Jamie Murray hails 'amazing' rise of young stars in British tennis ahead of Australian Open and 2023 season

Updated 20/12/2022 at 09:30 GMT

The upcoming Battle of the Brits event showcases many of the top talents in British tennis, and top doubles player Jamie Murray believes the level of talent has rarely been higher. Looking ahead to the Australian Open and the 2023 season, Murray said he could see a host of the young British players making serious strides at top tournaments and in the world rankings on the ATP and WTA tours.

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Jamie Murray has given his thoughts on the "amazing" progress of some of the young stars in British tennis in looking ahead to the Australian Open and 2023.

Murray, who will be competing at the Battle of the Brits event in Scotland on Wednesday and Thursday, has shared his views on the improvements made with a host of rising players on both the WTA Tour and ATP Tour.

The 36-year-old has predicted that we could see a flurry of British men and women competing at top events and moving up the rankings in 2023 as they seek to emulate his brother Andy, and more recently, Emma Raducanu in achieving success at the highest level.

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“I think it could be lots of different reasons," Murray told the Express. "I think it obviously helps to have players from your country at the top of the sport, which obviously Andy has forever, Jo [Konta] was doing that for a few years.

“I think it gives those players something to aspire to and feeling like, you know, ‘maybe I can go do that’ because they can see one of their own countrymen and women doing that, I think that’s really important to have that."

Murray cited one of the reasons for the recent improvement in British tennis as being the fact that the Covid-19 pandemic gave young players a chance to compete with each other at the National Tennis Centre, along with the likes of his brother Andy, Dan Evans and Cameron Norrie.

“I think once you start to get a group around a similar level, they obviously start to push each other more, and I think the fact that in a way the pandemic kind of brought everyone under one roof at Roehampton," he explained.

"All of a sudden I guess, like Andy’s doing a lot of training with some of the younger boys, like Jack [Draper] he spent a lot of time with, doing a lot of training with Norrie and Evans.

Andy and Jamie Murray

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“There’s a good group of guys there that all get on well, they’re into their tennis, they train hard and I think that just helps the level get higher.

“I know I can imagine it’s the same with the girls as well, they’ve got a good group now from sort of 150 to 80 [in the rankings], there’s a bunch of them, and I’m sure they will all be competitive and want to do better than the others.

"That will push them to have good results, and who knows, maybe next year at some point it could be five or six of them all inside of [the top] 100, which is amazing.”

Jamie and Andy could play doubles together for the final time at the Battle of the Brits.

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