parents decided to send me to a school that would give me much more sporting opportunity: you rely on your parents to make things happen for you. I think what I would have been most impressed with, looking at how I’ve parented Jamie and Andy, would have been the ambition. Why shouldn’t we have opportunities in Scotland to go and play tennis down South, or overseas, and get good at it?
If I’d known I was going to create opportunities for kids to develop and travel, and get paid to have fun, I’d have thought: great.
Judy Murray will be appearing at Cheltenham Literature Festival on Oct 8. Knowing the Score: My Family and Our Tennis Story is out now in hardback and ebook, published by Chatto & Windus