Naomi Osaka’s partnership with the renowned tennis coach Patrick Mouratoglou has been the talk of the town for some time now. Previously, we saw the likes of Rennae Stubbs claiming, “Well, she’s always looked up to Serena. So maybe she’s thinking that this is going to be her moment where she can pick up someone who has moulded the Serena Williams person.” We all know Naomi Osaka is a big fan of Serena Williams but is it one of the real reasons behind her picking Mouratoglou as the new coach? Can’t say really, but recently, the Frenchman dropped a perfect Serena Williams example while explaining his approach toward Naomi Osaka.

During an interview on the ‘Talking Tennis’ YouTube channel, Patrick Mouratoglou shared a few thoughts on how his journey started with the Japanese superstar. Mouratoglou claimed that Naomi Osaka had gotten in touch with him after parting ways with her former coach, Wim Fissette. However, he also revealed that this isn’t the first time that Osaka has gotten in touch with her. He claimed that he already had a discussion with her when he was doing his coaching duties with Holger Rune. How does Patrick Mouratoglou look at this new role? Is there a similarity with his previous role with Serena Williams?

For Mouratoglou, coaching Naomi Osaka is like a challenge! Although he’s very excited to coach such an “incredible player“, Mouratoglou claims, “I think the challenge is great also because I feel her motivation is very high. So, there is a big challenge and this is what I like. It was a challenge when I started with Serena. It was a big challenge because I wanted to do better with her than she did previously and she did so well. So, the challenge was very high. In Naomi, it’s more to bring her back to being in a position to win Grand Slams.“

Surely it’s going to be a challenging task for Patrick Mouratoglou to guide Osaka back to her glorious days. We’ve already seen Stubbs aiming quite a few shots at the Frenchman for his role in Serena Williams‘ team. Stubbs opined that Mouratoglou wasn’t responsible for the Williams’ success. She feels that any good coach would have helped the 23-time Grand Slam champion. Because she already possessed all the necessary skills to succeed. Naomi Osaka is a four-time Grand Slam champion. Surely, she also possesses the necessary skills to succeed on this level. Time will tell if this partnership clicks or not, but what really pushed Osaka to look up to this experienced Frenchman?

Naomi Osaka reveals that she was initially hesitant to hire Patrick Mouratoglou

The 54-year-old tennis coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, has coached the likes of Marcos Barghdatis, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Grigor Dimitrov, Serena Williams (2012-2022), Stefanos Tsitsipas, and many others in his coaching career. He comes up with a vast experience in this field. Patrick Mourtoglou has helped Serena Williams win two AO, two French Open, three Wimbledon, and 3 US Open titles in her career. Despite all these feats, Osaka was initially a bit hesitant to bring in this big name to her team.

During an interview with wtatennis.com, Naomi Osaka revealed, “I think the fact that he was Serena’s coach for me made me want to avoid him just because his persona is so big. Like, this isn’t rude because I found out it’s not true, but I didn’t know if he was a good coach or he coached Serena.” Then, after meeting him and interacting with him during her practice sessions, Osaka realized that Patrick Mouratoglou is a “really good coach.” She said that now she’s really glad that Mouratoglou has taken this project and she will get the chance to work with this renowned coach.

She further added, “I think I’m at a stage in my life that I don’t want to have regrets. I’d rather pull the trigger on something and I don’t want to say ‘fail,’ but I feel like I really need to learn as much as possible in this stage of my career. Patrick seemed like the guy with, I guess, the information that I wanted to learn from.” Do you think Patrick Mouratoglou can really help Naomi Osaka get closer to fulfilling her dream of landing her fifth Grand Slam title in 2025?