Marcos Baghdatis was like a son to me, says former coach Mouratoglou
In an interview to Tennis Now, Patrick Mouratoglou commented on his past co-operation with Marcos Baghdatis, who is retiring from tennis in this week's Wimbledon. The Frenchman said: "He was like a son to me because he came to my tennis academy when he was 13 and a half years old. The academy was small at that time, we didn’t have many players, I was very close to him. I was actually driving him every morning. He was living at some people’s apartment that I found for him and I was picking him up every morning, bringing him to the academy, we had all these talks every morning, we were incredibly close, so we shared a lot of things, from 13 years old to world champion in juniors and then at 20 years old he reached the final of a Grand Slam in Australia, he lost in four sets to Roger Federer.
He reached the semi-finals of Wimbledon the same year, became Top 10 in the world, so we went a long way. We spent probably around eight years together and he was a kid, so... I explain in my book that it didn’t end well between us and I take full responsibility because I was much older, I had not much experience, and I learned a lot from that. It was very painful for me because again he was like a son, and to have this relationship kind of… yeah, we lost our relationship, it was very painful but I realized that in my job I should not put too many emotions and when you have emotions you have to be able to step back—it taught me a lot of things about my job."
from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/2RS2zVu
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