Tennis
1News

Sir Andy Murray's mum Judy helping coaches and kids in NZ in global tennis push

January 10, 2020

Judy Murray had some words of wisdom for Kiwi kids and coaches.

One of the world's most well-known tennis coaches has been in the country this week, helping coach Kiwi coaches and kids.

Sir Andy Murray's mum, Judy, made the rare visit to New Zealand as part of a global tennis push.

Even after staging thousands of coaching clinics around the world, Murray still gets a buzz out of helping new tennis players.

“I've never lost my passion for my sport,” she said.

If anyone knows the sport from top to bottom it's Murray, she's raised and coached two professional players herself, a seven-time grand slam doubles winner in Jamie Murray and Sir Andy, a three-time singles grand slam winner who’s coming back after major hip surgery.

“Hopefully (he’ll) be back February, March maybe,” she said.

The matriarch of the Murray family is now working globally to get the game back to grassroots.

“Probably around the world tennis is in decline, we have to do something to arrest that,” she said.

“It's generally perceived as difficult to do, difficult to access and expensive, I’ve created programmes that kind of smash all of those things.”

Starting with making tennis fun, like for kids in Manukau.

She's also been sharing advice with parents and part time coaches, the "come play" session is the first staged outside of China by the WTA, the governing body of the women's tour.

“What we're doing here is building skills and fundamentals, there's a method behind each game we're doing but the kids just think we're playing games,” WTA coaching director Mike Anders said.

“We have to recognise there's very few children who end up having a career in sport, we want them to enjoy it for the long haul,” Murray said.

“Coaching has become such a thing, not just in tennis in all sports, children are programmed into activity in a way that they never were in my day, we played freely.”

One of the issues for the game in New Zealand us not having a local star in singles, often due to a lack of numbers or finance.

Murray recommends the American university route or exhausting all options here.

“We have to teach our coaches to deliver to big numbers, cos big numbers are more sociable and it's much more cost effective,” Murray said.

Straight forward advice from a coach who's seen it all.

SHARE ME

More Stories