The way phenomenal and accomplished athletes’ minds work can often catch regular folks off-guard. How is it that a tennis player like Naomi Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion and former world No. 1, would ever get to a place where she might question her ability?

It happens all the time, even with the all-time greats — a subset of the tennis species that Patrick Mouratoglou, the longtime coach and tennis media impresario, has spent most of his career studying. He coached the best of the best, Serena Williams, at the scene of so many of her greatest triumphs.

In September 2024, three-quarters of the way through her comeback season after giving birth to her daughter, Shai, Osaka hired Mouratogou to replace Wim Fissette. Osaka had reunited with Fissette (who coached her between 2019 and 2022) the previous summer, to prepare for her return to competitive tennis last January. At first, she was magnanimous about the relationship between improvement and outcome. When she came within a point of beating Iga Swiatek at last year’s French Open, Osaka wasn’t down: “Obviously the results aren’t resulting right now, but I think I’m growing every tournament,” she said in her news conference.

When the results still didn’t result, Osaka found herself again struggling with her confidence and decided to move away from the coach with whom she won two of those four Grand Slam titles.

Osaka, 27, hasn’t won a title of any kind with Mouratoglou yet, but she has come awfully close. She had to retire with an abdominal injury when she was up a set against Clara Tauson in the final of the Auckland Classic in New Zealand in January and she has played her best tennis since becoming a mother in the past five months, when her body has allowed her to do so.

“I just had to believe in myself a lot more,” Osaka said at the Australian Open after her second-round win over Karolina Muchova, one of the world’s most gifted players, who had eased past Osaka at the same stage of the U.S. Open four months prior. There in Melbourne, Osaka was talking about coming back to win the last two sets after losing the first 6-1, but she could have been talking about how, when healthy, she has rediscovered her swagger and her ability to take the racket out of her opponents’ hands.

That is not an accident.

In an interview in February from Los Angeles, where he and Osaka prepared for her comeback from that abdominal injury, Mouratoglou said they have been working on confronting those moments when she feels her belief slipping and on figuring out ways to overcome them.

“You earn confidence with what you do every day in practice,” Mouratoglou said.

After two weeks of hard training, Osaka will try to bring that swagger to the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, Calif., this week.

In the interview, Mouratoglou, 54, said he expects nothing less from Osaka, a player he says comes to the court every day with an open mind and a hunger to try anything to get better.

All the great ones do.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

GO DEEPER

Naomi Osaka and the gravity of a superstar at the U.S. Open

How is her injury feeling?

She has no pain anymore. We have been serving, but slowly and progressively. She’s done the work to try to make sure she does not get hurt again.

What is it like to work with players at her level? How does she compare with Serena Williams?

I don’t compare anyone to Serena. It is very exciting, because of her potential. She has the potential to win very many more Slams. Her motivation is very high. Tennis is a big priority and she is prepared to come back all the way.

How do you know if you are a good fit with her? 

I don’t know if it’s a good fit — all the players are different, and as a coach you need to adapt.

Is it any different when you are coaching a superstar rather than some of the players you have worked with who are not at that level?

It’s very important when you work with a superstar that you do the same as if the player is not a superstar. You need to talk to a person in a normal way, like she is a normal player. When they achieve so much they have certainties about what they do, but they have to be open enough to learn and continue to grow. That’s where Naomi is. She really wants to improve. She’s really taking the advice, and giving 100 percent. She is not scared. That’s the champion’s mindset.

It’s interesting you say that. I would have thought people who have won so much in the past think they know how to do it again. 

They are champions because they are doing what it takes to improve; their ability to trust the person working with them to tell them what to do and what it takes. That makes them champions.

Rafa (Nadal) and Novak (Djokovic), they went through so many technical changes. They see the sport as a race. Everybody is improving. That is how Serena was seeing the world. If you’re happy with what you have and don’t try new things, you will be overtaken by others. The progress comes from seeing which areas you can get better with.

Why is Osaka better now than she was last year?

Her confidence is much higher. This comes from what she has done at practice. She’s practising extremely well. She pushes herself. Her game has gained in consistency. A player has to be aware of how she is feeling, even if she feels she is losing confidence. Before, she didn’t express it to herself. Most of the matches, she lost because she stopped believing and this is not allowed.

We do practice matches. She is aware of what she is feeling. We talk about it. We work on it in the moment. It’s fine to have that feeling, it’s natural — there is no shame in being nervous. We just have to be aware of it. It can affect you but it can’t affect you too much — Novak gets super-nervous or angry, but the most important thing is the ability to come back very fast. Otherwise, you are losing points and points and points. You have the right to become nervous and lose confidence, but not too much and not for too long.

You don’t talk much during matches other than small messages of encouragement. Why?

There is not so much to say, unless I see she is not following the plan one way or another. The match, we prepare it before. The only thing I can do is to support her.

In the Muchova match in Melbourne, Muchova was playing great and Naomi was struggling to get to her level. I’ve seen that in the past year. I found out that when she was in trouble, her confidence level would drop a lot and the game was affected.

Her first tournament in China, she had lost 20 matches in a row when she had lost the first set. This time, she didn’t let what was happening on the court play with her mind.  It’s impossible not to be affected by the score. They need to be affected by the score. How much it affects you and does it affect you in a way that can harm you is the question. You want to be affected but stay under control. Keep believing in what you are doing.

Is that what she did against Muchova? 

She stayed mentally there. You don’t go away. Nobody plays perfectly from the first point to the last.

When you coached Serena, you went up against Osaka. Did you share your old game plans with her?

No. You don’t want to reinforce the spots that are weaker. I also don’t think you win by improving your mistakes so much. You prepare solutions, and you make your strong points better. If someone has a good game plan to beat Jannik Sinner, I would like to see it. Players at that level, you have to catch them on a certain day when there are weak spots.

I want my players to know how to turn their strengths into weapons: ‘What is my player’s game style and how do they win points?’.

So what are Osaka’s strengths at this point that should be her weapons?

When she is at the top of the game, she plays faster than anyone. She makes it very difficult to organize a point against her. She comes back to you with the ball in such a short time. When the ball touches the racket, it goes so fast to the other side of the net, and she can be very accurate with hitting her spots.

She also has big room for improvement. She can return better, be more aggressive on the second serve, take time away from the opponent better. The good thing is that she is extremely open to new ideas. I told her what I thought when I arrived and she told me she was very excited to get to work because she believed she was going to learn new things.

Naomi Osaka holds the Australian Open trophy after the 2019 final. (Getty Images)

Is that what the best ones tell you?

Absolutely. They forget what they have achieved one minute after they achieve it. Serena finishes 2012 winning Wimbledon and the U.S. Open and the Olympics and the WTA Tour Finals. She’s walking off the court and tells me to come up with a plan for her to win the French Open. She says, “I’ve been chasing it for 10 years. I want to win Roland Garros, make a plan for me to win it.” (Williams won the 2013 French Open.)

The past is the past. It’s important not to look at the past. ‘Let’s move on. Always focus on the journey, where we want to go’. That’s Naomi right now. She’s very ambitious. She believes her story is still to be written. That’s important, because when you hold a trophy it only lasts a few minutes. You have to be excited about what’s next.

What has changed about tennis in recent years?

In general, the fitness level has improved a lot. It’s easy to explain. All of the top players travel with a fitness coach and physiotherapist. It was not true before. The movement of the players is so much better. On the women’s side, (Aryna) Sabalenka, for her height, is moving so well. And then Iga (Swiatek) and Coco (Gauff).

(Carlos) Alcaraz, Sinner, it’s crazy how they move on the court. Even someone like Tomas Machac. So it’s harder to hit winners, to get the ball through the court. If Naomi keeps evolving as she is, she will be able to hit as many winners again.

Naomi said she didn’t know if you would actually be a good coach, because you had coached Serena and she wondered whether Serena even needed coaching. Others sometimes question how much impact you have when you are coaching these all-time greats? How does that affect you? 

People who say that don’t know what they are talking about. If I coach Naomi and she doesn’t do something well, I’m going to hear about it. I take no special pride in coaching champions. For me, if I don’t bring her to her top level, I didn’t do a good job.

(Top photo: David Gray / AFP via Getty Images)