Serena Williams teases Wimbledon return as coach Patrick Mouratoglou departs to work with Simona Halep
Serena Williams has confirmed she is targeting Wimbledon for her return to tennis, despite news of her longtime coach Patrick Mouratoglou's departure to work with two-time major champion Simona Halep.
Williams, 40, has not played since she exited Wimbledon last year due to a torn hamstring, but responded to news of Mouratoglou's "short-term" partnership with Halep on Thursday by finally sharing her immediate plans for a comeback.
Posting to her Instagram stories while backstage at the Bitcoin 2022 conference, Williams sent fans into a frenzy when she posted an exchange with NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers. "We’ve been talking about my comeback," she said. "He’s been hyping me up, and getting me ready for Wimbledon.”
Rodgers, looking confused, asked, "What about the US Open?", to which Williams replied: “Wimbledon’s before the US Open. I have to play Wimbledon. Exciting.”
It appears to mark a new stage of Williams's career where she could forge on without Mouratoglou, who has coached her for nearly a decade to huge success.
Since June 2012 he has helped her to 10 major titles and an Olympic gold medal. Since 2017 though, after a string of health problems which followed her complicated childbirth, she has failed to add to her 23 major singles titles and remains one short of Margaret Court's record 24-major haul.
Though it is unclear how long Mouratoglou's partnership with former world No 1 Halep is set to last, he confirmed earlier on Thursday that it was agreed after a conversation with Williams.
"Today, I am starting a new chapter in my coaching career: I am now the full-time coach of Simona Halep," Mouratoglou said in a statement on social media. "In the last eight months, I realised how much I missed coaching. It is the passion of my life, and I still feel like I have so much to give.
"Simona came to the Mouratoglou Academy before Indian Wells for a training block. I swung by at a few of her practices, watched her train. At the end of the week, she asked me if I was available to coach her. I have the highest respect for her but it was out of the question at the time. A few weeks later I had a conversation with Serena, and the door opened for me, at least short term, to work with someone else."
Analysis: Good news for Halep, new territory for Williams
After 10 years of stability in coaching terms, the prospect of Williams returning without Mouratoglou in her box will be new territory.
Mouratoglou has established himself as the leading and most high-profile coach in tennis since linking up with Williams. His academy in the French Riviera is the sport's premier base for up and coming stars, and he has overseen the development of world no 5 Stefanos Tsitsipas as well as US teenage talent Coco Gauff.
Never shying from the limelight, Mouratoglou is known for his colourful character, which has landed him in trouble during his tenure with Williams - most famously at the US Open final in 2018.
The timing of his decision to link up with Halep suggests that Williams could make her comeback at SW19 this summer without him, unless his agreement with Halep is only for the clay-court season.
The news of her return was welcomed regardless. Though she has remained in the public eye, mainly to promote "King Richard" the Hollywood biopic of her family's life story, until Thursday, Williams had provided limited tennis updates in recent months.
The only hint she had shared was in an interview with CNN last month, when she said she had "not given up" on her goal of reaching that 24th major title - the only record that eludes her.
But there was speculation last season, after her tearful exit at the Australian Open, that she was on the brink of retiring and the injury troubles that followed that summer have not abated those rumours. She has struggled to consistently re-establish her place at the top of tennis since returning from maternity leave in 2018 and her 10-month absence since Wimbledon last year has caused her ranking to plummet to 246.
Considering Williams usually reserves her court-time for only a handful of the most important events, any potential route to a future title will be all the more difficult unseeded. And, like Roger Federer, Williams turned 40 last summer so time is not on her side.
Her Wimbledon return could mark one of her final opportunities to secure No. 24, and will provide an exciting narrative for the women's game, which lost its world No 1 Ash Barty last month after her shock decision to retire at 25.
On the other side of this story, Halep securing Mouratoglou's tutelage full-time is a major coup. At 30, Halep is the same age Williams was when she first started working with Mouratoglou, and she has been on the hunt for a replacement since splitting from long-time coach Darren Cahill last September.
Injuries over the past year have pushed her down to 20th in the rankings, and Mouratoglou may be able to provide the consistent messaging to help her rekindle the form that saw her win the 2018 French Open and beat Williams to the Wimbledon title the following year.
