"He literally coached Serena Williams" - Fans slam American's ex-coach's "complaint" after controversial take on serves

Serena Williams' ex-coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, recently pushed for a radical rule change in tennis. Mouratoglou claimed the high number of aces and serve winners is hurting the sport. According to the iconic coach, it would be better for the sport to have just one serve to encourage more rallies. However, most tennis fans disagreed with Mouratoglou's take and blatantly criticized him.

On Wednesday, April 2, a video posted on the Frenchman's official YouTube channel showed him criticizing the existing serve rule in tennis, which consists of the first and second serves. Mouratoglou urged for tennis matches to afford players simply one serve to reduce predictable patterns of play involving serve winners, aces, and missed returns.

"It hurts tennis that there are too many aces/serve winners. What solves the problem is to have only one serve. We want more rallies and less boom, serve, winner, ace, missed return. You can have an ace once in a while, but not too many," Mouratoglou said.

Several tennis fans on X were not pleased with Mouratoglou's idea. Some brought up the name of the legendary Serena Williams and how her serves used to be feared, particularly during her glorious collaboration with Mouratoglou from 2012 to 2022, which yielded 10 out of the American's 23 singles Grand Slam titles.

"He literally coached Serena who hit ace after ace 😭😭," a fan wrote.

"Like how tf can you complain about aces when you coached the literal best server in the world 😭," another replied to the previous post.

"Be quiet," another chimed in, adding a video of Williams winning an entire game off of her aces against Agnieszka Radwanska at the Wimbledon Championships.

Others voiced their respective opinions on how such a rule change could come with more negative impact than positive.

"It could make matches more watchable for casual fans, sure—but is it still the same sport if you take away one of its core weapons?" questioned one fan.

"No way.. tennis now is beyond boring and repetitive No interesting game styles, very little variety Big serve and big forehand is all we got now lol if you take that away every match is the exact same," added another.

"Absolutely not. Stop trying to change the rules of tennis. I don’t know why, but I hate when people throw out random rule changes🤣🤣," yet another fan weighed in.

In 2023, Mouratoglou gave a candid interview, in which he suggested that certain aspects about tennis need to change for the sport to be accepted by younger generations.

"The format of tennis doesn't fit the way the world is now" - Serena Williams' former coach Patrick Mouratoglou in 2023

Patrick Mouratoglou (left) and Serena Williams (right) during a practice session at the 2021 French Open (Source: Getty)

Speaking to Vogue in 2023, Serena Williams' ex-coach Patrick Mouratoglou opined that tennis fails to appeal to younger audiences due to its unchanged format since its inception. He also suggested that keeping things the same is likely to jeopardize the sport in the long run. These thoughts and opinions led the veteran coach to form the Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS) in 2020.

"The format of tennis was created in the 19th century, and it has never changed—it doesn’t fit the way the world is now. And we love tennis—I’m from that tennis base. I’m 53, not 61, but I fell in love with tennis in the ’70s, like the fan base. But if we continue like that, it’s not going to work," Mouratoglou told Vogue.

The 2012 Wimbledon Championships marked the first Major Serena Williams won under Mouratoglou's tutelage, while the 2017 Australian Open was the last. Serena Williams bid a tearful goodbye to her tennis-playing career at the 2022 US Open, following a surprising third-round loss to Ajla Tomljanovic.

Meanwhile, after moving on from the successful collaboration with Williams, Mouratoglou coached the likes of Simona Halep and Holger Rune. Right now, he is serving as Naomi Osaka's coach.