Game, set and match to supermum Judy

My goodness, Judy Murray is an incredible woman. In her new book Knowing The score, the 57- year- old supermum shares her experience of raising two tennis champions. It involves endless laundry, spreadsheet timetables, coaching, driving all over the country to matches, begging for sponsorship and seizing opportunities — all of this in a pre-internet age.

‘I’m very stubborn,’ she says. I’ll say.

As tennis is an individual sport and not a team effort, Judy (right) had to do it all herself. Along the way she learned how to do tax returns, trained as a massage therapist and took a course in media management. In the early days she could never afford the professional help her sons needed, so she became a one-woman support team. Today, elder son Jamie, 31, has three grand slam doubles wins, a davis Cup and an oBe to his name. Andy, 30, has three grand slam victories, two olympic golds and a knighthood. Last year, they made history by becoming the first brothers to top the world tennis rankings (Andy in singles, Jamie in doubles) at the same time. They would be the first to say that much of this is thanks to their mother.

yet even now she cannot relax and take pride in their achievements. As the stakes get higher and higher, the less and less she can bear to watch them play. When her sons step onto the grass at Wimbledon this year, she will be doing housework.

‘I just scrub and polish until it’s all over. Then I turn on my phone to find out the result,’ she says. All that, for this? one senses that failure is not an option Chez Murray.