Andy Murray’s journey to tennis greatness began with a childhood filled with imagination, competition, and larger-than-life role models. According to his mother Judy, the world No. 2 once sported a fake Andre Agassi ponytail, staged WWF-style wrestling matches with his brother Jamie, and even flipped board games when he was losing.
“Role models were very important to the boys,” Judy said of Andy, 29, and Jamie, 30, now the world’s top doubles player. “I can remember the boys watching on television when they were very young and really enjoying watching Andre Agassi. In fact Andy had the denim shorts with the pink lycra that came out underneath them! He even had a cap that had a fake ponytail at the back of it. He absolutely loved it because Agassi was his absolute idol. And if you watch how Andy played, it’s not dissimilar to how Agassi played. So role models can be a huge influence.”
FEE SET AT 150 GBP FOR USE OF THIS PICTURE
She added that Tim Henman also inspired both her sons. “When they were 11 and 12, they won a competition and got a chance to go to Queen’s Club and be part of a big day that Henman was at. Tim had just a quick word with them. He was the British No. 1 at the time and now he’s a great friend and has been a great advisor to both of them through their careers. It’s interesting looking back on that because I can see the impact that it had … You can’t underestimate the effect either an event or a person can have on a young player.”
Speaking at an HSBC ‘Road to Wimbledon’ event in Sussex, Judy stressed the value of exposure for children. “I’m a huge believer in giving kids the opportunity of getting closer to the big action and the big players. The closer you can get them, the more chance you have of them believing they can get there themselves one day — and that Wimbledon isn’t just something you see on the television. We also have to get more children enjoying competition. Nowadays children do a lot of competing on tablets, playing against a computer. And they learn to win and lose in private. [To change that] competition has to be fun, it has to be challenging, it has to be stimulating and we need more of this kind of thing to bring more children into enjoying the competitive side of tennis.”
For Andy and Jamie, sport was never limited to tennis. “When they were very young they did pretty much every sport under the sun,” Judy recalled. “They loved WWF. Andy loved The Rock and Jamie loved Stone Cold Steve Austin. So they used to create their own WWF bouts. They’d make belts out of cardboard with paint and glitter. I remember one night hearing a lot of noise from the bedroom, banging and clattering. I went upstairs to see what they were doing and they said, ‘We’re having a ladder fight for this belt’. And they’d made this belt and it was lying beside their two duvets on the floor — that was their ring. And they had to wrestle each other and one had to pin the other and count to three. And once you’ve counted to three, you run up a ladder and you ring a bell. That’s what they’d seen on the television — this drama. And what they had was two duvets, a stepladder and a lampshade to smack after a pin-down. And this was them recreating what they’d seen simply on television — the impact of seeing events up close is even greater.”
According to Judy, Andy’s competitive streak was evident from the very beginning. “Probably because he had an older brother who was bigger than him and better than him at everything they did,” she explained. Even during simple board games, his refusal to lose shone through. “Any number of times he was playing and he realised that he wasn’t going to win, the board would be tipped up and the pieces would go flying everywhere. And Andy would storm off saying he wasn’t playing. But he and Jamie were very good at creating their own games with each other and their own scoring systems. Andy’s still good at changing things, on court, to find a way to win.”
Today, that competitive fire has carried Andy and Jamie to the very top of their sport, their sibling rivalry shaping champions who went on to deliver Davis Cup glory for Great Britain in 2015.
