Serena Williams’s coach says in-match coaching should be allowed in tennis to help the sport’s popularity.
Patrick Mouratoglou, who admitted he used hand signals to try to help Williams during her controversial loss in this year’s US Open final, posted a statement to Twitter on Thursday saying that coaching would let “viewers enjoy it as a show” and “ensure that it remains pivotal in the sport.” Mouratoglou also pointed out that other non-team sports such as boxing and golf permit athletes to consult someone during competition.
“I have never understood why tennis is just about the only sport in which coaching during matches is not allowed,” Mouratoglou wrote.
Banning coaching, Mouratoglou wrote on Thursday, “almost makes it look as if it had to be hidden, or as if it was shameful.” He called the issue “symptomatic of the confrontation between two ways of thinking: the conservative, traditionalist way and the modern, progressive way.”
Patrick Mouratoglou (@pmouratoglou)
The status of coaching in tennis needs reforming. Read my opinion below pic.twitter.com/qLKIINwqbx
Mouratoglou added that coaching goes on anyway. “It is a very basic truth that the vast majority of tennis coaches are actually coaching on court, despite the rules,” he wrote. “Look at how many times players look towards their boxes during a match. Some do it after every single point.”
Mouratoglou thinks part of the appeal of allowing coaching is that it would help get viewers “emotionally involved.”
“You want spectators and TV viewers to have opinions about the players and the coaches and to know who they like and don’t like. Watching the interactions between players and coaches is a very good way of achieving this,” he wrote. “Moreover, emotions run high when coaches talk to their players during matches. Sometimes the players don’t like to hear what their coaches are saying, but this all adds to the drama, which creates engagement on social media.”
Debate around on-court coaching was sparked when chair umpire Carlos Ramos gave Williams a code violation after Mouratoglou gestured in her direction during her loss to Naomi Osaka at the US Open in September. The WTA does allow coaching during women’s matches at other tournaments. The tour’s CEO, Steve Simon, said in the aftermath of the US Open final that it “should be allowed across the sport.”
The sport’s various governing bodies and grand slam tournaments have been looking at the issue, with some sounding more willing than others to consider permitting coaching. Wimbledon, for example, has made clear that it is “fundamentally opposed to any form of coaching during a match.”