Okay, so the other day I was messing around, trying to figure out this whole Serena Williams and Patrick Mouratoglou thing. You know, their whole coach-player dynamic. I wanted to see if I could find some patterns, some key moments in their time together.
First, I dug into a bunch of old match footage. Seriously, hours of it. I started with some of their earliest collaborations, then worked my way through the years. I was mainly looking for
- How they interacted on the court during matches.
- What kind of body language they had between points.
- Any obvious signals or communication.
The Observation Phase
I grabbed a notepad and started jotting down anything that seemed significant. For example, I noticed that early on, Patrick was super animated, lots of hand gestures, really trying to pump Serena up. Then, as time went on, it seemed like he toned it down a bit, maybe because they developed a better understanding.
I also spent some time reading old interviews, searching for any quotes from either of them about their working relationship. That was kind of hit or miss, to be honest. Some interviews were super insightful, others were just the usual PR stuff.
After many hours of research. I found out The pair worked together for a decade before she retired in 2022, and under Mouratoglou’s guidance, Williams won Wimbledon in 2012, the Olympic gold medal, three consecutive US Opens from 2012, and, in 2017, a record-breaking 23rd Grand Slam at the Australian Open. That’s all record of my parctice.
It was a pretty interesting deep dive, even though I didn’t really come to any earth-shattering conclusions. More like, it confirmed some things I already suspected about how important a good coach-player relationship is at that level of competition.
