About the coach
I built the team I couldn't afford.
Mousheg Hovhannisyan: former WTA Tour coach, ATP-ranked player and ISSA-certified trainer. Thirty years of tennis and training, now coaching tennis and in-home fitness in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles · Pepperdine D1 · WTA & ATP Tour · ISSA certified
My story
The part most coaches leave out.
It started in the summer of 1997, in the courtyard of an apartment building in Yerevan, Armenia. I was five. My father found an old wooden racket in the basement, sawed the handle down until I could hold it, tossed me a ball and said one word: swing. My first three years of tennis were against a wall. At eight, my family moved to Los Angeles, and I learned the game at the city's public parks.
I started coaching at fifteen, for gas money, while competing almost every day. By eighteen I had reached the semifinals of the national championships at Kalamazoo, beaten a seventh seed in Challenger qualifying on a wildcard, and earned my first ATP points. What I had was the strokes and the work ethic. What I didn't have were the pieces around them: a strength coach, a recovery plan, someone to train the mental side, someone to track the numbers. Each one costs money, and I couldn't afford any of them.
I played four years of Division I singles and doubles at Pepperdine, with twenty-three straight wins and the NCAA Final Four in 2012, and graduated in 2014. Then I went on tour with enough money for exactly one year.
When the year ran out, I stopped. For almost two years I coached one family, school semesters in Indiana and summers on Long Island, and saved. In October 2016 I went back out, and from then on coaching paid for my playing. From 2017 to 2019 I coached on the WTA Tour, and in the weeks between I traveled all over the world to compete. In 2019 I traveled with Valeria Savinykh, a former top-100 player, as her coach and hitting partner through Wimbledon and the US Open, and worked as a hitting partner on the ATP Tour. Two careers at once, each paying for the other.
Coaching paid for my playing.
2020 was going to be my last season as a player. It was the last one I could afford. COVID shut the tour down partway through and made the decision for me. I started coaching full-time in Los Angeles.
Athletic Intelligence is my answer to the question I carried through all of it: what would I have become with the whole team behind me? I couldn't hire a strength coach, a recovery specialist, a mental performance coach and an analyst, so in the years since, I built each one into how I coach. Tennis or fitness, five pillars, one coach. The people I work with don't have to choose.
Athletic Intelligence
The ability to notice what matters, organize the body, and choose an effective response as conditions change.
The definition I coach from, and the subject of my book, The Eight Points of Tennis.
The road
Thirty years, in order.
- 1997Yerevan, Armenia, age five. A wooden racket, cut down to fit. Three years against a wall before a first court.
- 2000Los Angeles, age eight. Learned the game at the city's public parks.
- Age 15Started coaching, for gas money, while competing almost every day.
- Age 16Wildcard into Challenger qualifying in Carson. Beat the seventh seed.
- JuniorsFormer SoCal No. 1. Selected for USTA Player Development, training a year in Boca Raton, Florida, in the cohort that helped build the program. Semifinals at Kalamazoo (USTA Boys' 18s Nationals), singles and doubles. First ATP points at eighteen.
- 2012NCAA Final Four with Pepperdine. Twenty-three straight wins.
- 2014Graduated Pepperdine after four seasons of singles and doubles, including WCC Doubles Team of the Year. One full year on tour.
- 2015–16Coached one family, in Indiana and on Long Island, for almost two years to fund the next run.
- Oct 2016Back on tour, coaching in the weeks I wasn't playing.
- 2017–19WTA and ATP Challenger Tour coach. ATP-ranked player, career-high No. 911.
- 2019Coach and hitting partner to Valeria Savinykh at Wimbledon and the US Open. ATP Tour hitting partner. Part-time player.
- 2020COVID tour shutdown. Full-time coaching in Los Angeles, the start of Athletic Intelligence.
- 2026The Eight Points of Tennis, first edition. In-home fitness, mental performance and nutrition join the tennis program.
- TodayCoaching tennis and fitness in Los Angeles. Building athletes with the whole team behind them.
How I coach
It's just a ball and a stick.
Strings, shoes, data and technology matter, but they're tools. None of them can read the opponent, choose the shot or handle the pressure. The athlete has to, and everything I do is built to make that athlete.
Every drill solves a problem.
I don't ask what stroke or lift we're practicing. I ask what problem it exists to solve, then build the session around it: control first, then constraint, then competition.
I coach the whole athlete.
Perception, balance, fuel, the tool, practice, presence. Sport forces all of them into one response, so I train them together: on court, in your home, and in how you eat, recover and think.
We measure, and we break it down.
Every athlete starts with an assessment and gets re-tested. I record key shots and movements and analyze them with you, so we work from what actually happened, not what it felt like.
My job is to make you need me less.
A coach shouldn't impose an identity. He should reveal one, then teach its owner to guide it: to see, decide and adjust without waiting for a correction.
The book
The Eight Points of Tennis.
Thirty years of playing and coaching, organized into the eight relationships every player has to hold at once. Built on the court and checked against the science afterward, with a Court Test at the end of each chapter you can run in a single practice.
- 01PerceptionSee
What matters soon enough to act?
- 02BalanceOrganize
Can the body remain available as conditions change?
- 03FuelSustain
What allows capacity to remain available?
- 04ToolExtend
Does the tool reveal ability, extend it, or replace it?
- 05PracticeAdapt
What problem is this repetition teaching the player to solve?
- 06AthleteIntegrate
Who is being formed by these repeated experiences?
- 07PresenceReturn
What does this moment require now?
- 08CourtReveal
What remains available when preparation meets consequence?
Players
Who I've worked with.
- Coach · WTA Tour
- Valeria SavinykhCoach and hitting partner through the 2019 season, including Wimbledon and the US Open. Career-high WTA No. 99.
- Hitting & training partner
- Venus Williams · Naomi Osaka · Sam Querrey · Tommy Haas · Donald Young · Alexander SarkissianAnd many other top-100 ATP and WTA players.
- College
- Division I playersIncluding Lorenzo Brunkow, a blue-chip recruit who trained with me for years as a junior, then won a Big West championship as a freshman at UC Santa Barbara.
- Juniors
- Jack & James TurenCurrent students. Each has gained two UTR points in the past year.
A training day
Court in the morning. Strength by the afternoon.
Strokes, movement and strength, built in the same day and planned by the same coach. This is the team I couldn't afford as a player. Now it's how everyone I work with trains.
See the five pillars →Let's get to work.
Book a single session, or apply for a 6-week program.