Jelena Ostapenko Appoints Marion Bartoli in Her Team

Published 10/09/2019, 8:17 AM EDT

The former Wimbledon champion, Marion Bartoli makes a return to the WTA circuit by joining Jelena Ostapenko’s team. The Latvian Grand Slam champion, Jelena Ostapenko has announced their alliance at Linz Open 2019 in Austria. “We are great friends and talk a lot. That’s why we decided to work together this week. She was a great player I hope I can learn a lot,” Ostapenko said.

Marion Bartoli shared insights about Ostapenko during Linz Open presser. “She sometimes asked me about a player when I was commentating. We have the same game style, its easy for me to understand the way she plays,” Bartoli said.

Over the past year, Ostapenko was training under the Dutchman, Glenn Schaap, who previously coached Nadia Petrova, Dinara Safina, Jelena Dokic, Tajana Golovin, and Anett Kontaveit. Ostapenko’s first coach was her mother while her father served as a fitness coach.

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Now she has joined forces with Marion Bartoli who earlier gave a statement about taking over the coaching duties for upcoming Frenchwoman Lucie Wargnier. Ostapenko trained with two-time French Open doubles champion Anabel Medina Garrigues in 2017 and simultaneously pulled off the French Open 2017 title by defeating the consistent player of the WTA Tour, Simona Halep in the finals.

Bartoli + Ostapenko in Linz pic.twitter.com/t5rMhiTgHh
— Vladas Lasitskas (@VladasLasitskas) October 9, 2019

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The same year, Jelena Ostapenko parted ways with Garrigues and hired David Taylor (the former coach of Grand Slam champions Sam Stosur and Ana Ivanovic). He trained her during Grand Slams while her mother played the role of a full-time coach.

Jelena Ostapenko has never won a match at the Paris major besides the year 2017, where she was the champion at Roland-Garros.

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World Number 72, Jelena Ostapenko is through to the round-of-32 at Linz Open 2019 and she sets up the clash against the Frenchwoman, Alize Cornet. This year, on the singles circuit, Ostapenko has won just 15 matches. However, she has been having a decent run in the doubles domain of tennis and she is yet to win a title this year in both singles and doubles discipline of tennis.

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Mahalakshmi Murali joined EssentiallySports in 2018 as a tennis author and has gone on to pen more than 1800 engaging articles, probing into various aspects of the sport and its illustrious players. With her expertise on the sport, Mahalakshmi has interviewed stalwarts from the sport such as Serena WIlliams’ coach Patrick Mouratoglou and Kevin Anderson’s physio, Carlos Costa. Equipped with her vast experience and a keen understanding of the sport, Mahalakshmi now co-heads the tennis department.