As the 16-year-old Patrick Mouratoglou looked at himself in the mirror, he feared his life was doomed to failure.
In his own words, he was “losing every day” as he battled with self-esteem and confidence issues that left him struggling with depression as he tried to find a way out of his agony.
Emerging from a wealthy family, Mouratoglou felt like a failure as he found it difficult at school, shied away from engaging with others and woke up every day with a thudding horror of what came next.
Panic attacks struck fear into him every night and when he woke from the limited sleep he was getting, his worst fears were realised when he tried to take on the next day.
The Patrick Mouratoglou we see confidently striding around tennis courts and guiding players to success as one of the most prominent coaches in the game could not be further away from the shy loner who tried to make it as a tennis player and didn’t know where to turn when his only dream died.
At the age of 15, his parents told him to walk away from his lifelong goal of making it as a tennis pro and focus on his studies, but that plunged him into a work where his insecurities were cruelly exposed.
He was never suicidal, but he describes his late teenage self as “deeply depressed” as he suggested “thoughts of death” haunted him.
So how did this young boy who didn’t know how to overcome his demons turn into one of the most confident and successful figures in the tennis world?
Mouratoglou’s new book Champion Mindset takes readers on a journey through his evolution, with his 10-year transformation from being a young boy riddled with fear to the leader who could walk into the world of tennis legend Serena Williams and take her career to the next level.
This is the leader who has overseen the development of a hugely successful tennis academy in Nice and is now opening up more coaching centres around the world while he is also the mastermind of the Ultimate Tennis Showdown tour that is gathering momentum at a thrilling pace following its launch during the Covid lockdown.
Here, in an exclusive interview with Tennis365, a reflective Mouratoglou has opened up on his darkest days and insisted his achievements in the sport he loves are nothing compared to the wins he has enjoyed as he rebooted his own life.
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“I always say transforming the 16-year-old me into the 26-year-old is my biggest achievement because at 16, I had no chance to achieve anything in my life,” Mouratoglou told Tennis365.
“My life was going to become a disaster and it took me 10 years to rebuild myself into someone who was prepared for life. When you are ready for life, when you are confident and you have good self-esteem, you can then dare to be ambitious.
“Then it gives you a lot of energy because you have dreams that you want to achieve and when you have confidence and self-belief, you start to think you can achieve them.
“It took me 10 years to get to that point from the age of 16 and this is the most important achievement in my life.
“A lot of people, maybe not to my extent as I was extremely bad, are in difficult situations when they are teenagers and even as adults. Why you are too shy and have no self-belief, you can’t do anything.
“This is one of the reasons why we did this book. To show that you can get out of the situation and change your life.
“A lot of people, maybe not to my extent as I was extremely bad, are in difficult situations when they are teenagers and even as adults. Why you are too shy and have no self-belief, you can’t do anything.
“Now I have spent the rest of my life trying to help others find their self-confidence in tennis. To believe more in themselves and to reach out to achieve their dreams.
“This is a self-development book and I wanted to do this and allow others to read my story and learn from it. Also, this is what I do for players when I am working with them. I work on the people as well as the tennis player as the whole package is what brings success.
“Of all the victories I would win in the coming years building my tennis academy into the largest in Europe, becoming a coach, coaching my players up to Grand Slam wins, the victory over myself has proven to be the greatest.”
Mouratoglou found a way to reinvent himself with the help of psychologists and a desire to understand why he had mental blocks halting his progress and the end result is the shining light we see on the tennis stage now.
Mouratoglou is currently working with four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka and has worked with Holger Rune and Grigor Dimitrov, with his personal journey part of the reason why he can work with players both as a coach and a mentor.
“People will be surprised that I didn’t have confidence when I was 16, but if you see me then and now, you would say it is impossible for this to be the same person. I literally couldn’t speak to anybody. I was so scared,” he added.
“I was avoiding people. I was avoiding eye contact with people because I was scared that if they caught my eye, they would ask me a question or start to engage with me. Whenever this happened I was terrified.
“I was last in my class at school. I was always sick because I didn’t want to be there and I would have panic attacks every night. That was my life. I was losing every day.
“Before I went to sleep, I knew I would have a panic attack about what would come next in my life. Then I would get to the morning and I was so tired because I was not sleeping.
“I knew that when I got to school, the teachers would be tough with me because I was bad at school. Then I would spend the whole day with people I couldn’t connect with, so my life was miserable. That’s the reality.
“What I did between 16 and 26 completely changed my life and I wanted to tell this story, share it with people, so it would be useful for them if they are feeling the same emotions.
“I’m excited to share my personal experiences, my professional experiences and explain how to change from someone who didn’t dare to do anything to achieve their dreams.”
Champion Mindset by Patrick Mouratoglou is available here
Champion Mindset by Patrick Mouratoglou
The post Patrick Mouratoglou admits he was ‘losing every day’ and was ‘deeply depressed’ in emotional Tennis365 interview appeared first on Tennis365.
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