Judy Murray has grand designs for the grassroots of British tennis

Giving youngsters the opportunity to play at public facilities, not clubs, is key to finding more talent
Judy Murray
Judy Murray helped the push to refurbish the dilapidated courts at Drumchapel Park in Glasgow. Photograph: Mark Nouillan for the Guardian Mark Nouillan/for the Guardian

It is a long way from Drumchapel to Wimbledon but Judy Murray is convinced the most direct route from darkness to a new dawn in British tennis begins in often unpromising landscapes.

Her philosophy, echoed in some influential quarters of the Lawn Tennis Association, challenges the conventional view of tennis in this country as an organic offshoot of established and comfortable clubs, with champions emerging either by accident or through the now discredited strategy of performance-led investment that many critics believed marked the regime of the departing chief executive, Roger Draper.

Her own son Andy, she points out, had to leave what he considered the rigid and suffocating system to find freedom to develop his talents in Spain as a teenager – but, she says, there are other ways.

A couple of weeks ago, before she took the Aegon GB Federation Cup team on a challenging and ultimately frustrating mission to Argentina, she stood alongside teachers, community workers and like-minded optimists in one of Glasgow's most deprived areas to unveil refurbished courts in Drumchapel Park that had been rotting through neglect. For people whose only image of Judy Murray is the fretting mother at big tournaments, her evangelism in more modest surroundings should come as a counterpoint. But this is where she has been doing quiet missionary work for tennis for many years.

"It's a very small club," she says, "but one of the oldest in the city. There were no nets, the fencing was ripped, they were dangerous. But the upshot of doing a class there [three years ago] was it set the ball rolling again. Last year at Wimbledon, we got tickets through the schools association for 32 kids from the local primary school to come down in a bus. The teachers made this huge effort to give these kids the opportunity. It's a massive achievement in a seriously deprived area. That's the way forward. I grew up like that, with things happening through the local community, through volunteers and a sense of belonging. I understand the importance of getting people working together."

If any of these young players make it, Murray will be delighted, but that is not what drives her to spread the game, she says, and nor should it be the obsession of the LTA, who are considering a radical change in strategy.

If Murray (who has no interest in applying for Draper's job) has any influence, the dubious policy of indulging players with little chance of ever making it will be either scrapped or modified. The word that recurs in our conversation is "opportunity".

"If you wanted to try tennis for the first time, you're probably not going to rock up to your local club and have a go. That's why you need these kinds of public facilities, not expensive and driven by people from the local community.

"In my opinion, our competitions are too serious and too regimented, and they come far too early. We have an elaborate mini-tennis system where you move from a red ball and a more or less badminton-size court at age seven, to a three-quarter court with a slightly different ball, a transition stage, before going to a full-size court when you're nine, with a green ball, with a little bit of the pressure taken out. But you can't move from one to the other until you're old enough. So there is a dilemma for players who are very big or very good for their age. The competition can stop stimulating them, because they can't move on. They get too good for the size of the court.

"When Jamie and Andy were eight and nine they were playing with a normal tennis ball on a normal-size court, and doing pretty well. They were playing not just for the under-12s and junior local team, but with grown men, some of the old fogies at the [Dunblane] club. They were learning how to play the game properly. Kids can get stuck far too early in their own age group. If they were eight and nine now, they would not be allowed to be play with a yellow ball, on a full-sized court or in an under-12s competition. A lot of stimulation for them at that age was that there was a big variety of competition for them. That is not the case now.

"The other thing that comes into it is the cost of competing. If you become one of the better ones – not too difficult because the numbers are small – you end up having to travel considerable distances with overnight stays, expensive petrol etc, to improve your rating and progress to the next level. That is a deterrent for many families, just the cost of it. The key is to have better competition locally. It requires a huge number of brainstorming sessions to keep more kids in the game and get them to a better level. It has to be better and affordable at the entry level."

Does she sense a will to do that? "There certainly should be. That's what the governing body is there for. Performance is one thing, and of course it provides inspiration and the excitement, perhaps, for children to want to get involved, but your role models are only effective if your grassroots are very strong."

Those inspirational figures do not come along very often. Her youngest son is one of them. Tara Moore might be another. "She is a very exciting young prospect," Murray says of a 20-year-old currently ranked fifth in Great Britain and 200 in the world. "She is the same age as Heather Watson and the last three months she has been working at the National Tennis Centre with Jeremy Bates. He's had a very good influence on her. She's incredibly talented, great hand skills. For her it's all about learning to live the life of a tennis professional, because for the bulk of the year you're on your own. If she approaches it with the right attitude, with the right support around her, we could see a lot of her in the next 12 months.

"We don't have big numbers of potential top players through our juniors, and that's something needs to be addressed through the grassroots. We need to find ways to encourage more girls into the game, and to keep them in the game. Part of that is getting more female coaches. They can address the needs of girls much better than male coaches do. And that's a significant factor keeping girls in the game."

Her "girls", as she calls the Federation Cup team, faltered in Buenos Aires, losing 3-1 on clay, and Great Britain's return to World Group II after an absence of 20 years is on hold for another 12 months. But Murray is not one to mope. "We will get there one day," she says.

She is also a realist. Standing amid the weeds and broken nets of a derelict club in Drumchapel three years ago, she knew that one day change would come, but not without people pulling together. It is a powerful metaphor for the state of British tennis.