Besides Being Fed Cup Captain Murray Hopes to be Peacemaker

Written by: Staff on 26th December 2011

Besides Being Fed Cup Captain Murray Hopes to be Peacemaker

Britain's Andy Murray returns the ball to
David Ferrer of Spain during the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals tennis tournament at O2 Arena in London, Britain, 21 November 2011. EPA/ROGER PARKER |

Judy Murray sees her new role within the Lawn Tennis Association as far more than just being Fed Cup captain. The mother of world no.4 Andy and his Davis Cup cohort and brother Jamie, intends to break down the walls of sexism in coaching circles and be the middle-woman between parents and the British tennis hierarchy, which up to now has been a massive grey area.

And Murray wants to bring in peace negotiations with one particular family that poses a massive potential embarrassment to the Roger Draper-led LTA; the Broadys that currently boast 17 year-old Liam, who added to his string of impressive junior accomplishments earlier this month by winning the Orange Bowl doubles title, and his 20 year-old sister Naomi who is now the nation’s fifth ranked female.

Four years ago the LTA withdrew funding for Naomi after taking the view photographs of her partying were posted on a social networking site. The LTA maintained this was ‘unprofessional behavior’ and showed a ‘lack of discipline’. Her father Simon responded angrily by saying neither of his children would ever again accept another penny of LTA support but by the same token they would never represent their country while Draper was in charge.

Murray, who has the respect of Simon Broady from the way she adopted independent measures for the tennis development of her two sons, is now hoping for an end for the impasse that appears to be denying Britain the services of two talented youngsters.

“I’ve learnt a lot on the journey I’ve been on with the boys,” Murray said. ““I was getting my brains picked a lot by parents, who were saying, ‘What do we do now? What happens next?’ I got lucky with a lot of decisions that I made with Andy and Jamie, but I thought I could pass on a lot in different areas. I hope I can help the girls build a better pathway from under-21s through the career stages and to try to develop a female coaching workforce.”

Murray, long an LTA critic, is energized by her new role that she broke down into three areas: to captain the Fed Cup side. to act as a conduit between the official body and parents; and to mentor a new band of female coaches in Britain that she feels is tragically missing.

She believes that women coaches are outnumbered ten-to-one, and recalls the instance when she personally met with resistance when enrolling in a training course two decades ago.

“It was the first year of the Performance Award course in 1994,” she said. “There were a lot of applicants for 20 places, and 18 of them went to guys, plus me and a 21-year-old girl. Somebody tried to stop me getting one of those places because he said I had two young children, so how could I possibly commit myself to coaching at a high level?”