Serena Williams’ former coach states why ‘rage rooms’ are a bad idea for tennis

Serena Williams’ former coach Patrick Mouratoglou has put forward his case for why ‘rage rooms’ are not good for tennis.

The recent ATX Open in Austin, Texas, introduced a ‘rage room’ for WTA players, allowing them to take out their anger in a dedicated private area.

It was brought in following Coco Gauff’s racket smash at the Australian Open, when the American thought she was completely out of sight.

Gauff took her frustration out on her racket following her quarterfinal exit in Melbourne, with her actions en route to the locker room caught on camera and shared online.

Patrick Mouratoglou doesn’t like the idea of tennis ‘rage rooms’

Offering his verdict on the idea of the ‘rage room’, an exasperated Mouratoglou said in a video on his Instagram: “I’m a bit desperate from that.

“There is a proposal to add rage rooms on tour where players can go and privately release their anger.

“I understand the point, because when players are crazy frustrated after a loss and they want to take the rage out and shout or break a racket, they want to have privacy for that.

“Because when they don’t have privacy, everybody’s judging them, and I think that’s one of the big problems of today’s world.

“Like people are so judgmental, they don’t know tennis, they don’t understand tennis, they don’t understand the pressure that those guys go through, they don’t understand how desperate players are sometimes when they lose a match.

“But to have to hide in a way to get angry sounds nuts to me.

“I think a big improvement would be for a lot of wise people to tell those guys who criticize the players after a match, get frustrated and angry, ‘shut up, you don’t know what you’re talking about’.

“After what happened in the [2018] US Open, the drama with Serena [Williams] during the match against [Naomi] Osaka, I told those guys, a few guys who were criticizing her, some said it to me, and I said, listen, imagine you wake up angry. It happens to you sometimes, right? It’s a bad day.

“You’re taking a flight, and the person at the desk who’s checking you in for the flight is talking to you in a very bad way, and you don’t have even 1% of the pressure of a Serena playing a match for history.

“Are you going to react well, or are you going to shout back at the woman or the man? Think about it.”

Mouratoglou was adjudged to have coached Williams back in the 2018 US Open final, for which she was given a code violation.

The American superstar was handed another violation for a racket smash, before a game penalty for her outburst towards chair umpire Carlos Ramos.

She accused him of being a thief and refused to shake his hand after the match in New York, which Osaka won 6-2, 6-4.

Tennis players definitely deserve more privacy

It was certainly an intriguing introduction to the WTA 250 tournament in Austin, which helped kick-start the Sunshine Swing.

Whether or not the ‘rage room’ was used much will perhaps never be known, with players able to go in there free from judgment and away from any prying eyes, of which there are many.

Tennis players really don’t have much privacy at all nowadays, with several likely to welcome an area where they can truly take their anger out.

However, by the time they reach the room, stress from a loss may have already decreased to a point where they no longer need it.

One certainty is that they shouldn’t be watched 24/7, with Gauff having particularly deserved to elude the spotlight given that she admirably smashed her racket as far away from the court as possible.

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