Serena Williams‘ coach Patrick Mouratoglou is arguably one of the best tennis coaches in the world. However, one of his former pupils accused Mouratoglou of not caring about her mental health and taking a toll on her family life.
Former World No.15 Aravane Rezai started to work with Patrick Mouratoglou in 2009. The Frenchwoman was guided by her father prior to her collaboration with Patrick. The Rezai-Mouratoglou partnership went off to a good start. However, the collaboration soon took a bad turn.
“It was like being in prison” – Aravane Rezai on training with Patrick Mouratoglou
Rezai revealed that she was under immense pressure to perform in the tournaments under the guidance of Mouratoglou. She also compared her training routine to being in a prison.
Aravane revealed that she trusted him fully. However, she explained that it is not right to put a still young girl to fight her father while you stay behind and wait. She explicated that he wanted the results and he didn’t care how he gets them.
“He is a man passionate about tennis, you can see that he cares. I would not say that he is a great coach, but he is a great businessman: he knows how to play, how to analyze things from a tactical point of view,” Rezai told Punto de Break.
“If I go into details … In Madrid, I was put under enormous pressure to win that tournament. I couldn’t unwind, I couldn’t take the phone, the credit card, anything. It was like being in prison. I would get up at six in the morning to run an hour or two, do the physical training before my training, it was too much,” Rezai recalled.
“That is why our relationship lasted just over a year. The people around me told him that I couldn’t take it anymore, but he replied that he didn’t care. I didn’t care about my mental health,” she added.
Patrick Mouratoglou is currently working with Serena Williams and Stefanos Tsitsipas for quite a long time. Apart from them, he has famously worked with Grigor Dimitrov, Marcos Baghdatis, and Jeremy Chardy. He also runs the Mouratoglou Tennis Academy in France.
