“I thought I’d be done with tennis by 30” Simona Halep reveals how Patrick Mouratoglou injected self-belief into her once again
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Simona Halep with her coach Patrick Mouratoglou
Simona Halep, the former World No 1, is set to make her return with the hard-court swing with her participation at the Citi Open 2022 at Washington DC. She was last seen at the All England Club where she lost to Elena Rybakina in the semi-final match. She will be looking to get back to winning Grand Slam titles as her last win was at Wimbledon in 2019. She has been struggling with a lot of injuries and her fitness has been a major concern for her being out of action time and again.
Halep, being out of most of the tournaments led her out of the Top 20 in the WTA rankings post the pandemic. The Romanian ended her association with Darren Cahill after her 2022 Australian Open exit to coach herself before she hired Patrick Mouratoglou as her new coach, who left the 23-time major winner Serena Williams as she had no concrete plans of returning to play.
Also Read: Citi Open 2022: Jessica Pegula vs Hailey Baptiste Live Stream, Match Timings, Prediction and Preview
“We just have expectations to work hard and to improve” Simona Halep on her new experiences with Patrick Mouratoglou
Halep, in an interview recently, spoke about her new coaching situation is new and exciting for her as Mouratoglou has a different way of looking into things and she has given him the full control to take all decisions on her behalf. She feels the presence of having him around is the best thing for her. Upon asking her about the comparisons between ex-coach Darren Cahill and Mouratoglou, Halep answered “First of all, Darren left me in September last year, so I didn’t leave him. Secondly, I will not compare because they are super different.”
About her experiences working with Patrick, she said “What I can say at this moment, it’s the best thing that could happen to me, to meet Patrick. He has super energy. He’s super kind. So it means a lot for me to work with people like this. Everything is Mouratoglou now. The team, it’s 100% him. Everything that is going around me, it’s about his academy and his-self. I made this change because I really felt to do it.“
She further revealed that he instilled the self-belief in her again to start loving the sport again. She added “I thought I will be done with tennis at 30, but now I started something nice and something new. Everything is completely new. So I will enjoy it. Actually, I’m enjoying it already. I will see how good I can be in the future. All his experience and all his advice is amazing, so I’m enjoying a lot in this period. He brought me back to love tennis, to love working, which never happened before. Now I’m just giving my best every day. We don’t have expectations in order of results. We just have expectations to work hard and to improve.“
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Prateek Pradhan
(601 Articles Published)