Known for her long collaboration with Serena Williams on the WTA circuit, Patrick Mouratoglou now sees the end of the career of Novak Djokovic. If this is so certain, it is thanks to his experience as a coach and his observation according to which when a player no longer has any particular objective to achieve, the game stops.
Novak Djokovic, record of the record for the greatest number of weeks spent as world number 1, winner of 24 Grands Chelems, (finally) Olympic champion and considered as a legend of tennis, has obviously checked all the boxes, which does not bode well for the rest according to Patrick Mouratoglou.
Recently interviewed by Tennis Channel, the founder of the Mouratoglou Academy compared the ends of careers of the two champions and raised roughness concerning the motivation of the Serb.
« Elle [Serena] lost in the first round of Roland Garros, but also spent two years without winning a big home, which is a lot for Serena. She said to me: ‘I just want to win once again and potentially end my career.’ Because she didn’t play very well for two years. By that I mean that she was not up to it, let’s say it like that. After she won several victories, we talked about the record of Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, and the goal was to beat him, and then, of course, Steffi Graf. It’s fun, because two months, or a month before the US Open where she would have won it, equaled Steffi at this time. She said to me, ‘OK, what is the next step? Because once I have done that, what will I do? ‘ For her, it was very important to always continue something. She always had a big goal in mind that motivated her, because of course, it is difficult to imagine what we feel when you gain so much tournaments of the Grand Slam, but I suppose that at one point, motivation is there. And we see it with Novak now, it’s his big fight. It is not a question of tennis, it’s just that he is … it’s very obvious when he plays matches and probably when he trains. Yes, what is his goal now that he discovered how to win more Grand Slam tournaments than his two big rivals, Roger [Federer] and Rafa [Nadal] ? »
Posted on Thursday May 1, 2025 at 3:20 pm
