Photo by REX/Shutterstock | Judy Murray
Photo by REX/Shutterstock | Judy Murray

Book Review | Knowing the Score by Judy Murray

By Jake Davies & Ros Satar

The Britwatch Tennis team take on Judy Murray’s Knowing The Score: My Family & Our Tennis Story – it offers a fascinating insight into the struggles of a family to make two outstanding tennis champions.

The Facts

Knowing The Score: My Family & Our Tennis Story, by Judy Murray

Published: June 2017

 

Summary

What happens when you find you have exceptional children?
Do you panic? Put your head in the sand? Or risk everything and jump in head first?

As mother to tennis champions Jamie and Andy Murray, Scottish National Coach, coach of the Fed Cup, and general all-round can-do woman of wonder, Judy Murray is the ultimate role model for believing in yourself and reaching out to ambition. As a parent, coach, leader, she is an inspiration who has revolutionised British tennis.

From the soggy community courts of Dunblane to the white heat of Centre Court at Wimbledon, Judy Murray’s extraordinary memoir charts the challenges she has faced, from desperate finances and growing pains to entrenched sexism.

We all need a story of ‘yes we can’ to make us believe great things are possible. This is that story.

 

Review

It is safe to say that we can take the success of our British players for granted, but the success of Andy and Jamie Murray, particularly at Wimbledon, is something that we should appreciate and cherish, because of how unlikely those achievements looked just twenty years ago.

Andy and Jamie Murray
Photo by BPI/REX/Shutterstock |
Andy and Jamie Murray

A lot had been made of the young Murray brothers from an early age. Many would be surprised at the early success that Jamie Murray had on the singles court, but Judy Murray talks through the unbelievable results that Jamie produced from an early stage of his career in singles and the tough decisions she had to make for both her sons for the benefit of both their careers.

Judy also talks through the difficult predicaments she found herself in as she tried her utmost to do the very best Jamie and Andy. None more so than when Andy watched the unbelievable intensity of Rafael Nadal’s training in Spain and realised that that was the next step in order for Murray to compete at a higher level.

The decision was a no brainer for his mother. Always trying to look for the best for her children to excel, even when she was down to her last pennies, but an act of kindness from a stranger would change everything for the Murray family.

Judy unexpectedly received a £10,000 cheque from tennis devotee, Maggie Auld, which arrived in a time of need and a challenging time of pure stress. That money would go on to help fund Andy Murray’s stay at a renowned academy in Barcelona.

Who knows whether Andy could ever have pursued his dreams to this extent without the great act of kindness from his biggest fan.

This book also shows Judy’s determination to make change in a sport very much male-dominated – making all her efforts to ensure that the participation of women in any capacity in tennis would improve through her help and through her hard work.

That can be seen with her great commitment to the Great Britain Fed Cup team for the five years she was in charge up to 2016, the tireless work she has put towards getting young girls to take up the sport of tennis from a young age and the fun schemes and ways she has enabled those children to stay interested and motivated to play tennis on a regular basis.

Judy also touches on her responsibility as Scotland’s national tennis coach, which is a role she filled on two separate occasions. Many only really see Judy as Andy and Jamie’s mother, but her role in the sport of tennis stretches much further than that, because of what she has contributed for so many people in so many different capacities.

Knowing the Score is an accessible, relatable and uplifting story that shows that with the necessary commitment and hunger to push the boundaries and to never take no for an answer, that anything really is possible, even with limited resources. If there is hope there is a way.

 

Audience

Obviously if you are a Murray fan this is a great insight, but it is the details around the periphery of Jamie and Andy’s success that are the real eye-openers. The section describing the collapse of Jamie’s game when he went to Cambridge and how Judy decided enough was enough was one of the more heart-breaking parts of the book.

 

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