With Mauresmo in corner, Pouille faces Djokovic in Australian Open SFs

“It’s not about whether you’re a man or a woman, it’s whether you can do the job, and she can.”

Those words have become Lucas Pouille’s mantra over the last week and a half. After failing to win a match since October, the 24-year-old Pouille suddenly finds himself in his first Grand Slam semifinal at the Australian Open. For that he can thank his new coach, Amelie Mauresmo, and the work they’ve put in together since they teamed up late last year. On Wednesday, Pouille defused one of the tournament’s most in-form players, Milos Raonic, in four sets. The win was much like his other victories so far Down Under: Tight, tough, tiebreaker-filled, requiring not just brilliant shot-making, but patience and persistence.

In 2018, Pouille found himself in short supply of those last two items; the game had become a chore to him. Now, with his new coaching team, he says he’s happy to come to the courts again, and enthusiastic about his job. That sense of renewal might have happened whether he was working with a man or a woman, but that’s part of Pouille’s point: Coaches of either gender can make you love the sport again, and during her career, Mauresmo surely went through the same emotional ups and downs on the WTA tour that Pouille has gone through on the ATP tour.

The idea that men and women athletes have the same mental and motivational issues may sound perfectly reasonable to you, but in tennis circles it has long qualified as radical.

“Men are coaching women, so why not the contrary,” Pouille said on Wednesday. “It’s about knowing tennis, about having a good state of mind. She’s a champion. She’s a great coach.”

Mauresmo, of course, has been here before. She coached Andy Murray to the Australian Open final in 2015 and 2016. While that was just three years ago, it feels like another era entirely when it comes to the concept of women coaching men. Murray was the first high-profile male player to hire a woman as his coach, and the move, predictably, came with plenty of skepticism, and even derision. But while Murray and Mauresmo never won a major together, she was a key part of the mid-career revival that brought him to No. 1 at the end of 2016.

So far with Pouille, there has been less skepticism about Mauresmo’s hiring. If it existed, his run to the semifinals has silenced it, at least for the moment.

“I think time [has] changed,” Pouille said when he was asked whether he had received any of the negative reaction that Murray did. “I think he did it first, so that’s why he received so many texts. It’s a shame that it happened...But no, to respond to your question, I didn’t receive any bad message.”

It’s fitting that Murray’s pioneering legacy is being carried on at this year’s Australian Open, which may have been his last. The next question is: How far can Pouille carry it?

When she worked with Murray, Mauresmo regularly ran into a brick wall at the Australian Open named Novak Djokovic. Djokovic beat Murray in the final here four times. Now Pouille will face that same brick wall on Friday.

The task of climbing it, or battering through it, will be just as daunting for the Frenchman as it was for the Scot. One possible positive it that, unlike Murray, Pouille won’t bring any scar tissue to the encounter: He and Djokovic have never faced each other. Pouille will need to use his strong, sliding first serve to full effect; he’ll need to open the court with his versatile forehand; he’ll need to be proactive and avoid sinking into the grind with Djokovic; and he’ll need to win the same type of close sets he’s been winning so far at this tournament.

Unfortunately for him, those are exactly the types of sets that Djokovic specializes in winning.

Winner: Djokovic

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