Serena Williams Is Not at the U.S. Open, but Her Coach Is Everywhere

Patrick Mouratoglou has become a bigger star than most players, and is building an empire, too. That does not leave much time for coaching, and that may be just how he likes it.

Maybe it’s the beard, the persistent, salt-and-pepper whiskers, always trimmed to a perfect length that makes Patrick Mouratoglou initially seem more like a French existentialist philosopher rather than tennis coach. Or maybe he is a tennis venture capitalist. Or a tennis resort executive. Or a tennis “guru,” as Stefanos Tsitsipas, the Greek star, has referred to him. Depending on the moment, Mouratoglou can be all of those things, which can make it difficult for him to also be a coach, at least in the way he thinks a professional tennis coach should coach. That may seem odd for a man best known as one, a man who wrote a book about himself called “The Coach,” but it is the way he always intended it to be. For years, Mouratoglou has been courtside at Serena Williams’s matches. He has coached her since 2012, and was presumed to be her boyfriend for a time. Coaching her from the stands during the 2018 U.S. Open final led to one of the most notorious meltdowns of Williams’s career. She is not at the U.S. Open this year, having withdrawn to recover from a hamstring injury.