Coach Patrick Mouratoglou gives insight to the world of tennis - The French Open, Simona Halep and US Open

Patrick Mouratoglou the well known French tennis coach who has developed talents such as Marcos Baghdatis and Anastasia Pavyluchenkova. In addition he saw great success when he spent over ten years with Serena Williams. During this period it saw them both become some of the most decorated in tennis.

However more recently Mouratoglou has been working very close with former World No.1 Simona Halep who he has helped and encouraged to not drop out of the game.

It hasn't been easy though as Halep suffered a panic attack mid game in the French Open, Mouratoglou has given an insight to this during a recent interview.

“I think she was completely exhausted, physically, but even more mentally than physically,”

“We started in April, and a lot of changes. Not that I wanted for most of them. It’s her choice. But she made a lot of change because that’s her personality.

“When she started she’s really generous in the efforts and she gives, she gives 100 per cent, all the time.

“She worked much more than ever apparently. I don’t know how it was before but from what I heard from her and her fitness coach, she worked very, very, very hard [with me]. She decided to go with me 100 per cent and because she wanted to have people that are working with me in the team, so a lot of changes.

“The panic attack in Roland Garros was because she wanted to do too well and it brought too much stress to handle. But this was the first signal that It was mentally difficult. Then she did well.”

Mouratoglou found difficulty in deciding what to do to improve Halep's game. This was because for the Romanian to improve she needed a lot of game time so she could feel comfortable and help bed her style in. However the issue was when Halep struggled to mentally cope with playing such regular tennis.

The French coach yet again gave a great in sight speaking on this.

“She played a lot of tournaments because she needed to play, she had to,”

“Of course because of that in the semis of Wimbledon, she was really empty emotionally. So you pay the price, but she played three semi-finals in a row and then won a Masters 1000, because she played those matches. So yes, there is always you win somewhere you lose a bit somewhere else. You cannot have everything from day one.”

“My job is to help people achieve what they want to achieve. So it’s never my goal, it is their goals,”

“I get to know them and it takes time. With Simona we went fast on solutions because she wanted to go full and she trusted me 100 per cent from day one. She said ‘Tell me, I want to change everything that needs to be changed’.

“So if the player says ‘I want to win a grand slam,’ for example, that can be a goal or ‘I want to be top 10’ or ‘I want to be number one in the world’, that’s their goal. So I help them reach that goal.