The real Serena Williams is back, according to her coach Patrick Mouratoglou.

After going missing on the Tour for months, Williams re-emerged - of all the places - on the baseline of Centre Court at the All England Club. Or perhaps it was during a pre-Wimbledon phone call between player and coach. But Williams was her normal self in Saturday's final.

Standing on the players' lawn after Williams had defeated Germany's Angelique Kerber in straight sets, Mouratoglou spoke of his relief. Not relief that the Californian had finally put herself level with Steffi Graf's modern era record of 22 Grand Slam titles, but relief that "Serena is back", having not been herself in her defeats in this year's Australian Open and Roland Garros finals.

"If I'm totally honest, I'm not relieved to have the 22nd, I'm relieved to have Serena back. Everything depends on that,” said the Frenchman. “I don't look at the reward, I look at how to achieve it. There was something missing for a few months and the thing that was missing was just Serena. The tennis player was there but Serena as a person wasn't really herself, so she was much more beatable.

"She got that back over time. I think we didn't realise how much time she needed to recover from the loss at the US Open [to Roberta Vinci in the semi-finals last year]. Maybe I'm being wrong, but that's how I feel.

"I spoke to her on the phone a few days after the Roland Garros final and I thought to myself, 'OK, she's back'. She sounded like Serena and before she wasn't. She was thinking like Serena. She's probably the greatest of all-time so she's probably not thinking like everyone else. That's what's so special, and she didn't lose that, it's come back. It was just lost for a few months."

Mouratoglou said that Kerber made it "tough" for Williams. "Kerber played really well. Kerber is very difficult to manipulate on a tennis court because she reads the game so well. She has a good answer to all the problems. But she's a bit predictable, otherwise we would have been in trouble. Serena did the job.

"What you saw today, what you saw in the semis and what you saw in the second round [against Christina McHale] - that was Serena. When she was in trouble, boom, boom, she did it. When she needed to close, boom, she did it. That is Serena. I didn't see that for months."