Murray speaks about the lack of female coaches in tennis

Andy Murray has had a great career that has been recently derailed by injuries. He is still working on his comeback which is set for Miami but amidst the coronavirus threat that might not happen. In the meantime, he wrote an op-ed piece for International Olympic Committee. The reason was International women's day as he wrote about the lack of female coaches in tennis.

He started by giving a lot of credit to his mother who was his coach early in his career due to her playing the sport as well. He admitted she still coaches him from time to time as any mother does for her children. But then he turned to the problem:

"But when I became professional, I noticed that basically every male player had a male coach and, in most cases, a male support team."

He decided to change that in 2014 when he hired Amelie Mauresmo. It's was a big deal in the tennis world as no high profile player ever hired a female coach before. Murray explained the decision by highlighting the similarities in their careers. The partnership was somewhat fruitful albeit Murray didn't win a grand slam during her tenure.

"The reason they were questioning her was purely based on her sex; it was not because of her ability or what she’d done in her career. I did well with Amélie and reached Grand Slam finals, but a lot of people saw the period when we worked together as a failure because I didn’t win a Grand Slam title."

He also spoke about how she would often get the blame. Usually, it was the player who got the blame. He also touched upon the Olympics:

"The best coaches should be the best people and, at the Olympic Games, there’s no way that women should represent only 11 per cent of the best coaches – clearly more work needs to be done here."

It's clear from these statements that this is an issue very dear to Murray. His Idol growing up was his Murray and that strong connection with her is why Murray is an outspoken feminist. It's not the first time Murray openly spoke about sensitive issues. His comments prior to the Scottish Independence referendum caused a lot of controversies.

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