"Tell me it means nothing to them": Rennae Stubbs disagrees with Patrick Mouratoglou's dismissal of Olympic Games

Tennis News
Tuesday, 10 October 2023 at 18:23
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Rennae Stubbs has shared her disagreement with Patrick Mouratoglou's statement that players do not value a victory at the Olympic Games as much as Grand Slam titles.

Well-known coach Mouratoglou, who has coached the likes of Serena Williams and Holger Rune, recently posted a video on his Instagram where he analyzed the importance of Olympic medals to tennis players.

The Frenchman said that the lack of a deep historical connection and the amount of tournaments in the sport's calendar makes it difficult for players to value the Olympics in the same way that athletes in other sports tend to do.

Mouratoglou's Olympics analysis 

"There is no real connection between tennis and the Olympic Games. A lot of tennis players don’t feel that it’s such an important event for tennis. Initially, tennis was at the Olympics, then it got out, and finally, tennis was reintroduced. As a consequence, there is no history between tennis and the Olympic Games. They feel that a Grand Slam is 100 times more important for a tennis player than the Olympic Games," Mouratoglou explained.

"Every year you have the Masters 1000, which are extremely important because your ranking depends on that, mostly for all the best players. You have the Grand Slams, who are incredible institutions.

"For most of the players, to win one Grand Slam would be the highest achievement possible. And every four years, there are gonna be games that look small, not as an event but tennis — the Olympics compared to the Grand Slams. So again, we need time and history. When there is a long history between tennis and the Olympic games, I think players will consider it different," he added.

Stubbs condemns idea that Olympics lack value in tennis

However, former doubles World No. 1 Stubbs took to social media in order to share her disagreement with Mouratoglou. The 52-year-old shared a collage of four Olympic winning moments, including those of Belinda Bencic and Monica Puig, who won the women's singles event at Tokyo 2020 and Rio 2016 respectively.

"here’s a few photos of recent gold medal winners at the Olympics. You tell me it means nothing to them," Stubbs captioned the post.

Moreover, in response to a fan who argued that in terms of season planning, the Olympics did indeed lack value in comparison to Grand Slams, Stubbs wrote:

"There is a different feel to them and trust me. If i had won a gold medal at the Olympics it would have meant the SAME as me winning a Grand slam!! Winning for your country is a feeling u can never explain!"

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