Judy Murray rallies against ‘elitist image’ of tennis during talk at Henley Literary Festival

Judy Murray has rallied against "elitism" in tennis during a talk at Henley Literary Festival 2023.

The tennis coach and mother of tennis stars Andy and Jamie Murray, who recently penned her first thriller The Wild Card, spoke before a crowd at the Oxfordshire festival, for which The Independent is the exclusive news partner.

Speaking with Lisa Edgar, chief insight officer at Saga Group Plc, Murray told the audience: “Those of you who know me know that I like to raise awareness of certain things and often get myself into trouble doing so, particularly on the female side and the need for more women in the workforce, the need for more equality of opportunity in the sporting world in general.

“But the thing of having more female coaches for me, that was a big thing. The thing of the ‘Haves’ and ‘Have-nots’, that’s one of the things that I’ve always hated about tennis – the elitist image that it has of being difficult to do, difficult to access and expensive.”

Murray’s novel, set in the world of tennis, addresses the structural power dynamics within the sport, with Murray stating that the story explored “the Haves and Have-nots”.

“I’m very aware that when you start to progress through tennis, it is very, very expensive, because when you outgrow your own catchment area – for us, our catchment area of Scotland, you have to travel down south – the costs are huge. The time commitment is huge. And not everybody can afford to do that with their kids.

“You know, in an individual sport, the onus is very much on the parents to make it all happen. If my kids had been great at rugby or football or cricket, they’d have been signed up by the club and the club would have taken care of the fixtures, of the kit and the training. They’d have been paid a salary, paid bonuses and I would have been completely anonymous in the background, driving the car maybe once in a while. But in something like tennis and I guess golf, the parents had to make it all happen.”

She added: “So one of the things I wanted to do was make that distinction between the ‘Haves’ and the ‘Have-nots’.”

Other speakers at Henley this weekend included David Walliams, who opened up about a recent incident in which he was locked up by Italian police, and ace fighter pilot Nathan Gray, who spoke about losing a colleague in a tragic 2002 training accident.

TV’s Rob Rinder, meanwhile, regaled his audience with a wide ranging discussion of everything from the legal system to Strictly Come Dancing, and at midday on Sunday (8 October), Captain Corelli’s Mandolin author Louis de Bernieres spoke at an event chaired by The Independent‘s chief books critic Martin Chilton.

Henley Literary Festival continues until 8 October.