‘Why, at the age of 57, I’ve just got my first tattoo’
Judy Murray reveals the obstacles she overcame for her champion sons – as well as her new tattoo, writes Judith Woods
At the base of Judy Murray’s neck is her first tattoo. She had it done three weeks ago, to mark the launch of her autobiography Knowing the Score, and “unusual” doesn’t begin to describe the motif that she chose.
Murray, 57, may be the mother of tennis champions Andy and Jamie, and have ascended to the heights of Scottish National Coach – but not for her a dinky Wimbledon ball or even a delicately rendered racquet. No, the nation’s most famous sporting mother has had a large spider inked on her nape. It is not the cutesy Miss Muffet sort either, but a dark gothic arachnid. “I’ve always wanted a tattoo and a spider seemed perfect,” she says, brightly. “I wanted it somewhere I couldn’t see it; just knowing it’s there is enough.”
Once you’ve read her book, it makes sense: it’s a tribute to Robert the Bruce’s indefatigable spider, the one that refused to accept failure and inspired him to “try, try and try again”. It also sums up Murray’s own attitude, because her main revelation is the astonishing – dare I say, appalling? – amount of graft she put into making her boys’ dreams come true. “I wrote the book to share my experience,” she says. “There is no manual out there for parents to help them negotiate this path.”
I’m not sure it is so much a how-to guide as a terrifying warning; the endless laundry, the timetabling, the ferrying about and the way in which Murray tirelessly wrote begging letters for sponsorship and lobbied for opportunities – and here’s the clincher – without so much as an internet search engine to help her. I end up torn between awe at her bloody-minded mettle and relief that neither of my daughters has ever professed such a passion.
“Individual sports are a real slog and you have to pay for everything yourself; that’s how I learnt how to do tax returns, trained as a massage therapist and took a course in media management,” she explains. “We didn’t have money for professionals.”
By now I am pulling such a face that Murray laughs and assures me that I would do the same for my children. But I so wouldn’t. Especially without a cast-iron guarantee of stellar success.
Jamie is now 31 and has an OBE, three Grand Slam doubles wins and a Davis Cup to his name. Sir Andy, aged 30 (there are 15 months between them), was knighted this year, having notched up three Grand Slam victories and two Olympic golds, among many other achievements. At the end of 2016, the pair made history by becoming the first brothers to top the world tennis rankings at the same time.
“I had a lot of belief in the boys, I realised they had talent and wanted to play,” says their mother, who brought up her family in Dunblane and now lives in nearby Bridge of Allan. “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. I thought if they are the best 12-year-olds, what do the best 14-year-olds look like?
“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.”
As we know from her 2014 Strictly Come Dancing triumph, Murray is a far cry from the fist-pumping tiger-mother caricature perpetuated in the media. She and Anton du Beke hung on until week eight, when their clunky Let’s Go Fly a Kite Viennese Waltz could not, in all good faith, be overlooked. Yet Murray emerged as a star in her own right. We now know her to be reserved, shy even, brisk rather than brusque and as for domineering; wholehearted would be a far better epithet. “When I was asked to appear, Jamie said ‘Oh Mum, you’ll love it’ and Andy said ‘Oh Mum, you’ll
‘I learnt how to do tax returns, trained in massage therapy and took a media course’
be awful’ and they were both right,” she says. “I adored every minute.”
In Knowing the Score, she steers fastidiously clear of personal family details; no space is given over to her divorce from the boys’ father Willie, in 2005, after nine years of separation, while Jamie’s Colombian wife, Alejandra, and Andy’s wife, Kim, and 16-month-old daughter, Sophia, are only mentioned in passing.
“I love being a grandmother” is all she will say. “You get to do the fun stuff, and it’s lovely to have a little girl in the family.” But for all the emphasis on her boys’ privacy, Murray doesn’t hold back when it comes to her own humiliations. No woman could fail to flinch at her account of the time she scrabbled together £29.99 to buy a new M&S jacket in order to accept the Junior Player of the Year award on Andy’s behalf – only for the male host to publicly mock her dowdy appearance, sneering that her son should have given her a few quid. Then there were the endless unflattering paparazzi shots and a particularly unforgiving film of her clapping at Wimbledon.
“I wanted Andy to see me, so I lifted my hands above my head at every big point,” she says. “The BBC showed the clip in slow motion, and as I was wearing a vest top, each time my hands met, a ripple of flesh juddered down my arm. It was grotesque – they kept playing it, over and over.”
After that, she vowed to cover her arms, clap like a seal and look impassive. It didn’t last.
Like any mother, Murray feels her boys’ pain more keenly than her own; when a 19-year-old Andy made an (un)wisecrack about “supporting any team playing against England” during the 2006 World Cup, she was as floored by the backlash as he was. He has long since redeemed himself in the eyes of fans, but it served as a reminder that with fame comes responsibility.
As for Jamie, Murray admits that sending him away to train in England, aged 12, was a mistake. “I thought he was going to be coached by someone with a track record of producing top players with a full support network, but that wasn’t the case,” she says. “It knocked his confidence. The whole episode made me very wary of trusting anybody else with my kids’ tennis. I still warn parents about sending them away too young. The most important thing is for them to grow up into rounded individuals.”
Murray, who is currently single, no longer plays a part in their professional lives and since stepping down as Great Britain Fed Cup captain (the female equivalent of the Davis Cup), now devotes much of her time to encouraging young girls to play tennis. “I want Jamie and Andy to leave a tangible legacy behind that benefits kids who might not otherwise have thought about taking up the game,” she says.
Meanwhile, both her sons are playing at Wimbledon this year, but chances are Murray won’t be snapped punching the air. “I can’t bear to watch, even on television,” she says. “I don’t listen on the radio either; it’s too stressful. Instead, I clean the house, starting with the bathroom and I just scrub and polish until it’s all over. Then I turn on my phone to find out the result.”
I think we can all join Judy in hoping that this year’s outcome will be more than just some very shiny taps.
Knowing the Score by Judy Murray is published by Chatto and Windus (£18.99). To order for £16.99 plus p&p, call 0844 871 1514 or visit books. telegraph.co.uk