U.S. Open has void
Serena Williams will be missed, but she hopes to return for the Australian Open, her coach says
The U.S. Open will be the third consecutive Grand Slam tennis tournament played without Serena Williams as she awaits the birth of her first child next month.
And there isn’t any debate that her absence is having an impact on every tournament.
One person who is confident a tournament without Williams is somewhat an off-kilter event is Frenchman Patrick Mouratoglou, who has coached the 23-time Grand Slam champion since she shockingly crashed out of the
2012 French Open in the first round. Among the achievements their alliance has produced are 10 Grand Slam titles and the facilitation of her dream to win Olympic gold in singles, which she did in the 2012 London Games.
“Everybody thinks the same, that the tour without Serena is not the same, which is true,” Mouratoglou said Saturday in an interview with USA TODAY Sports at the U.S. Open. “She was dominating so much for quite a long time and also because of her personality.
“It’s a strange period now, but it’s not going to last too long,” he added, beaming a broad smile.
Mouratoglou, in New York to commentate for Eurosport and ESPN, agrees Williams has no idea about the demands of motherhood, but he emphasizes she finds demanding situations a challenging motivation.
Mouratoglou, whose book The Coach has just been released in the USA, is confident that Williams, soon to be 36, will return to tennis as a working mom. A
47-year-old father of four — Mouratoglou’s children span from
10 months to 23 years — he wasn’t upset she disrupted her career to have a baby believing, “Life is bigger than tennis.”
“She’ll be a great mother,” he said. “I see how she is with her dogs — I know it’s not the same — but for a long time she considered them as her babies. She’ll be great, but at the same time nothing will step between her and what she wants from tennis. So she will be the best mother, but she will find an organization so she can do her job perfectly.”
Mouratoglou says Williams respects history and she’s well aware that Australian Margaret Court holds the overall record for Grand Slam singles titles at 24.
“It’s not an obsession, but if
she beats the record, she’ll be happy,” Mouratoglou said. “Remember, she’s not coming back to be top 10. She’s coming back to win Grand Slams and beat other records.”
Mouratoglou has worked with many players such as Grigor Dimitrov, Martina Hingis and Marcos Baghdatis, and his academy has often hosted many top players, most recently of note former No. 1 Angelique Kerber and David Goffin.
What he has found in his five years with Williams is she brings one personality trait to their association that keeps him devotedly interested.
“After a certain point, I know my players so well I can antici- pate their reactions,” he said. “But Serena is surprising me all the time. I can never anticipate what she’s going to say, what she’s going to do. You cannot get bored with her, because it’s never the same.”
Even with Williams not a physical presence at the moment — they are in constant contact by text or phone — she remains unpredictable.
“She tells me, ‘You have to find a hitting partner for me in September when I come back,’ ” Mouratoglou revealed, laughing. “I said, ‘ You are having the baby in September, you can find just someone to hand feed you balls.’ She said to me, ‘Don’t underestimate me.’ This is Serena.”
The current plan, barring any complications such as Williams requiring a Cesarean birth, is for Mouratoglou to travel to Florida to start serious practice in November with the aim for her to rejoin the tour at the beginning of 2018.
“The goal is to be ready for the Australian Open, and then we’ll see,” Mouratoglou said of Williams’ desire to defend her title. “If she’s ready, she’ll compete. If not, we’ll delay the comeback. I don’t think she should compete if she’s not really ready.”
Mouratoglou is so self-assured and popular around the tour it’s hard to imagine the shy, insecure child he paints himself as in his book.
His love for tennis commenced when his parents introduced him to the sport at their club, but his father, a successful real estate entrepreneur and pioneer in the field of renewable energy, discouraged him from a career as a player in favor of a future in the family business.
“I completely get it, that it’s difficult to imagine who I was, but that’s my story, and I didn’t exaggerate at all. If there’s one lesson to learn: You can change everything in your life, everything, but it depends on you.”
Mouratoglou eventually left the family business with his par- ents’ blessing to start a tennis academy — his father even offered financial assistance once he supplied a sound business plan.
His life goal: If he wasn’t going to win a major as a player, he would do so as a coach.
“Winning a Grand Slam was something I was chasing the first day I became a coach,” he said. “That’s the most exciting thing you can do, but to do it you have to work with a player who can win Slams.
“Serena had won already 13 before me,” he added. “I feel I made a difference in people’s careers, and that’s what I feel with Serena.”
No one agrees with that sentiment more than Williams, who wrote the following in the foreword of Mouratoglou’s book:
“Patrick Mouratoglou is the ‘Mastermind’ indeed. I wanted something fresh, something different, something that was able to take me from great to historic. That is what Patrick was able to do with me.”