'Serena Loves To Intimidate People': Williams' Ex-Coach Recalls Rough Beginnings
WTA
Serena Williams was a unique tennis player during her playing days, and such was also the start of her collaboration with Patrick Mouratoglou.
The 42-year-old American has 23 Grand Slam titles to her name, but until the 2012 French Open, she had 'only' 13. Often, it's her former coach, who joined her after that tournament, who is credited for 'reviving' her tennis career, as she has not won a single major between the 2010 Wimbledon Championships and the 2012 French Open.
The legendary American started working with Patrick Mouratoglou, and their collaboration was incredibly successful. It showed already in the first major that they worked on as a team.
Williams won the 2012 Wimbledon Championships, and she subsequently won also the 2012 US Open, but the start of her collaboration with the French coach was far from easy, as revealed in her ESPN+ docuseries, In The Arena: Serena Williams.
The docuseries highlighted many moments from the American's legendary tennis career, and one of them was the start of the coaching relationship with Mouratoglou, which the Frenchman himself detailed.
"Serena loves to intimidate people. She loves it. And she was trying to intimidate me that day. It was the first day of practice in Wimbledon. I'm waiting on the court for practice. She enters the court. I say, 'good morning', and she passes like this. Zero emotion on her face. She doesn't even look at me."
Having some minor experience as a coach, Mouratoglou knew that if he let it be, he would struggle to gain any respect as a coach, so he quickly had to come up with something to show who was the 'boss' on the practice court.
"If I let her do that first day, I'm done and I know it. She has a cap, and I hit the cap really hard. Not her head, but just this (protruding part of) the cap, and I hit it so hard that the cap goes like this on her face, and she's shocked. I'm sure that nobody ever did this to Serena. No one. And especially not a guy who knows her for a few days."
The French coach knew that some rules had to be in place, so he immediately stopped Serena, explaining that if they wanted to succeed together, she needed to respect a few rules that he had.
"I tell her, 'this is not going to work like that because I have a few rules that you will have to respect. Number one, when you enter the court in the morning, you look at me and you say, good morning."
"Rule number two, when I speak to you, you stop. You look at me and you listen to me and you answer me."
The American player did, and the rest is history, as the two enjoyed an incredibly successful period together, which resulted in Williams extending her legacy and adding dozens of titles to her collection, before the two split towards the end of her tennis career.
