Kamau Murray (born 1980) is an American

tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...

coach. He is best known for coaching

Sloane Stephens Sloane Stephens (born March 20, 1993) is an American professional tennis player. She achieved a career-best ranking of world No. 3 after Wimbledon in 2018. Stephens was the 2017 US Open champion, and has won seven WTA Tour singles titles in to ...

to the US Open title in 2017.

Early life and background

Murray grew up on the South Side of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. His father was an attorney and his mother was a high school assistant principal. Murray began playing tennis at age 7 during his summer break from school, as it was the first summer program his parents found where they could afford to send him. He continued to play during the school year in Chicago Public Schools after-school programs for many years. His parents also hoped he could earn a scholarship through playing tennis, as they did not expect to be able to pay for him to attend college. Murray attended

Whitney Young Magnet High School Whitney M. Young Magnet High School (locally known simply as Whitney Young) is a public magnet high school and middle school located in the Near West Side neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Whitney Young is operated by the Chicago ...

, the same high school as

USTA The United States Tennis Association (USTA) is the national governing body for tennis in the United States. A not-for-profit organization with more than 700,000 members, it invests 100% of its proceeds to promote and develop the growth of tennis, ...

president

Katrina Adams Katrina M. Adams (born August 5, 1968) is an American tennis executive and former professional tennis player from Chicago. She was president and CEO of the United States Tennis Association and chair of the US Open, as well as the chair of the I ...

. He was also classmates with future NBA player

Quentin Richardson Quentin Lamar Richardson (born April 13, 1980) is an American former professional basketball player who was formerly the director of player development for the Detroit Pistons of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Nicknamed "Q-Rich", he p ...

, who was and still is one of his best friends.

College career

Murray played tennis at

Florida A&M University Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), commonly known as Florida A&M, is a public historically black land-grant university in Tallahassee, Florida. Founded in 1887, It is the third largest historically black university in the Un ...

, where he served as the team captain for two years. During his sophomore season, the team won the MEAC conference title. After finishing his undergraduate degree, he also served as an assistant coach for the team while completing an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

degree.

Coaching career

Murray, side-by-side with Othmane Garma (“Coach OG”), has coached

on the

WTA Tour The WTA Tour is a worldwide top-tier tennis tour for women organized by the Women's Tennis Association. The second-tier tour is the WTA 125K series, and third-tier is the ITF Women's Circuit. The men's equivalent is the ATP Tour. WTA Tour tou ...

XS Tennis

Murray is the founder of the XS Tennis program in Chicago.

Taylor Townsend Taylor Townsend (born April 16, 1996) is an American professional tennis player. She reached career-high WTA rankings of world No. 61 in singles (July 2018) and No. 31 in doubles (December 2022). She also reached the doubles final of the 2022 ...

was one of Murray's first five players at XS Tennis when he first launched the program.

References

External links

XS Tennis
{{DEFAULTSORT:Murray, Kamau Living people 1980 births American tennis coaches Tennis people from Illinois