Judy: I was wrong to send Jamie away to school at 12
JUDY Murray has said sending her son Jamie to boarding school aged 12 was a ‘ big mistake’ that may have damaged his career.
Jamie Murray, the elder brother of Andy, left home as a child to live 400 miles away to concentrate on his tennis training.
But his mother said the ordeal left his confidence ‘shattered’ and may have wrecked his chances to be one of the world’s best singles players.
Her son, now 31 and ranked 8th in the world for doubles, left their home in Dunblane in 1998 to attend a training centre in Cambridge run by the Lawn Tennis Association.
At the time he was ranked in the top three in Europe for under-12s.
The original plan had been for him to move to Berkshire, but the LTA closed the training centre there and Jamie was offered an alternative place in Cambridge.
The nearby school was ‘fantastic’ but she added: ‘He was having to go in at the top of prep school – the hardest time to integrate as a new boy. Friendships there would have been made years ago, even if Jamie was prepared to brush that aside. I didn’t have the heart to hold him back ... that was probably my biggest mistake.’
Faced with an intensive training regime, the youngster was left with little time to mix and make friends.
And changes made to Jamie’s game also hit his confidence. His mother recalled: ‘It did not take long before the cracks started to show. After about three or four months he was really struggling.’
When she asked him if he wanted to come home, he would insist he did not, despite clearly being unhappy: ‘We would take it in turns – me, his dad, his grandparents, even Andy – to tell him it was OK if he wanted to.’
‘I could tell how unhappy he was, crying on the phone most nights. It was devastating,’ said Mrs Murray.
She finally intervened after a tournament in 1999 in which her son was ‘filled with dread’ and unusually clingy. The 57-year-old said: ‘When it was time for him to go back to Cambridge and me to go back to Scotland he got quite upset. I snapped. “Enough,” I said to the coach. I looked at Jamie and said, “you’re coming back with me.” And that was it.
‘I can’t believe I made such a big mistake. I will never know where the line between confidence and skill lies, what lasting damage was done to Jamie’s game by that experience.
‘What I do know is that he left for Cambridge a confident, competitive singles player, ranked in the top three in Europe for under-12s along with Rafael Nadal.
‘He returned with shattered confidence, now only at his best with someone alongside him on court. Are those things connected? How can I ever have a definitive answer for that? It was too much for him.’
The comments were made in her autobiography, Knowing the Score, in an excerpt published by The Sunday Times yesterday.