Judy Murray ready to step back and hand over to the next generation
Lockdown gave Judy Murray a taste of retirement, and she found she rather liked it.
While best known among the wider public for being Andy and Jamie's mother, Judy has been a one-woman task force for growing tennis in Scotland and for girls and women across the UK and globally.
Since her days as the national coach for Scotland, when she helped a group of young players, including her sons, to make it to the professional game, Judy has been immersed in the sport, but now she wants to take a step back.
She said: "I'm used to travelling, it's been a way of life for me since the kids were very young and when I was the Scottish national coach.
"It has been really strange but I have to say that I really enjoyed most of the first lockdown because it gave me a chance to step back and chill out and not be packing a suitcase or jumping on a plane. It made me see what retirement looked like, and I quite liked it.
"I'm definitely going to step back. I realise I'm getting a bit long in the tooth and I've been doing this for such a long time. It's actually now time for the next generation to step up."
That means carrying on and building on the work Judy has done to make teaching tennis fun and inclusive and taking the sport out of its traditional communities.
This week Judy is working with cinch, title sponsors of the cinch Championships at Queen's Club, who are offering the chance to win free tennis lessons.
"I really love things like that because not everybody can afford lessons, not everybody has access to a coach, so it's really opening the opportunity up to everybody," said Judy.
"For me tennis is the number one family sport and you can play all your life. I've always wanted us to create a culture of tennis like you find in Spain or France.
"France has ten times as many people who play tennis as us and probably ten times as many clubs and ten times as many competitions.
"For us to have a culture of tennis, we have to open it up so that we get bigger numbers. Everything's about numbers. Sport runs through families. You can see that in our family with Andy and Jamie, and my parents played at county level."
Judy has travelled less to watch her sons in recent years but is looking forward to seeing them back in action at Queen's having not watched any of their matches in person since last summer.
"I'm really looking forward to it," she said. "I love Queen's. It's one of my favourite tournaments. I think it's because it's at a club and it's grass courts and it's in Britain, so I've always loved that tournament.
"After the year and a half almost that we've had with so little live activity to watch, it'll be great to get back down there and see it all happening."
• Judy Murray was talking ahead of the cinch Championships. cinch, lead partner of the LTA, is running a campaign to give away free tennis lessons this summer. For more information go to cinch.co.uk