Breaking rackets has been a part of tennis matches ever since its heydays. Players like John McEnroe, Goran Ivanisevic, and even Novak Djokovic released their wrath on their poor tennis rackets. But renowned coach Patrick Mouratoglou has a controversial opinion on this. While he does admit that it may be bad, Mouratoglou has a valid reason to support such an act and it has turned out to be another instance in which without naming Rafael Nadal, he indirectly took a dig at him and people who share the same belief.
Taking to his Instagram recently, Patrick Mouratoglou shared his opinion on the act of smashing rackets. He said that he entered a room once, where he saw all these broken racquets hanging from the wall. Then he shared his take.
“We’re entering the room of this guy with so many broken racquets on the wall. So why the racquets are broken? When my players in the past have broken racquets, I always kept those racquets. First of all, because I don’t wanna leave the racquet on the court, and also because I like the story. Sometimes a broken racquet is a few days before a big tournament that the player ends up winning. But I have this story, this moment, this special moment when the frustration went too high. I know this is very controversial to say, but sometimes to take all the stress out and break a racquet can help some players. I know it’s a bad thing. Maybe there should be anoher way to do it, but it helps them because it just takes the stress away, the frustration away, and they can refocus. So all the racquets have a story and I like to collect the broken racquets and I like to keep them with me,” said Mouratoglou in the Instagram video.
While it’s hard to break Goran Ivanisevic’s ‘smashing rackets record’ (he was out of racquets in a match after smashing all of them), Novak Djokovic has broken his racket 62 times in his career as well. This number is way more than his Big Three counterparts, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.
Rafael Nadal has previously spoken about his school of thought, which will never allow him to disrespect a racket by smashing it. It goes back to his early learnings from his uncle Toni Nadal (also his first-ever coach), who always taught him to treat the racquet with dignity. For Nadal, that is an exercise of self-control as well as respecting the game and his opponent.
However, even in this instance, Patrick Mouratoglou seems to be siding with Novak Djokovic and not Rafael Nadal. Mouratoglou has previously made some statements about Nadal too. In 2016, he believed that Nadal was slowing down and would have tough challenges ahead, according to Sports Illustrated.
Rafael Nadal came back strong the next year to win the French Open and the US Open in 2017. More recently, the French coach again said on Instagram that Nadal should skip hard court events to give himself a better chance of winning the French Open, which was reported by Tennis Majors.
Despite Mouratoglou’s comments, fans love Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer for not practicing this act
Mouratoglou might support the act of smashing rackets, but two of the most loved tennis players don’t. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are against such an act, which shows one’s ugly side. Roger Federer broke his racket 5 times in his career, whereas Rafael Nadal never broke a single racket in his career. While Nadal’s etiquette and manners behind never doing it are listed above, Roger Federer only ever did it in his youth.
When Roger Federer first broke into the tennis scene, he was full of young blood and would often lash out. He played with a lot of aggression and thus, may have broken a few rackets. However, ever since then, he transformed himself into a much calmer and more composed person. Today Federer and Nadal enjoy the biggest fandom in tennis.
The huge moral conundrum remains of whether influential people like Patrick Mouratoglou should say something like what he did on Instagram recently. On one hand, he is honest about his feelings and tells the advantages of it and why players do it. But at the same time, he could inadvertently be inspiring young kids to do the same.
In the end, Mouratoglou is allowed to express his opinions without judgment on his own Instagram page at least. And to be fair, he did mention that it is a bad thing to do twice in the video.
