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B The most famous ritain tennis mother has more than her sons in mind today. Judy Murray wants to discuss anything that worries her about the sport she likes, including the abuse of teenage girls in the women's game.
It's been 12 years since I interviewed Murray – a life in the history of British tennis. At the time, Andy, 19, had just established himself as the country's number one singles, and Jamie, 20, had arrived at his first tournament finals. double ATP. Since then, the Scottish triumvirate has transformed British tennis.
In 2013, Andy became the first British man to win the Wimbledon men's title since Fred Perry in 1936. He won again in 2016. But we often forget that the least announced Jamie was the first to win a tournament Grand Slam – Mixed doubles at Wimbledon in 2007 with Jelena Jankovic. In 2016, their career has reached a peak. Surprisingly, Andy became the world's number one at the same time as Jamie became the world's number one double.
Meanwhile, Judy, already a respected tennis coach, has a proven track record. For five years, she led the British team for the Fed Cup – the first international women's team competition – while hearing more and more about tennis failures, more than ever before today. hui.
recently released in paperback. He could just as easily have called Settling the Score. When she was first asked to write it, she thought that she'd better wait until the boys had retired. Why? "Because I thought I would piss too many people if I wrote the book while they were playing." Like who? "The Lawn Tennis Association, the Tennis Authorities and Sportscotland." Basically, whoever is someone in British tennis. Her publisher convinced her that it was better than she said it while the boys were still playing.
Murray recounts the many ways in which she was discriminated against as a woman in a sport still dominated by men. Most obviously, she was labeled as an insistent parent because she was ambitious for her boys, invariably represented as the jaw-dropping, gnasher-discovering, punch-fisted monster mom. She became so embarrassed that she had her teeth whitened and straightened. Then there was the moment when Boris Becker announced that Andy Murray would not win a big slam until he cut his umbilical cord; the general manager of the LTA who saw her watching videos of Andy's next 16-year-old opponent and said: "My God, you take it all a bit seriously, is not it? do not you? " the performance director of the Scottish Sports Institute who told him that his boys did not meet the national funding criteria because they were only among the top 25 juniors in the world; The day she received an award on behalf of Andy, the comedian Tam Cowan, who was presenting the ceremony, looked up and down before saying, "Could not he bring you something Decent to wear tonight? Murray says, she was crushed
Murray is 58 years old and looks good – cut, clean haircut, elegant outfit. When we meet, she says she's slightly on the edge because Andy is back after 11 months with a career-threatening injury that required hip surgery. She does not care for him to win, just hoping that he will end the match in one piece. (He did, but on Sunday, he retired from Wimbledon saying that despite his progress, he was not yet able to play the best of the five sets .)
She does not feel anxious about her boys as she did. In their early thirties, the sun is probably preparing for their career. Now she is more concerned about the growth of the game at home. Over the past four years, she has traveled across Scotland in her gaudy pink and green walled minibus, under the name Tennis on the Road, offering free lessons to encourage kids to play the sport. She has also developed the Miss-Hits tennis specifically for girls. "Tennis is still a very minor sport in Scotland," she says. Even after the success of his sons? "Exactly, we need much more investment in Scotland in terms of public sports and public schools." Murray was born into a sporting family (his father, Roy Erskine, briefly played professional football in Scotland before becoming an optician) and she was a talented tennis player.She was offered a tennis scholarship at an American university, but she refused – it was too far away. that she went to Barcelona and competed with Bjorn Borg's fiancé, Mariana Simionescu, and Murray spent most of his life until his passport and money were stolen. At her home, beaten.It was the end of her tennis career.Now, she chose a degree in French and Commercial Studies at the University of Edinburgh.
It is often assumed that Murray channeled his thwarted ambition into his sons. compared to Richard Williams, who brought his daughters Venus and Serena to world domination. Murray says that she admires Williams immensely, but they could not be more different. He hoped to make them champions. I began to hope that my children would enjoy the sport as much as I do. I had no idea where we were going with that. "
Have not you dreamed of turning them into drummers of the world?" No luck! Anyone who knows me knows that this is not true. I'm always a bit jaded when people say things like that because it was not that. In fact, she says, for much of their childhood, they did not focus on just one sport. Jamie was an exceptional golfer and at age 15 had a handicap of three, while Andy was asked to sign youth forms by the Rangers football club when he was 14 years old. She says she was always ambitious for her children, but insists that she was not aggressive. 19659003] The Murrays grew up in Dunblane, a city in central Scotland that became famous for its massacres. Andy and Jamie were both students at Dunblane Elementary School when Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and a teacher in the gym in March 1996. Andy's class had entered the gym when shots were fired place and the little brother of his best friend was killed. It was a difficult time for the family. Murray has always said that one of his ambitions was to make Dunblane famous for something more than the massacre.
A year later, when Andy was nine and Jamie 10, Judy and the boys' father William broke up. At present, Murray has been hired as Scotland's national tennis coach on a salary of £ 25,000 a year. She combined the work with the transport of Andy, Jamie and their friends around Scotland to do sports, especially tennis.
It was long and expensive, and she was often skinted. When Jamie was 12, she allowed him to leave home to join a tennis academy in Cambridge. He hated that. Eventually, she told Jamie that he had to go home, but by that time his confidence was drawn. For two years, he did not touch a tennis racket. Murray still blames himself for letting him go. She vowed never to let Andy go home to continue tennis until he finished school. But at age 15, he was determined to join his friend Rafael Nadal in Barcelona, where he would play with and be coached by the best in the world.
Murray estimated that it would cost Andy £ 35,000 a year to train there. At the time, Andy was ranked among the top three in Europe in his age group. She approached LTA for support, but was snubbed. It always dominates. "I did not expect that they would give me the whole lot, but since there was no alternative in the UK that was just for its stage of development and that they had an annual budget of £ 50-60 million and no player, I thought that they would help us more.I was blown away by that.This was so disappointing. "If she went to LTA as a parent of a promising youngster today, would that be easier?" I think it would probably be a fight again. "
Why have not they learned? "I do not know. From the experience that I have experienced as a parent, as a coach, as a woman working in this very male dominated sports world, I am surprised that They did not choose my brain more. The same for Kyle Edmund's parents. No child is going anywhere without backup and parental support, so why not take advantage of our experience? As parents, we had to help our children cross the world junior circuit and then move on to the senior circuit; we had to find the right coaches and fitness coaches and make everything financially possible.
Murray believes that sport is still infected by class snobbery. "You often find that clubs in Scotland are surrounded by three or four courses, so there is no room to expand, and people who have been members for years are starting to see it as theirs. second house. They do not want you to come in and they do not know who you are. We need everywhere to be open and welcoming doors. Golf and tennis have similar challenges.
But the area that concerns her most is that of women. In 2011, she was named captain of the Fed Cup (in fact, coach / manager), and says that's the job she found most satisfying – and shocking. Satisfied because she believes that in her five years in the role (she resigned in 2016), she developed the game of women in Britain; shocking because of what she discovered.
When she started, she says, the culture was completely dysfunctional. While there was great camaraderie on the men's tour, she found that women rarely spoke to each other – not even teammates. The senior members of the team, Anne Keothavong and Elena Baltacha (diagnosed with cancer in 2014 and died the same year at the age of 30), had barely spoken to each other since their teenage years because They thought that to be competitive, they had to be enemies. Murray told them that it was nonsense – they would go nowhere without mutual respect at the very least. On their first trip abroad, in Israel, Murray brought a ton of games, just as she had done when she had taken her boys on the road. Baltacha and Keothavong eventually became great friends.
Unless you are at the top and can travel with an entourage, the world of tennis feels lonely. And even more so for girls who start, she says, because there are so few women coaches. "If you are a young player and you roam the world, you often have no one to talk to." Murray says the girls on tour are vulnerable – their bodies are changing fast and they have no one who to talk to "I noticed how much girls were going to dinner together, players tend to spend most of their time with their coach or partner, and often they are guys – guys who are a bit older than kids." Who do these girls talk to if they have emotional or physical problems? You can not talk to a guy you use largely. "
Does she think that tennis will have its #metoo moment? "It's really about women coming to the scene in their lives where they feel confident enough to express themselves.Who are you talking about?" There should be an independent sports organization, where the players can go where they know someone will listen to them and they will know that someone will react to it – that it is emotional, physical or sexual abuse. Often you are afraid to speak because you think it will hurt people against you, tipping the boat. "
Has she heard of such abuses in women's play? "Yes, I do not think anyone would tell you that there are any examples, I think everyone on the circuit could name something that's wrong." It's very easy for a player young and inexperienced to enjoy it, be it physically, emotionally, sexually, financially. "I do not think so. I would definitely recommend anyone who has been abused in this relationship to coach them to talk about it.
Does she think that will happen? "Just one person to start."
Maybe she should team up with great tennis champion Billie Jean King and launch the #metoo tennis movement. She laughs. "I'm a big fan of Billie Jean King, an incredible and amazing woman, but it should not be just her doing it, we need current players to move in. Use your voice when you have a voice. "
Murray says that she feels so much stronger since she used hers. She used to be intimidated by the way she was portrayed – austere, humorless, aggressive. But not anymore. In fact, she's the opposite – warm, funny – as we discovered when she was a popular candidate, even though she was unhappy, about Strictly Come Dancing in 2014.
Murray is now a grandmother – Andy and his wife Kim Sears have two daughters. How old are they? "Two years and four months and seven months," she says proudly. Would she coach them if they demonstrated tennis skills? "Definitely not, I would teach them how to dance, I'm never going to go through this again." Really? "Yes, absolutely, I went straight back to the base, I like it, it's not stressful."
One of the things she found most stressful , she said, was the regular attacks against Andy's personality – reporters who said that he was taciturn, too aggressive, unkempt, unattractive – she looks at me with a knowing air. [19659003] I one day called Andy the most unattractive man I've ever met, and I asked him if he could really be related to Jamie, who is really friendly. Look, I say, he took his revenge – in Andy's autobiography, he called me the strangest man he'd ever met. Can she understand why the press had a sound on him? Yes, she said, but he was so young. "It was very hard to hear people criticizing your son. I thought, give him a break: he's a kid, he's a great competitor, he's a perfectionist, he's wearing his heart on his sleeve. In fact, far from the short, he is laid back, very amusing, kind, sensitive. Did criticism bother him? "Yes, of course, it bothered him. Of course ." That's what I love about her – she does not let me down, but she does not hold a grudge.
Many experts think that Andy has seen his best days on the court. Does she think that he could win another grand slam? "If his body allows him, I think he has unfinished business.He is one of those children who, if someone tells him that he can not do anything thing, will do everything possible to prove to you that you are wrong. "
She suggested that Scotland needed a decent Talent Sports Center. She was ignored, so decided to build one herself. "There will be everything – a six-hole golf course, a climbing wall, playgrounds, a playground and, of course, tennis courts." She estimates it will cost between 10 and £ 12m. "I want to have a brick and mortar legacy for the boys in our backyard, so it's just outside of Dunblane.This has required a lot of work and a lot of struggles, but I'm not sure. hope it will be operational by 2020. "She also launched the Judy Murray Foundation, which aims to make people more active in rural or disadvantaged areas.
How would she like us to remember the Murrays? "I hope people will say that we have raised the profile of British tennis, shown that Britain can produce the best players, have more players and coaches. Hope we have developed our sport in many ways. "
She's talking about her annus mirabilis in 2016?" It was just perfect. It's just the dream thing, is not it? "In December 2016, Andy's success was recognized with chivalry." Two months earlier, Jamie received an OBE, and last June, Judy also received an OBE. Awesome, I say, she smiles, "Yeah. That's good, is not it? "
Knowing the Score is published by Vintage, price 8.99 €
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