Judy Murray was there in the front row for her son as he advanced to the Australian Open semifinals on Wednesday, just as she was there at the beginning when Andy Murray’s tennis matches were often played against his older brother in the living room of the family home in Dunblane, Scotland.

“When it was winter, he and Jamie would line up all their little trophies and things across the middle of the living room, and that would be their net,” Judy Murray said in an interview at Melbourne Park.

“A sponge ball isn’t going to hurt anything. I didn’t mind.” Judy Murray also did not mind because she was a tennis nut herself, a determined woman from a sporting family who fell for the game despite the inconvenience of being from Scotland, a place of famous libations and infamous weather where tennis was far down the list of priorities and outdoor hardcourts are, to this day, nearly as rare as palm trees.