Edmund one step from Grand Slam final
Kyle Edmund’s mother won’t attend semi-finals in Australia ‘to spare him my nagging about sun cream’
TENNIS fans have grown used to the stern presence of Judy Murray urging her son Andy to greatness and not being shy to offer encouragement from her courtside seat.
But when Kyle Edmund, the new British grand slam hopeful, steps onto the court for the semi-final of the Australian Open on Friday his mother will be nowhere to be seen.
Denise Edmund says she does not want to annoy her son by nagging him, so has decided to stay away from Melbourne – unless he reaches the final.
“I’m not planning on going to watch over there as Kyle has got his winning formula and he needs to stick with that without his mum nagging him about whether he’s got enough sun cream on,” she told The Daily Telegraph. “I 100 per cent know he is in the best care. Kyle will be so focused. When he walks on court he needs to think only about himself without distractions. But when he gets to the final I might join him!”
She is not the first tennis mother to steer clear of the offspring’s key matches. Heather Watson’s mother Michelle frequently sits them out, so as not to distract her, and last year Johanna Konta’s mother Gabriella was too nervous to watch her Wimbledon semi- final from courtside. Mrs Edmund has repeatedly warned her pale-skinned son to cover himself in sunblock before every match.
Mrs Edmund, 50, said: “He is very pale and light-skinned and I’m always telling him what to pack and making him take sun cream and sun block for his cheeks. I always get him the spray one. He jokes that I always nag him saying ‘don’t forget the sun cream’, I think if I cannot give him tips and advice on tennis then at least I tell him to look after himself in the sun.”
But it seems she may indeed need to remind him before his semi-final against Marin Cilic. After his quarter final victory against Grigor Dimitrov, the world number three, Edmund, 23, admitted: “I got a bit burned on Monday. I didn’t put enough on then… I have to take responsibility. My mum gives me a lecture if I don’t.”
If Edmund goes on to win the Open he will have gone one better than five times finalist Andy Murray by becoming the first British man to win the Australian Open since Fred Perry in 1934.
Edmund moved to the UK from South Africa with parents Denise and Steven, a businessman originally from Wales, when he was just three, and the family settled in the Yorkshire village of Tickton. By the age of 13 he had been offered a place at a tennis academy at Bisham Abbey in Bucks, and at 17 moved to the LTA’S National Training Centre in Roehampton, west London.
Mrs Edmund said: “When we moved here from South Africa the last thing I wanted them to do was to sit in front of the TV all day so I booked them tennis classes. Whereas his sister Kelly would be offering her opponent Jaffa cakes, Kyle was more intense and serious. He was obsessed with anything with a ball: football, rugby, cricket you name it. He’d get all the neighbours to form a street cricket team so he could play”
Although he recently bought a property in the Bahamas as a warm-weather training base, Edmund, who has earned £1.52million during his career so far, regularly returns to Tickton.
“He might fly all over the world now but when he comes home all he wants is for me to cook him a Sunday roast with Yorkshire puddings. Every time! I’m in trouble if I don’t!” said Mrs Edmund.