Grooming a champ

Tennis: Amelie Mauresmo never won the French Open but her pupil Andy Murray could well do it this year

Amélie Mauresmo made it past the quarterfinals at every Grand Slam tournament except the one that mattered most to her, the French Open.

That had nothing to do with her clay-court prowess. She was terrific on the surface, winning the Italian Open twice and the German Open twice. She was terrific elsewhere, too, winning the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 2006 and becoming the first Frenchwoman to reach No 1 in singles since computer rankings started in 1973.

It was the expectations —  hers and those of her compatriots — that caused the trouble at Roland Garros, the site of the French Open and the national tennis center, where she had lived as a teenager.

Once her home tournament began, shots flew off her racket frame and the long, flowing swings that were her trademark were suddenly more constricted, tightening along with her jaw line.

At times, it was as much fun to watch as a child’s piano recital gone awry. It was unpleasant to see someone bright, sensitive and talented caught in the headlights despite trying new approaches. (Once, she even recruited Yannick Noah, the last Frenchman to win the singles title here, in 1983, as a consultant, hoping some of his positive energy and pixie dust might rub off.)

But Mauresmo, now 35, no longer has to hit the right shots at Roland Garros. She only has to help her pupil, Andy Murray, understand how and when to hit them.

A year ago, at the end of the French Open, Murray chose Mauresmo to be his coach. This week, coach Mauresmo has been back on the center court that caused her so much angst, but now in a much more peaceful state of mind as she has overseen Murray’s practice sessions.

Their groundbreaking partnership, widely questioned last season as Murray struggled to keep pace with his longtime rivals, has flourished of late. Murray is back up to No 3 in the rankings after reaching the final of the Australian Open in January. More unexpectedly, he is 10-0 on clay coming into the French Open, with titles in Munich and Madrid, after having never reached a clay-court final before.

Newly married and apparently free of back pain, Murray is attacking returns and other shots with conviction, and although he is still far from immune to the midmatch mutter, his running dialogue has been accompanied by plenty of winners on the run, too.

“Immediately when Amélie started coaching him last year, you just knew that it was going to be a good fit,” said Brad Gilbert, Murray’s former coach. “Because the two strongest people Andy had in his life were his mother, Judy, and his girlfriend, Kim, who is now his wife. So that made a ton of sense to me. I think they work really well together.”

It seems all the more important for player and coach to seize the Grand Slam moment now, with Mauresmo pregnant and due to give birth in August. Who knows quite what the future holds in terms of Mauresmo’s ability or desire to coach? It is also unclear whether her pregnancy will affect her attendance at her July 18 induction into the newly revamped International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island.

Mauresmo, for now, is not eager to discuss the particulars, politely declining an interview request on Wednesday. But Murray discussed them on his way to victory in Madrid, where he defeated Rafael Nadal convincingly in the final on May 10.

“The most important thing is for both of us to be quite open about everything over the next few months,” he said. “It’s really kind of up to Amélie. It’s obviously a life-changing thing, having a child. I think we just need to give it a bit of time and see how she feels afterwards and what her priorities are.”

There is certainly no shortage of working mothers worldwide, even if there are few in the highest echelons of tennis players and coaches.

“All I know is that I had big plans after I would give birth to my first son, Alex, and everything flew out the window once I gave birth,” Chris Evert said in an interview this week. “All I wanted to do was be there every moment for him. But that was me, and everyone’s different.”

Mauresmo has made a habit of following her own path. In 1999, at age 19, she was the first prominent French female athlete to come out as gay — and the first leading tennis player to do so since Martina Navratilova.

“In hindsight, I should have done it differently, less abruptly,” she once said. “It was very tough afterward.”

She is now the first woman to coach a top-three men’s player since Gloria Connors, who long counseled her son Jimmy.

Mauresmo has never matched Noah’s popularity or charisma. Men’s tennis remains a bigger draw than women’s tennis in France, but Mauresmo also has a special place in her culture.

“She has marked her era in terms of equal rights,” said Amandine Miguel, a spokeswoman for Inter-LGBT, an umbrella organisation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups in France, after Mauresmo announced her pregnancy in April.
Navratilova certainly sees Mauresmo as a trailblazer.

“She came out when she didn’t have to, and it was still not a good thing for your career at that stage of where gay rights were in history’s timeline,” Navratilova said in an interview this week. “And then she put French tennis back on the map in a big way, and now she’s doing this with Murray.”

Navratilova, whose coaching job with the slumping Agnieszka Radwanska was short-lived, added that it was important that Mauresmo succeed in order to keep the road wide open for others.

“Overall, yes, because women are judged by a different stick, that’s for sure,” Navratilova said. “So if it didn’t succeed, they’d say women can’t coach men, as if that made any difference. It so depends on the two people involved. So we are judged differently, and I do hope Amélie succeeds.”

The magnifying glass is also big in Mauresmo’s case because of Murray’s high profile in Britain. When Murray was humiliated by Roger Federer, 6-0, 6- 1, at the World Tour Finals in London in November and finished the year ranked No 6, there were more than a few calls for a coaching change.

But Murray, who has expressed surprise with the negativity directed toward Mauresmo and is fully aware of the symbolic reach of their partnership, instead split with his longtime assistant coach and hitting partner, Dani Vallverdu. He has also added the former pro Jonas Bjorkman to his team. The group takes a collaborative approach, with an accent on physical preparation and recovery.

“Honestly, for six months, Andy is giving himself all the means to succeed,” Mauresmo told the French sports daily L’Équipe in Madrid. “He is working an enormous amount. He couldn’t produce this volume of work last year because he was coming back from his back operation.”

But letting it rip far from Paris and letting it rip in Paris are not the same challenge, as Mauresmo knows all too well. The difference is that Murray has twice been past the quarterfinals at Roland Garros. And there are few who truly expect him to win it all, with Novak Djokovic in rare form again and Nadal diminished but still 66-1 at the French Open.
“One shouldn’t get carried away,” Mauresmo said. “The conditions won’t be the same in Paris as they were in Madrid. And above all, you should never count Rafa out. You have to expect him to be at his best in Paris.”