wITH British women's tennis currently enjoying a rich seam of success thanks to Laura Robson and Heather Watson, a Scots teenager is being touted as the next potential star to emerge from the conveyor belt of talent being carefully monitored by Judy Murray.
Glaswegian Maia Lumsden, 14, ranked the best player for her age group in Europe, earned her first senior ranking points last week when she made it through qualifying at the AEGON Pro-Series Challenger at Scotstoun and Murray, in town to speak at this weekend's International Festival of Athletics Coaching conference, paid tribute to this latest step in her sporting coming of age.
The Great Britain Fed Cup captain has known Lumsden, and her brother Ewen, from a young age, and still makes the short journey from Dunblane to the National Tennis Centre in Stirling to help out whenever she can and mentor her day-to-day coach Toby Smith.
She feels the youngster is on schedule to become another Scottish tennis superstar, assuming she follows the lead of Murray's son Andy and finds a productive international training arrangement such as the one the US Open champion discovered at the Sanchez-Casal Academy in Barcelona.
"Maia made it through the qualifying, which is a good marker for her," said Murray. "She is ranked very highly in her age group in Europe, so in world terms she is doing very well. To qualify in a women's event, play the first round and go down in three sets to England's world No 298 Lisa Whybourn is all good experience, but she has still got a lot of experience to bank in the older age groups of the juniors.
"Everybody comes through at their own pace, but at the moment Maia is very much on track. She is one of the best players for her age in Europe, is naturally talented and has very good hands. But she is now at the stage where she needs to learn how to train with more discipline and for longer. We can do a good job with the skill development in Scotland but when the girls hit that 15, 16 age and they need a more competitive sparring environment and a more international learning environment, then they have to go out of the country, preferably overseas so they can get the good weather, a variety of different surfaces and a variety of different people to train with.
"I think it is more than likely she will move abroad – if she really wants to realise her potential she has to go into an international training environment."
Just as Robson and Watson are currently challenging each other on the main tour, Murray sees Lumsden in the vanguard of a promising quartet of young Scots, each of whom is the British No 1 for their calendar year.
"It is handy for me because the NTC is at Stirling, which is just a few miles down the road, so when I am at home it is not a difficult thing for me to pop in and try to help out," Murray said. "Anastasia Mikheeva is a year younger than Maia, Anna Brogan is a year older than Maia, and Ali Collins is two years older than Maia.
"So of players born in 2000, 1999, 1998, and 1997 we have the No 1 in Britain for each year of birth, all Scottish girls. We can do a good job for a few players, not a load of players, partly because of facilities, partly because we don't have the numbers to start with, plus we have only a couple of coaches who really know what they are doing. But there is a very impressive stable of girls now."
Coaching for Murray begins at home, having developed and authored a Set 4 Sport programme which encourages parents to develop their children's sporting and co-ordination skills in fun-based activities around the home.
"I think there is a big onus on parents, from when kids are small," she said. "I think you would struggle I am sure to find any top-class sportsperson without an enormous amount of support from their parents, particularly in individual sports."
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