The most famous—and most controversial—tennis coach in the world was seated behind me at the back of a Sprinter van last week, chatting with his girlfriend in rapid French as we drove to dinner on Lake Lyndon B. Johnson.
Patrick Mouratoglou, once the tanned presence in Serena Williams’ camp, the familiar face in Simona Halep’s box, Holger Rune’s on-again, off-again guru and most recently the courtside coach in Naomi Osaka’s entourage, was in Texas Hill Country to promote one of his many business ventures.
Google him—I’ll wait—and you’ll quickly find that he’s a polarizing figure, whose cocksure Frenchness elicits jealousy, perhaps, and ire, definitely, from fellow pundits and anyone with opinions on tennis. He’s been called a huckster; a bad-luck charm for any player who hires him (see: Halep, Rune, Tsitsipas et al); a nepo baby; a loud-mouth. He has a natural ability to campaign and cajole and convince, and he raises a lot of hackles while he does it. He holds opinions about every part of professional tennis, and he gladly broadcasts them far and wide. His 1.8 million Instagram followers willingly take it all, along with a lot of tennis instruction, and—huh—ads for Mouratoglou Apparel in which the Mouratoglou-branded waistband of what might be boxer-briefs peeks out from above the low-slung jeans of the man himself. So apparently he’s an underwear model now as well.