It is rare that a woman coaches a man in tennis, although men have most often coached women.  When Andy Murray took on Mauresmo, he opened the doors for different coaching arrangements in the game.  As always with gender issues, the reasons are complicated.  My guess: Mauresmo was a played her turned on herself when she made errors.  Murray does the same thing.  The great tennis teacher Dennis Van der Meer was detoured from a pro career because he had performance anxiety.  He worked particularly well with players who suffered from the same fears.

If Mauresmo succeeds with Murray where Brad Gilbert and Ivan Lendl have failed, can it be that she understands his core problem and can make him take a page from Novak  Djokovic’s book and get angry for a second and then go on?

It is nice to think that if a woman is the right person to do this job, a Wimbledon winner will pick her.