Gender, never an issue

Tennis : Working with Murray, Mauresmo broke the barrier for female coaches on the men's circuit

Not long into Andy Murray’s first news conference since he parted ways with his coach, Amelie Mauresmo, he was asked if the end of their pairing was “a blow to the idea of women coaching men in tennis.”

In nearly two years with Mauresmo, the highest-profile female coach in tennis, Murray maintained a career-best ranking of No 2, reached two Australian Open finals and nearly single-handedly led Britain to a Davis Cup title. So he did not agree with the premise of the question.

“I think it did work,” he said Tuesday at the Italian Open. “I mean, for two years, I think, the results that we had were good.”

He added: “When she first came into the team, I was really struggling, you know. I was not doing well. My confidence was low, and I was going the wrong direction.

“Then, obviously, when she came on board, my results actually really picked up. I mean, for me, the time we spent together was positive. It’s just a shame I wasn’t able to win one of the major events, because that’s what both of us wanted.”

Murray and Mauresmo, both two-time Grand Slam singles champions, announced Monday that they had mutually ended their partnership because of scheduling problems. Mauresmo, with a young son and duties as the French Fed Cup captain, had been able to spend only 10 days with Murray since January.

Murray made a comparison to Roger Federer’s recent split with a male Grand Slam champion coach, which had drawn little scrutiny despite similar results and a similar conclusion.

“Roger stopped working with Stefan Edberg at the end of last year because Stefan Edberg wanted to spend more time with his family, didn’t want to spend as much time traveling,” said Murray, who also has a baby daughter. “No one sort of batted an eyelid about that, you know?

“So in my opinion, it’s nothing to do with Amelie being a woman. I think it’s the case of a lot of the ex-players: It takes a lot of time to do the job well and properly. It’s not easy to do that for four, five years in a row.”

Murray is working, in the interim, with the male coach Jamie Delgado, a former British player, who is able to be with Murray most weeks of the year.

“It isn’t easy to find that, especially if you’re going for the ex-players that have spent, you know, 15, 20 years of their life on the road for 30, 35 weeks a year,” Murray said. “They don’t always want to do it.”

Novak Djokovic, who added seven-time major champion Boris Becker to his team at the beginning of the 2014 season, said he understood the limitations of working around Becker’s schedule.

“Certainly it is a challenge to organise properly the time spent on the tour, for the former players that also have their own families and private lives, and different things,” he said.
Djokovic added that Mauresmo would have faced additional obstacles in her calendar after becoming a mother last year, which he called ‘the biggest and toughest job you can have in the world.’

The sustainability of the trend of former stars serving as coaches for top players remains in question. But Murray’s decision to work with Mauresmo will be remembered as bold, given the near invisibility of female coaches in professional men’s tennis. Even on the WTA Tour, none of the top 25 women have female coaches.

Pam Shriver, a commentator and former player, said Murray and Mauresmo had been pioneers in a ‘groundbreaking situation,’ which should expand the minds of men and women alike.

“I think all these things help both genders open up their mindsets to possibilities that people might not have thought of before,” Shriver said. “In the case of men’s tennis players,” she continued, the possibilities included “the notion that a female with great tennis knowledge and elite tennis experience, like Mauresmo, can help communicate and help make a male player a better player, to help them in a stage of their career, by being the best lead coach at any given time.”

Shriver added: “Not that it’s going to open up the floodgates, but people now will think outside the box, and think not just ‘Who is the best male coach available?’ but ‘Who is the best coach available?,’ and that would include females.”

Shriver said that women who wanted top coaching positions should not be complacent about their wishes. “There are certainly some good female coaches out there, but getting the opportunity to coach at the highest level, meaning a top-10, top-5 player, those opportunities have been rare for women coaches,” she said.

“But I think also the women coaches have to market themselves. They have to let their talents be known. They can’t sit on the sidelines and expect it to happen. They have to work the networks, and work with the agents, and get their résumés and ideas out and market their ideas and their talent.”

Shriver credited Mauresmo with helping Murray emerge as a leader on various issues, including feminism and performance-enhancing drugs.

“Mauresmo’s two years are not just about on-court results, but also Andy developing as a person, as a leader,” Shriver said. “He’s developing a really great reputation as the one in the Big Four who is OK with pushing the envelope on issues.”

Although Murray did not win a third Grand Slam title under Mauresmo and won only one of 13 matches against Djokovic, Shriver said that she saw the partnership as entirely positive.

“I think the feeling is all good for these two years,” she said. “It’s not just all about how many majors you win.”