JUDY Murray and Colin Montgomerie have announced plans to build Scotland's first purpose-built tennis and golf centre near Stirling.
Murray, the mother of Scots tennis ace Andy and the coach for Britain's Fed Cup tennis team, and Montgomerie, the former Ryder Cup captain, said the facility would help breed a new generation of Scottish sporting talent.
Work on the new centre at Park Of Keir between Dunblane and Bridge of Allan will begin in 2014 if the proposal gets planning permission.
Murray had previously revealed her ambition to create an "affordable and accessible" tennis centre in Scotland, and last year scouted out a 15-acre plot in Cramond, Edinburgh.
Shortly after her son's historic US Open win in September, she and Montgomerie held talks with Alex Salmond to find out if such a development would be backed by the Scottish Government.
The financial support was expected to come primarily from the Lawn Tennis Association and private investors including Andy Murray, the world No 2.
Councillor John Hendry, who is leading Stirling's bid for the National Performance Centre for Sport, welcomed the tennis-golf initiative.
He said: "These proposals fit well with our commitment to make sport a driver in improving health and wellbeing across society."
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