Judy Murray on revolutionising British women's tennis (The Sit-Down)

In the second part of Matt's chat with Judy Murray, the Scottish matriarch talks about her passion for the investment in and visibility of women's sports. Inspired by the Billie Jean King quote, "if you don't use your voice, nobody will hear you," Murray discusses her work in the women and girls space, including with the WTA to foster more tennis opportunities at a grassroots level in Saudi Arabia — current home of the WTA Finals — and in her previous role as British Fed Cup captain, where she brought more women into high-performance roles. Be sure to check out Part 1 of The Sit-Down with Judy Murray, in which she discusses raising her Grand Slam champion sons Andy and Jamie.

Listen to the full episode of Part 2 with Judy Murray here.

---

AusOpen.com
iHeart
Apple Podcasts
Spotify 

Host handles:
@Viv_Christie
@MattyAT

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It was interesting you said it was quite stressful for
you when I like that really top level, high level
intensity and being the hunter not the hunter anymore. But
you still were the British Fed Cup captain for five years,
so I'm assuming there were parts of the job that
you really enjoyed, particularly taking the British team from the
Zono groups. I think they got to the cusp of
the World Group or maybe playing off for it. So

(00:21):
what did you love about working with the top British
women's players in that time?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
I think that you know, when I took the role on,
we were in the Euro Africa zone, and of course
I'd never done anything like that before. I had captain county
teams and I've obviously had captain the Scottish teams in
the friendly internationals. Things that we've had quite quite different,
so I didn't really know what was what I was
what I was getting into. But I know how to

(00:46):
build teams and I know how to bring people, to
bring people together. And we went over to Egypt to
Israel sorry for our first in February twenty twelve, and
there were sixteen teams in our group and we went
five days in advance of its starting There was only
one other team there with us that far in advance,

(01:07):
which was Estonia, and Estonia had one male coach and
four players. The four players stayed in one room, and
we had as a wealthy governing body of the LTA,
we had our fitness trainer, Visio. I took a video analyst.
I had to fight for that, but I got it.
We had a team room. Each of our players had

(01:27):
their own room, and we were able to be there
to prepare for four or five days before. And the
reason for going so far in advance of that for
me was building the team together. You know, I had
Laura Robson and Heather Watson as to eighteen and nineteen,
and An Kiothovong and Elena Baltasha, who were both coming

(01:48):
towards the end of their careers, sort of twenty nine,
twenty eight, twenty nine year olds and brilliant, brilliant, give
you everything, and the young ones were hugely exciting prospects.
But it, you know, it was it was actually a
really good mix and it worked incredibly well. But when
I went to pick a backroom staff to come with me,

(02:11):
this was probably sort of December time, and I went
down to the LTA, and I was really amazed to
discover that there was There were no female fitness trainers,
there were no female videos, there were no female video analysts,
and I was like, they didn't they just didn't exist.
It was it was all guys. And I took an
all male team and they were all great, But my

(02:33):
point was, why aren't there any women? You know, we're
women's team. I was the first female captain for many
many years. I'd always been male captains, and you know,
I set about asking questions and saying, look, you know,
when you're dealing with females emotions and females bodies especially,
we need some women in the workforce. I wasn't looking
for an all female team, Don't get me wrong. I wasn't,

(02:55):
but I set about doing something about that. And you know, now,
obviously it's nine years later, but we have female hydeos,
and we have female fitness trainers, and we have female
video analysts, and we have female managers who can come
and you know, and help to do all the logistics
and so forth. So I felt like as well as

(03:18):
trying to build the team, and you know, in bringing
a video analyst with us, none of our girls had
ever had their matches analyzed or been presented with video
analysis of an opponent before a match. Like for me,
I'd been doing that since two thousand and four in Scotland.
I taught myself how to do it and it's very
time consuming, but yes, really, it really really is. But

(03:43):
I taught myself how to do it because you know,
when I was a national coach, I had no resource,
so it was almost like, if I need to learn something,
we're going to have to learn it myself. But that
blew me away that you know, with the LTA, with
all of its you know, Grand Slam Nation and with
all of its huge budget, nobody was doing that. So anyway,

(04:03):
we did a lot of that. But in the five
days running up to that, we had a great time. Everything.
In the evening we played team games and it was
always the girls against the boys, always and that was
done on purpose to make us bond as a unit.
So you know, whether it was past the bomb or pittionary,
but we had honestly the best time and by the

(04:23):
time we got going, because nobody comes to watch in
those zones unless you're the home team, nobody comes to watch,
so you really have to make your own noise. We
had the drum kits and all the rest of it,
and freezing cold. If you had a night match, it
was just it was like playing a club match, a
lot of it. But we made our own noise and
we made a great team spirit and one of the

(04:43):
things that I was particularly proud of at the end
of that very first campaign. Yes, we got through into
a playoff for the World Group where we went to Sweden,
but and Kiothovani and Elena Batasha, who are exactly the
same year of birth, exactly the same age, came all
through juniors to huge arrivals and juniors they didn't speak
to each other. They would make a little bit of

(05:05):
an effort for fed Cup, or so I was told,
but they never spoke to each other. And actually by
the end of that fed Cup campaign, they were sitting
beside each other on the bus to the airport, they
sat beside each other on the flight home, and they
had agreed to play doubles together and to try to
get into the Olympics doubles together, which of course was

(05:27):
going to be in London in July, and for me
that was a massive success. But what definitely through that
period that I was fed cup. We created a great
support group of our women by telling them. And this
goes back to what I was saying about the small pond.
It's too easy to be rivals within a small pond.
I was saying to them, it is not about you

(05:47):
against you. This is about us together against the rest
of the world, and we all work together and we
support each other. Wherever your playing.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
To catch the rest of this episode, you can find
the link to the full show in the show notes,
or by heading to the sit Down wherever you listen
to your podcasts, M