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The Daily Telegraph Saturday 30 September 2017 *** 25

discovered that I love going to


I F I C O U L D S E E M E N OW musicals, going to the spa, shopping,
eating out I didnt know what any of
those things were when I was 10.
I dont think Id ever have thought

J U DY
the tiger mum tag was fair. My
parents decided to send me to a school
that would give me much more
sporting opportunity: you

M U R R AY
mums the rely on your parents to
word make things happen for
With son Andy, you. I think what I would
below, who has have been most impressed
twice won with, looking at how Ive
Wimbledon, and parented Jamie and Andy,
with her own would have been the
58 , t e n n i s c o a ch ambition. Why shouldnt
trophies, left
we have opportunities in
Scotland to go and play
tennis down South, or overseas, and
What would your get good at it?
If Id known I was going to create
younger self make opportunities for kids to develop and
travel, and get paid to have fun, Id
of your life today? have thought: great.

W
POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES; PA

Judy Murray will be appearing at


hen I was Cheltenham Literature Festival on
growing up in Oct 8. Knowing the Score: My Family
Dunblane you and Our Tennis Story is out now in
didnt see being hardback and ebook, published by
a sportsperson Chatto & Windus
as a career
option because, Interview by TomOugh
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 wasnt 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 dont realise this
when youre 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 thats what I
ended up doing, much further down
the line. I was a teacher of tennis,
which wouldnt 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 dont know if Im the same person

I still get a kick from


rubbing shoulders with
Bjrn Borg and John
McEnroe
as that young girl. Its been 47 years
since I started secondary school, so its
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 Bjrn 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 Im travelling
all the time, around the world, and Im
a much more confident person than I
was even five years ago. I didnt have
much leisure time until
recently, when I
decided to
take more
time for
myself.
Ive

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