Virginia Wade Hoping that Murray’s Fed Cup Appointment Will Bring British Success

Written by: Staff on 12th December 2011

Virginia Wade Hoping that Murray’s Fed Cup Appointment Will Bring British Success

epa01482280 Andy Murray's mother Judy Murray (L) , his girlfriend Kimberly Sears (C), his agent Patricio Apey (R) and British business mogul Sir Richard Branson (back R) applaud from the family box during the men's final on the fifteenth day of the 2008 US Open tennis tournament in Flushing Meadows, New York, USA on 08 September 2008. EPA/ANDREW GOMBERT |

Virginia Wade, Britain’s most eminent former tennis champion and holder of every British best in the Fed Cup history book maintains she is partly anxious and partly optimistic about Judy Murray’s appointment as the new British captain.

Wade hopes the appointment of Murray, mother of world no.4 male player Andy and former Wimbledon mixed doubles champion Jamie, will be the catalyst for an improvement in an undistinguished recent record that has seen Britain absent from the Fed Cup’s elite World Group since 1993.

But she said: “Who can honestly say they know the answer to that one We would all like to say we hope so but the honest fact is with this particular appointment, we are moving into the unknown.”

Wade, a member of Britain’s team in each of the four Fed Cup final appearances between 1967 and 1981 and herself a former captain, got to know Murray, the former Scottish Ladies champion, when the pair conducted coaching clinics together at the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire just a few miles from the later’s Dunblane home during the late 1990’s.

She continued “Judy is incredibly enthusiastic, a very good motivator and talks a lot of sense about tennis. She was also a good player and I think the entire nation has seen how passionate she gets when watching her sons play. But the question remains, ‘Would she have got this job if she wasn’t the mother of you know who?” I think we all probably know the answer to that one.

“From my perception, the best way to get to grips with the captaincy of a team is to have played firstly with most of the team and secondly have a first hand knowledge of what the majority of the opposition can produce on the court. It is not an easy job and one of the hardest things is getting a togetherness in the team, and women players can be considerably more catty in this respect than the men.”

There is an element of continuity to the appointment as Murray’s predecessor as British captain was Nigel Sears who happens to the father of Andy’s girlfriend Kim. Sears, now back on the WTA circuit coaching former world no.1 Ana Ivanovic, quit his role of the Lawn Tennis Association’s Head of Women’s Tennis in July but was credited with healing a long term rift between Britain’s two most experienced players Elena Baltacha and Anne Keothavong as well as nurturing the precocious talent of Junior Grand Slam winners Laura Robson and Heather Watson.

Topics: Judy Murray, Virginia Wade

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