Tennis player's response to question about female coach sends important message about equality
A top French tennis player's response to a question about the hiring of female tennis coaches prompted an enormous cheer from the crowd at the Australian Open.
Lucas Pouille — who will play Novak Djokovic on Friday at his first grand slam semi-final — was asked a question by John McEnroe about his coach.
McEnroe interviewed Pouille immediately after he defeated Milos Raonic in the quarter-final. He referred to Pouille's decision to hire former tennis player Amelie Mauresmo, a former world number one.
McEnroe said: "I’m getting the feeling that a lot of these guy players are going to be hiring female coaches now."
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24-year-old Pouille replied saying: "They should. She has the right mindset, she knows everything about tennis. It's not about being a woman or a man, you just have to know what you're doing and she does."
The crowd erupted into applause as Pouille said these words. Well said.
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
