Tennis
Andy Murray’s legacy tarnished by Tennis Scotland says Judy Murray in scathing attack at local authorities
Andy Murray’s mum Judy Murray has launched a scathing attack at the Scottish Government and Tennis Scotland after plans were shelved to build a £20million tennis centre.
With her great sons Andy and Jamie in mind who became huge sporting heroes not only locally but all over the UK, it was set to be built close to the family home of the Murray family in Dunblane.
Of course it also was heralded and helped in its bid by Judy who has spent over a decade trying to get it over the line until now when it has been shelved with Judy accusing the authorities of a lack of ‘apathy and co-operation’ and quipping that the legacy of her sons has been ruined.
She used the fact that in her view the legacy of her son Andy wasn’t celebrated enough by the powers that be and is now ruined with this now not going ahead.
“I was encouraged to give it scale by Sport Scotland and the Lawn Tennis Association to become a centre of national significance.
“I would have to say I didn’t need that. I just wanted somewhere to work to develop other coaches and players.
“And I wanted it to be about community; to be open to everybody. Everything just took so long and got bigger and so the costs went up; we hit Covid and Brexit and had challenges with planning delays.
“I wondered how it can be so difficult to build something that is inherently good. We had set it up as a charity, so there was no commercial value to us in it whatsoever.”
“I worked my butt off to try to get it to where we got it to. But when the construction costs began to rise steeply we really needed all the stakeholders who had committed to step up to help us to fill that gap. And that didn’t happen.
“We actually had the outline planning permission and we were ready to go for the detailed planning permission.”