Kamau Murray (born 1980) is an American

tennis Tennis is a List of racket sports, racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles (tennis), singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles (tennis), doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket st ...

coach. He is best known for coaching

Sloane Stephens Sloane Stephens (born March 20, 1993) is an American professional tennis player. She has achieved a career-best ranking of world No. 3 by the Women's Tennis Association, WTA. Stephens has won eight WTA Tour-level singles titles, including the 2 ...

to the

US Open U.S. Open or US Open are open championship sporting tournaments that are hosted in the United States and in which anyone, especially amateur and professional, or American and non-American, may compete. The term may also be applied to non-sporting ev ...

title in 2017.

Early life and background

Murray grew up on the South Side of

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

. 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 is a public four-year magnet high school and middle school located in the Near West Side neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. Opened on September 3, 1975, as a public magnet high school, joining Lane Tech in that ...

, the same high school as

USTA The United States Tennis Association (USTA) is the national Sport governing body, 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 devel ...

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-Ball", 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 university, public Historically black colleges and universities, historically black land-grant university in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. ...

, where he served as the team captain for two years. During his sophomore season, the team won the

MEAC The Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC ) is a collegiate athletic conference whose full members are historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the Southeastern and the Mid-Atlantic United States. It participates in the Nation ...

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) is a professional degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration; elective courses may allow further study in a particular a ...

degree.

Coaching career

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

on the

WTA Tour The WTA Tour (also known as the Hologic WTA Tour for sponsorship reasons) is a worldwide top-tier tennis tour for women and organized by the Women's Tennis Association. The second-tier tour is the WTA 125 series, and third-tier is the ITF Wome ...

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 has a WTA career-high doubles ranking of world No. 2, achieved on February 24, 2025 and a singles ranking of No. 46, achieved on August 19, 2024. Townsend won ...

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 Tennis coaches from Illinois African-American tennis coaches African-American tennis players Tennis players from Chicago