Patrick Mouratoglou

[seano]

Having watched many of his videos on Youtube, his teaching paradigm astounds me. Specifically, all his attention on usage of the wrist on all shots. As a teaching reference to get people to relax and produce effortless power, I understand. But his philosophy has no basis in science and I'm curious about potential injury to students. The wrist is a fragile joint and should not be used to produce power, it can transfer it but not produce it.

Sean

[stotty]

I don't know too much about Patrick but what I have seen of him I haven't liked. A coach should be in the background and and act more like a player's secret weapon who divulges little to the public about regimes and tactics. The trouble with Patrick is he wants to command more attention that the player and I find that really annoying.

Interesting about the role of the wrist which by all accounts plays a passive/alignment role in most shots. However there is a marked difference between McEnroe, who lays the wrist back hardly at all, versus someone like Roger. I am not sure McEnroe's ability to impart topspin isn't impaired in some way by his lack of lay back.

[seano]

Exactly my point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEAHCYfbv-k

[bowt]

completely agree Patrick's stuff is cringe worthy

[seano]

Thoughts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-8y6_bB-P0

[johnyandell]

Can't stand to watch it...

[seano]

John, I thought you'd like that one.

[johnyandell]

Ha!

[stroke]

He seems so transparently unknowledgeable about tennis technique, yet there he sits as a paid coach of one of the best players in the world, Tsitsipas. That serve video, it brings back memories of Vic Braden "go spaghetti", but Vic at that time to me knew way way more about tennis technique than Patrick does now.

[stotty]

Actually, he's an interesting phenomenon...in a way. His videos are highly watched by members of the public and many of them consider him very knowledgeable. Yet in the trade he's mostly derided by many coaches as someone who talks a load of claptrap. He gets found out all the time. It just goes to show being a show off and a good talker can get you a long way. He can swat aside a decent coach by convincing any audience he knows more.

It seems it's not just the Kremlin who are experts in misinformation...and propaganda.

[jimlosaltos]

I can understand how PM might fool a weekend hacker like, say -- me <g>

But look at the list of highly successful players he has worked with: Serena Williams, Holger Rune, Simona Halep, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Grigor Dimitrov, Jeremy Chardy, Marco Baghdatis, Coco Gauff (hmmm, maybe that explains her forehand?).

A few of these are quite smart. I won't name those to avoid insulting fans of ones I don't name <g>.

Part of his appeal to them, I suspect, is that he has built an excellent program with great facilities, excellent support & services, as well as high-level players to hit with.

That's no small accomplishment.

What else do those top players see in him? Serious question. There must be something beyond skillful patter.

[stotty]

I can understand how PM might fool a weekend hacker like, say -- me <g>

But look at the list of highly successful players he has worked with: Serena Williams, Holger Rune, Simona Halep, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Grigor Dimitrov, Jeremy Chardy, Marco Baghdatis, Coco Gauff (hmmm, maybe that explains her forehand?).


What else do those top players see in him? Serious question. There must be something beyond skillful patter.

I hear this quite a lot. You are absolutely right to raise the issue. Pretty much all those players mentioned were the finished article before Patrick started talking the hind legs off a donkey to them. The formative years of a player are done well before the celebrity coach pitches up. I guess Patrick's most valuable tool is the ability to inject self belief and motivate a player. I imagine he can butter a player's ego pretty well too. But his technical input and knowledge is highly suspect in many coaches' view.

[johnyandell]

Jim, Skillful I would not say. Agree with Stotty.

[jimlosaltos]

Jim, Skillful I would not say. Agree with Stotty.

Thinking back, his facilities and services come up. Not a big sample base. But Simona Halep was referred to his services for training, then later worked with him as a coach. Similarly, Serena Williams was referred by Grigor Dimitrov to PM's facilities, then started working with him. I remember Serena talking about being able to hit with Jeremy Chardy -- an average, paid hitting partner isn't likely to duplicate Chardy's 135 MPH serve (which she bragged about returning, but that's another story).

Perhaps a high quality facility with available, quality pros to hit with is the foundation of PM's business model. After that, as Scotty wrote, those players' games are already developed, PM provides some form of psychological, positive motivation and services, sort of an upsell add-on.

Then again, every time I see a pro player with Kinesio tape dangling from his or her leg, I think "If they believe putting tape on top of your skin helps stimulate blood flow to heal a muscle, they'll believe anything."

[stotty]

Many years ago, back in the 90's, a British tennis magazine called Serve & Volley (now no longer published) dropped a couple of coach/journalists into the Bollettieri academy for a couple of weeks to observe how such high level players were being produced. After two weeks of taking notes and looking under every stone they could find, they came to the conclusion nothing too special was going on other than there were loads of players drilling for hours on end from morning until night. They also found some of the coaching to be highly suspect in fundamental areas, such as grips. One observed how backhand volleys were being hit with forehand grips, which produced too much underspin, yet coaches repeatedly let such flaws go by.

Another conclusion they came to was many players overcame problems for themselves despite weak coaching or no coaching intervention at all. Access to quality hitting was found to be the most valuable resource the academy offered.

It raises the question: how valuable is coaching and can it be quantified? Since we cannot take a young player, clone him, then coach one to death and leave the other well alone, there is no way to truly measure the effect coaching.

I suspect it's mostly about the player since the player brings so much to the table the coach has no control of: height, athleticism, level of natural ability, etc. Coaching may only add 20, 10 or perhaps only 5% to the outcome of a player's development...and that figure could vary significantly from player to player. In defence of coaching that 20, 10, or 5% could be vitally important and make all the difference.