Introduction
Patrick Mouratoglou (born 8 June 1970) is a Greek-French tennis coach and sports commentator. He has coached a number of well-known tennis players including Marcos Baghdatis, Julia Vakulenko, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Aravane Rezaï, Jérémy Chardy, Laura Robson, Yanina Wickmayer, Grigor Dimitrov, and Serena Williams.
Early life
Mouratoglou was born on 8 June 1970 in Paris, France. He is the eldest son of Pâris Mouratoglou, a Greek-born renewable business magnate. Patrick began playing tennis at the age of six. He was a middle-rung junior player, but at his parent's behest, he stopped playing to focus on education.
Coaching career
Mouratoglou was to take over his father's renewable energy firm in France, however he instead chose to pursue his career in tennis. In 1996, at the age of 26, he formed Mouratoglou Tennis Academy on the outskirts of Paris. He cites Bjorn Borg as his inspiration for the game of tennis.
The first success to come out of his tennis academy was Cypriot tennis player Marcos Baghdatis, whom Mouratoglou started coaching in 1999. Baghdatis went on to become a junior world No. 1, win the 2003 Australian Open boys' title, reach the final of the same tournament in 2006 and reach the world's top ten.
In July 2007, Mouratoglou began coaching Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and helped her reach the world's top 30 in the next two years. In 2008 Pavlyuchenkova entered Wimbledon as the youngest player in the women's draw. Mouratoglou trained her until September 2009. In the following years, Mouratoglou trained French tennis player Aravane Rezaï and Belgian tennis player Yanina Wickmayer. Wickmayer attained a career-high ranking of No.12 in April 2012 and Rezai entered the World’s Top 20 and won the Premier event in Madrid. Mouratoglou stopped working with Rezai in August 2010 and with Wickmayer in April 2012.
In December 2010, Mouratoglou began coaching British tennis player, Laura Robson, who at the time was world No. 217 and trying to break into the senior tour. They worked together for six months before separating shortly before 2011 Wimbledon when Robson was still struggling to make any progress on the WTA Tour and had slipped further to world No. 257. During this same period, Mouratoglou also trained French tennis player Jérémy Chardy.
In March 2012, Mouratoglou started coaching Bulgarian tennis player, Grigor Dimitrov. Dimitrov, who at the time was ranked 102 reached to the Top 50 in five months time. The two worked together until September 2012, at which point Mouratoglou began exclusively coaching American tennis player Serena Williams.
Mouratoglou trained Williams to capture 10 Grand Slam titles, three WTA Finals championships and an Olympic Gold Medal: Australian Open (2015, 2017), Roland Garros (2013, 2015), Wimbledon (2012, 2015-16), US Open (2012-14) WTA Finals (2012-14) and Olympic Gold Medal in singles (2012 London) and lifted her back to world No. 1 in the WTA rankings. Williams continues to be trained by Mouratoglou to date.
In 2015, while working with Williams, Mouratoglou also began coaching Greek tennis player Stefanos Tsitsipas.
Besides coaching, Mouratoglou writes frequently for several tennis magazines and has provided commentary on television shows. In 2007, he published a book titled Educate to Win. He also has a blog on Eurosport.com and Yahoo - France, England, Germany, Italy, Russia and Spain.