The Cauldron Anyone for tennis?

A few years ago, I started following a sports writer from The Telegraph on X (formerly known as Twitter), after one of her articles caught my attention.

Molly McElwee is an award-winning journalist who specialises in tennis, football, and women’s sports. She’s a sharp and articulate writer whose intelligence shines through her work — always clear, concise, and free of jargon or in-jokes.

Her interviews with athletes and analyses of topical issues often (intentionally or not) highlight the experiences of women and the unique challenges they face in sport. Her perspective felt fresh, and I always enjoyed reading her pieces.

I am a lover of sport in general, and this started with my first visit to Goodwood races at the age of four months. My huge extended family regularly went to the races en masse as we were lucky to live near three courses: Plumpton, Fontwell and Goodwood.

Now don’t imagine us dressed up in fancy clothes with the ‘ladies’ wearing fascinators.

Horse racing is one of those sports where high society stand cheek-by-jowl with the working classes and their grubby children. We were the latter and would scurry around picking up discarded betting tickets to add to our collections.

We stand beside the jumps waiting for the thunder of the hooves and the snap and clack of the leap; live sport is exciting and the only ‘reality TV’ worth watching in my opinion.
I come from that generation of girls who sat in front of the communal television every Saturday afternoon, watching by default the likes of Jimmy Hill and Dickie Davies talk with other men about men playing men’s sport.

All commentary was male, and the only visible women were the mute typists in the background on World of Sport. I was actually alive at a time when women’s football in England was banned, yes, banned!

Then I discovered Wimbledon, and everything changed.

My mum loved the tennis and would listen to it on the radio while sunbathing in our garden (and then running back in at speed when it started to rain).

There’s a lot to be said about having one shared screen for five family members. Unlike today when children have their own personal screen in their own bedroom and can watch anything they like at any time, ‘in our day’ we were forced to watch what our parents wanted to watch which led to discovering all sorts of interesting programs.

The first FA Cup final I saw was Arsenal v Ipswich in 1978, but it was the tennis which caught every English woman’s eye the year before in 1977, when Virginia Wade lifted the Venus Rosewater Dish when she became Wimbledon champion.

This brings me back to that Telegraph sports journalist I followed on X, well it turns out that Molly McElwee is the daughter of Big Mick McElwee the legendary manager of Lincoln Red Imps.
Imagine my surprise discovering that ‘Molly’s a Llanita’ (fans of Gibraltar Bloomsday will get that reference).

I was very proud-by-association that a girl from Gibraltar had followed her passion and dedicated her life to reporting across sport. Molly McElwee is now a freelance journalist and has just published her first book, Building Champions: Paths to Success in Women’s Tennis.

It’s a genuinely brilliant read, with a foreword by the inimitable Billy Jean King no less!

Rather than media-pumped press soundbites and polemics about who is or isn’t the GOAT, McElwee takes you into the back stories of the classic players such as Kim Clijsters and the Williams' sisters, but also brings the reader right up to date with Raducanu and Swiatek (I loved the bit where she interviewed the teenage Emma, the detail was incredible).

The lives of these top women's tennis players are both fascinating and revealing.

How they have all risen to the top using so many different templates for their success makes this well-researched and beautifully written book a must-read for tennis and sports fans alike.

The good news is that Molly McElwee is one of the speakers at this year’s Gibunco Gibraltar Literary Festival, so you can go and listen to her in person and buy a signed copy of her book.

I have so many questions I want to ask but fear I might hog the microphone.

My overall feeling when reading Building Champions: Paths to Success in Women’s Tennis was that this was going to be the first of many.

A lot of journalists wait years before taking on the challenge of releasing a book yet here’s Molly McElwee with her first one hot off the press.

I look forward to future releases but, in the meantime, I can satisfy myself with her Substack page, the amusingly titled But Do You Actually Like Sport? after a question she has often faced in her career as a sports writer.

Molly McElwee not only likes sport, she lives and breathes it via her keyboard and pen.

Molly McElwee will be presenting her book Building Champions: Paths to Success in Women’s Tennis on 15th November 18:00 – 19:00 at The Garrison Library.