Judy: Why I got a giant spider tattoo... at 57!
Revealed live on TV, secret behind tennis mum’s inking
AT the age of 57, you might imagine that Judy Murray’s wild days are long in the past.
But yesterday, the mother of Britain’s top tennis stars revealed she had committed the ultimate act of teen rebellion – by getting a tattoo.
The seemingly strait-laced Mrs Murray showed off a large, Gothic-style inking on her upper back on TV last night.
While many who undergo the needle later regret it, the mother of two revealed a rather touching reason for her design.
She said it was to honour the story of Robert the Bruce and marked her perseverance in the struggle to raise two worldclass sportsmen in her sons Andy and Jamie.
According to legend, while on the run from the English, Bruce was sheltering in a cave when he spotted a spider trying to spin a web. Despite repeated failures it succeeded, supposedly inspiring him to continue with the armed struggle that ultimately led to victory at Bannockburn in 1314.
Mrs Murray’s own story of endurance involved scrounging for coaching money and hunting for sponsors, against the odds, while her boys were growing up in Dunblane, Stirlingshire.
Discussing the spider, which she had inked three weeks ago, she said: ‘I’ve always wanted a tattoo and a spider seemed perfect. I wanted it somewhere I couldn’t see it, just knowing it’s there is enough.’
Mrs Murray has frequently discussed the difficulty of raising children who have sporting talent.
Andy’s training costs came in at some £10,000 more than her annual salary as a coach, forcing her to take out a loan of £30,000. The money was only repaid after he began to bring in prize money from tournament wins.
In her new book, she also recounts how she scrabbled together £30 to buy a new blazer to accept the Junior Player of the Year award on Andy’s behalf – only to be mocked for her appearance by the host. Mrs Murray’s book – Knowing the Score: My Family and Our Tennis Story – hit the shelves yesterday and has already peaked in some bestseller lists.
In an interview, Mrs Murray, of Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire, said: ‘I had a lot of belief in the boys, I realised they had talent, were competitive and wanted to play. But I had no inkling they would both become world number ones. I was just creating opportunities so they could progress to the next stage.
‘There were tough times but I’m very stubborn and the more I was told something was impossible, the more determined I was to find a way.’
Andy became men’s singles world number one last year. Jamie is a former doubles world number one.
‘I am very stubborn’
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.