Judy Murray: I was made out as an overbearing mother
New Sky TV series Driving Force sees tennis coach Judy Murray discover what it takes to become a British female Olympian. Daniel le de Wolfe finds out more.
SPORT, BY its nature, breeds competitiveness. Pushing the human body to its absolute limit, athletes involved at the highest international levels endure gruelling training regimes, restrictive diets and antisocial work schedules in a bid to reach their full potential.
However, it’s often the untold psychological pressure and media scrutiny accompanying life in the spotlight that have the most punishing impact on athletes and their families alike.
Women in the sporting arena are no exception. It’s something Judy Murray, 61, tennis coach and mother of British tennis champions Andy and Jamie Murray, knows all too well.
“If you’re going to take a young athlete on a journey that may lead them to superstardom, you need to prepare them for everything that will be part of that journey,” remarks Murray earnestly. “And not just them, their immediate family as well, because it affects everybody.”
Teaming up with executive producer Rosemary Reed and Sky TV as part of new 10- part series Driving Force, the programme looks beyond an athlete’s final performance to uncover the relentless work that paves the way for success.
Highlighting the positive, but also the hauntingly negative facets of women’s top- tier competitive sports, the series sees 10 of Britain’s bestknown female Olympic champions speak candidly about the euphoric highs and untold lows that have defined their careers.
It’s a series that strikes a very personal chord for Murray, following years of public scrutiny supporting her sons on the international tennis circuit.
“I kind of got catapulted into the spotlight during Wimbledon 2005,” she says. “Andy was about 18 and totally unexpectedly made the third round and ended up playing on the Centre Court on the middle Saturday.
“The nature of tennis is such that – Wimbledon in particular – if you’re watching on the TV, there’s no ad breaks and the cameras and the commentators need somewhere to go.
“So I found myself being picked out a lot – whether I was clapping, whether I was smiling, whether I was punching the air, baring my teeth, whatever it was – and the pictures that they used of me were always the aggressive ones.
“And they immediately created this image of me as being the overbearing mother, too competitive, too pushy, et cetera, et cetera, and it just continued from there.”
It’s a source of frustration for the tennis coach, who now uses her platform to raise awareness of women’s tennis – and the wider topic of females in sport, through projects like Driving Force and the Judy Murray Foundation.
“If my kids had played rugby or cricket or football I’d have been lost in the crowd with all the other parents, nobody would ever have seen me,” she continues. “The nature of tennis puts you in the spotlight in a way that probably no other sport does, with a parent who’s just watching their kids playing and supporting them.”
With Covid- 19 putting huge financial strain across men’s sport, not to mention the knock- on impact on the lesser- funded women’s teams and sporting programmes, raising the profiles of female athletes has become more important than ever.
“The success of the Lionesses; the women’s rugby; England women’s cricket – winning the World Cup; the netball; and the hockey – these are world- class performers and they are teams – that has enormously raised awareness,” says Murray. “Team sport is huge for engaging the nation, you can rally numbers behind a team. Now, we’re trying to raise the profiles of them as individual athletes. If you can see it, you might believe that one day you could be it.”
The first episode of Driving Force premieres on Sky TV today.