Marion Bartoli, who beat Lisicki in the final but has since retired, also worked with French compatriot Mauresmo for a while having been coached throughout her career by father Walter. Of the current women’s top 20, none have female coaches although Germany’s Wimbledon runner-up Sabine Lisicki has an informal relationship with former number one Martina Hingis. (Murray was coached for years by his mother Judy, Britain’s Fed Cup captain, so having a woman in his camp will be nothing new for him even if it might raise eyebrows on the circuit. “Everyone I know talks very highly of Amelie, as a person and coach, and I’m convinced that her joining the team will help us push on – I want to win more grand slams,” Murray said in a statement on his website. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentesįormer Wimbledon and Australian Open champion Mauresmo will initially take up the role for the grasscourt season and will join the British number one at the Aegon Championships in London next week, his traditional warm up for Wimbledon.Īs well as being an important step for Murray after the end of his successful partnership with Ivan Lendl in March, the new relationship will be closely watched in a sport where few top women, let alone men, have female coaches. Mauresmo is only the second woman to coach a top-10 player, however, after Tatiana Naumko, who guided the career of the Russian world No9 Andrei Chesnokov in the 90s.Former French tennis player Amelie Mauresmo speaks during a news conference at the French Open Tennis tournament at the Roland Garros stadium in Paris June 8, 2014. Mauresmo joins Anastasia Kukushkina, who married the Kazakh player Mikhail Kukushkin, and Denis Istomin’s mother, Klaudiya, who has been with him for several years. Women coaches are rare on the men’s tour. He’s an amazingly talented tennis player and I feel I have plenty to offer both him and the team around him.” Speaking at Roland Garros, where she watched Rafael Nadal beat Novak Djokovic in four sets in the French Open final, Mauresmo added: “I’m really excited to be able to work with Andy. Everyone I know talks very highly of Amélie, as a person and coach, and I’m convinced that her joining the team will help us push on. “I have a very strong coaching team already in place but I think Amélie brings with her experience and tactical expertise and will push us all to improve. She’s faced adversity plenty of times in her career but was an amazing player and won major titles. I think it’s exciting, something a bit new for me, something a bit fresh and hopefully it works well.”Įarlier, en route to training at Queen’s, he said: “Amélie is someone I have always looked up to and admired. “Obviously I wasn’t paying my Mum so it’ll be a little bit different this time around because I’ll be employing Amélie. For me it doesn’t feel like a very different thing. “I obviously worked with my Mum for a long time and then even periods when I was 16, 17 years old. I think we will communicate well together and I think that’s a very important part of coaching.
Just from speaking to her, she’s very calm, she’s a good person. She won Wimbledon, she was world No1, won the Australian Open. We’ll try during the grass-court and hopefully we’ll both enjoy it. There was a will from both sides to give it a go and see how it works out. We chatted a little bit about it, whether she’d be up for doing it. Murray said: “I spoke to her a few times on the phone and when I was in Paris I met her before the tournament. They will talk again after Wimbledon, the Scot and the Frenchwoman, tennis’s equivalent of the Auld Alliance between the two countries, perhaps – a partnership dripping in symbolism before Scotland’s vote on independence in September. If it’s half-time, half a year, that’s not bad.”įor the benefit of English-speaking journalists earlier she described her commitment as “a significant amount of weeks that we have agreed on and should be good for everyone”.
Both agree that, if they click, they will extend the arrangement but Mauresmo, who organises a tournament in Toulouse, captains the French Federation Cup team and works as a commentator for Eurosport, told French journalists: “No, I don’t want to work full-time.
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