Serena’s final meltdown ‘best day for tennis’
Coach says infamous bust-up at US Open helped give sport a boost
PATRICK Mouratoglou well remembers the morning after the night before, when Flushing Meadows had been shaken to its foundations.
His player, Serena Williams, had come close to being defaulted from the 2018 US Open final, losing to Naomi Osaka amid angry confrontations with umpire Carlos Ramos.
The French coach was at the centre of it, having been called out by the official for giving illicit hand signals from the stands to the great American.
The following day Mouratoglou reported for duty with ESPN, the channel for which he does some expert analysis in New York.
‘Every morning we have a meeting of everyone involved,’ he says. ‘I came in the room and there was silence because everyone was uncomfortable.
‘I stood up and said, “Listen guys, yesterday was the worst day ever for Team Serena because she lost and because of what happened. But it was the best day for tennis, because tennis is everywhere, it’s great for tennis. So it depends how you look at it”.’
In Mouratoglou’s book there is no such thing as bad publicity for tennis — even when it involved him being on the receiving end of widespread opprobrium.
His broader concern is that the sport is losing its audience and is increasingly out of step with modern viewing tastes, especially among the young.
With that in mind he has created the ‘Ultimate Tennis Showdown’ to be held this month at his academy in Nice. It features a strong eight-man field who will play in an undisclosed new format with licence to express their personalities, something he feels we need to see more of in the modern game.
He talks a lot of sense when it comes to diagnosing the problems facing the sport in 2020.
It is less easy to agree with his protestations that he and Serena were wronged on that tumultuous day in New York.
‘Of course it is not very comfortable when you are in the eye of the storm but I am not scared,’ he says. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong, I just did what all coaches do all year long.
‘I think Ramos did a terrible job but we all make mistakes.
Coaches coach from the stands, we all know that.
‘I am always the first one to say I made a mistake, I’ve told Serena several times I have made a mistake with her.’
Mouratgolou, who also counts Stefanos Tsitsipas among his clients, will find wider approval for his belief that tennis needs more human drama, which he hopes to deliver with his format.
‘People watch sports like they watch a movie, they want to feel emotion. Watching tennis today is like watching a movie full of very nice people doing nothing wrong. We lack a bit of authenticity.’
He can cite the example of when Serena drew Maria Sharapova, with whom she never got along, at the 2018 French Open. The match did not happen due to injury but it attracted enormous anticipation until its late cancellation.
‘When you have rivalry and two people who apparently hate each other, it brings the drama to another level, so it drives a lot of emotions. You want to take sides.
‘The biggest female sports star on the planet is Serena because she is everything but flat.’ His high profile attracts some envious glances within the game but there is no question Mouratoglou is one of its sharper thinkers.
‘I love tennis, but I think it is in trouble. The fans we have are usually those that fell in love with the game in the Seventies or Eighties, and we are living too much on that fanbase.
‘I don’t think the personalities were better then but people were expressing themselves more.
‘The surfaces have become too uniform, it is why we got rid of a lot of game styles. We end up producing clones in terms of behaviour and game styles.
‘Players don’t dare be themselves, they feel they will be judged and they will lose their contracts. They create an image that they think people expect and it’s a big mistake.
‘People like watching real people and they know when it is fake. There is no villain, people fighting against each other, it’s like the opposite of boxing.
‘If we get the support we are going to change tennis.’
Serena, 38, has been in America during lockdown, with the clock ticking on her hopes of winning another Grand Slam title.
Mouratoglou is evidently keen to avoid discussing Serena directly but his response is interesting when asked if she will be ready when the international game restarts.
‘I think no player will be 100 per cent ready,’ he says. ‘To be 100 per cent you need to compete and they don’t even know when they will be able to. It affects the motivation of all players, I think people will need a few months.’
Has she been training hard? ‘She is doing the same as everyone, she is training.’