A MEETING at Stirling University on Thursday led to the baton for the well-being of Scottish tennis being passed from Judy Murray to Ellinore Lightbody, who succeeds Murray as national coach.
The setting for the last meeting with Murray in charge was symbolic as next year, if everything goes to plan, TennisScotland will have the longawaited national centre created within the university grounds.
It will have a total of six indoor courts and two outdoor clay courts plus all the back-up players need from the sports science staff and physiotherapists on the site. Administrators believe that having a national centre will take the game, already on a high in Scotland, to even greater heights.
Much of the renaissance in Scottish tennis has to be put down to Murray, who is a hard act for Lightbody to follow.
During her time in charge, players such as Andy Murray, the US Open junior champion;
Jamie Baker, the Great Britain under-18 champion; Graeme Dyce, the UK under-15 champion and Jamie Murray, the US Open juniors doubles semifinalist, all made great strides in the game. Meanwhile, Alan Mackin and David Brewer were playing on the ATP Challenger and Futures Tours and improving their rankings.
It is recognised, even by the Lawn Tennis Association officials in London, that the best young male players in Britain are currently from Scotland.
With Tim Henman retiring from the Davis Cup team and Greg Rusedski likely to follow, Andy Murray, in particular, is waiting in the wings to make the step up.
In the women's game, Elena Baltacha, who became the first British woman in 14 years to reach the third round of the Australian Open, honed her game at the Scotstoun Centre in Glasgow. Caitlin Steele, 14, another Glasgow girl, is tipped to be another future star.
"It has to be acknowledged that Judy has done a fantastic job bringing through some great players and is a hard act to follow, " said Lightbody, who was born in Greenock and who was Murray's doubles partner when they were juniors. "It is my job to find the next generation of good Scottish tennis players."
Lightbody comes from a tennis-playing family. Her father, Jim was chairman of the executive board of Tennis Wales. She spent her formative years in the principality before moving to the Hong Kong Institute of Sport, where she was responsible for training their best junior players.
She later became national coach of Wales before taking up a number of senior posts with the LTA. Latterly she was responsible for all the performance officers in the west of England, Wales and Scotland before taking over from Murray as Scotland's national coach.
"I will be working with officials in the district structure trying to find the best six, seven, and eight-year-old tennis players and will want to make sure there is a clear pathway for all of them to fulfil their potential, " said Lightbody.
"I want to make sure that the dedicated players, the ones with the desire to succeed, are supported and get what they need. The present programmes in place for them need to be improved and supported and that will be one of my major roles."
She believes she is taking over at a time when the Scottish game is in a healthy state and says it is important that the players with potential are given enough court time.
"Access to court time is an issue and, hopefully, when the national centre opens at Stirling, that will help matters, " said Lightbody. "Young players need to play 12 to 16 hours a week. As they are at school, everybody wants court times in the early evening and it is like putting a jigsaw together among court time, coaches and when the players are available."
Despite Scottish tennis producing some good young players, Lightbody believes more are required to ensure they all get a decent level of competition from the start.
"I would like to have a high volume of players coming through, as the more players you have the more likely you are to find the one or two players who can make the breakthrough, " she said.
"Scottish players have a big heart and a lot of desire. There are also a lot of enthusiastic coaches to help them and I am sure there are players out there who will do well in the future."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article