ANDY MURRAY ARTICLES 2004-2006 2004 Scots tennis 'courting disaster' Despite helping to produce world-class young players Scotland’s top tennis trainer has quit in disgust, writes Tom Lynch Published: 8 August 2004 There’s a wistful note to coach Murray’s voice when she recalls the moment. A hint of pride too. “I couldn’t believe that the kids I started off with when they were eight or nine were in the biggest tournament in the world.” Now, as a summer fog descends on her Dunblane home, Murray’s mood has changed. All the optimism has been replaced by frustration. Last week she resigned from her post at Tennis Scotland, disgusted at the lack of backing from the country’s sports administrators and its politicians and fearing that youngsters who have the talent to win top titles could be forced to leave the game. She is not alone in her thinking. According to Murray, three of the four tennis development staff in Scotland have quit this year, allegedly fed up with their puny resources. Next to go, Murray fears, will be the country’s outstanding crop of young players, forced out of the game because there is simply not the money to help them break through into the big time, to compete alongside the Tim Henmans and Greg Rusedskis for the top honours. The tragic thing is, she says, is that she and her colleagues have produced tremendous talents “against all the odds”. For, while the Scottish executive plans to spend £30m on football to make it competitive again on the world stage, funding for tennis has been slashed by 60%. “Now these kids are 17, 18, 19, we have no training base, we have no internationally experienced coaches,” she says. “There is no residential base and no indoor courts that belong to Tennis Scotland, the game’s ruling body. They need three or four years of investment to allow them to make the transition to the professional game.” Local clubs need to do more, she argues, but to achieve that there has to be a semblance of leadership in the game. Tennis Scotland has a 16-strong amateur board, but Murray wants to see a professional structure, employing people with skills in business, finance and marketing. In other words, simple progressive steps for a sport whose youngsters have shown they can compete on the world stage. The tragedy for Murray is seeing her efforts trickle away — the years of work with dedicated young people. It seems a ridiculously simple explanation, but for Murray, coaching was something which was “just there”. For a discipline she came to so casually, Murray is remarkably proficient. In the space of around 10 years she twice held the position of national coach in Scotland, schooling champions and nurturing talent to great effect. Under her tutelage, earlier this year, the country could boast two of the top six junior players in the world, an achievement that has gone largely unremarked on home soil. One of these outstanding stars of the future is Jamie Baker. The fact that the other is Murray’s son, Andy, speaks volumes for his mother. Yet despite the satisfaction of this success, Murray speaks sadly of the game she loves. “I work up to 70 hours a week and most of my time is spent on the road. When I am not travelling around tennis clubs in Scotland to coach I am abroad, supervising youngsters playing in tournaments. I feel I am being spread far too thinly and not achieving anything,” she says. “There is not point producing world class youngsters if we cannot support them as they try to break into the senior game.” Despite her reluctance to play tennis these days, Murray was born with a racket in her hand. Her love of the sport was fostered by parents who played at county level in her native Dunblane and who were keen all-round sports players. Without ever taking a formal lesson, Murray’s record as a youngster was phenomenal. She won the Scottish schools championship at 15, and went on to win 64 Scottish titles and 27 international caps. But her progress to a world-class coach was almost accidental. As a prominent player in the area, she was invited to give prizes at a children’s tennis tournament in Stirling. At the ceremony, she offered to contribute a prize of her own — tennis lessons for two of the under- 10s. News of the tennis lessons spread, and Murray found she enjoyed taking them. “I like to teach, I like to see the kids improving,” she says. Local people began to bring their children round, asking Murray to teach them the finer points of the game. They were happy to pay too, even though part of the price of Murray’s lessons was that the parents had to baby-sit little Jamie and Andy. But it was the perfect job for a mum with two lively youngsters. When they were a bit older, she could take them along to any of the tennis clubs where she was teaching. She quickly worked her way up that ladder — she was the first coach in Scotland to hold the LTA Performance Coach Award, the top certificate in the UK, and first became Scottish national coach in 1995, but quit after her first term to spend more time with the family. Now comes the bitter end of her second term. These days, she expains, the lack of facilities in Scotland means that producing a tennis pro isn’t cheap. A plan to develop a national tennis centre at Heriot Watt University was scrapped a few years ago. Recently, tennis missed out on a £230m Scottish executive plan to develop new sports facilities. That means that aspiring young players have to go abroad, at a cost of about £25,000 a year. n top of that there are the costs of playing in overseas competitions: there is no prize money for juniors and not very much on the first rung of a senior tour. Last year, SportScotland allocated just £76,000 to tennis. This year, pleading a fall in lottery takings, that already derisory figure is set to fall to £30,000. About enough to fund a single player. This public money was allocated in April, but Murray says the players still have not seen a penny of it as Tennis Scotland has dithered over how it is going to be parcelled out. Three Scots have got automatic qualification for the US Open next month. Murray is still trying to beg free flights for them, and does not know how they are going to raise money to put a roof over their heads for the few days of pre-tournament practice. “We could have some of the top tennis pros in the world,” she says. “I have been working with these kids since they were 8, 9, 10 and in six months they may have to quit the game. They are looking to me to help them and my hands are tied because the board of Tennis Scotland isn’t supporting me.” She has now decided to take time out. “I have got very grumpy recently,” she concedes. She will work with her older son Jamie, another of the UK’s top tennis prospects. (Andy is well supported by the LTA.) But, despite her apparent diffidence, she will always want to be involved in the game, and in the final analysis does not expect a complete career change. She once ran a children’s shop in Dunblane with her mother, but doesn’t hanker after a return to retailing. One thing she might do is play a little tennis — she says she does not play the game at all just now. If she wants a sporty evening she would rather go for a game of badminton — playing tennis would be too much like work. As for the young Scots players on the verge of great careers, there is still hope, Murray believes, “if SportScotland wakes up to the fact that they have some of the best young players in the world”. Maybe one day, the game’s administrator and the politicians will wake up, and proper investment will help talented young players realise their true potential. It’s an attractive thought but when the great day dawns, Judy Murray, perhaps the most successful coach in Scottish tennis history, will be gone. Murray beginning to realise his youthful promise By Magnus Linklater Published at 12:00AM, September 14 2004 This Times writer reflects on his close ties with the sporting family and its outstanding protégé LOUNGING back in his chair, complete with baseball cap, shellsuit and trainers, he looks like any other teenager. Now he has won the US Open Junior Championship in New York, Andy Murray has moved into the top class of young tennis stars, fulfilling the potential that those of us who have been watching him over the past five years always knew he had. A year ago, at the age of 16, the young Scot became the No 2 junior tennis player in the world — and since the classification of junior includes players up to the age of 18, he was clearly destined for great things. But in December last year, he developed a serious knee injury that put him out of the game for six months. To have come back from that to win in New York is a remarkable achievement. A practice session with his older brother, Jamie, on the court at the Institute of Sportat Stirling University, where I met him, was a revelation.