Harriet Dart loving life on her all-female team: 'With a woman for a coach, the dynamic is different'

British No 3 Harriet Dart will have another chance to fell a tennis Goliath on Thursday on Rod Laver Arena, the same stage where she suffered a dispiriting 6-0, 6-0 defeat last year to a rampant Maria Sharapova.

The opposition this time will be no less challenging. Simona Halep is the reigning Wimbledon champion and a famously brilliant returner – the female equivalent of Novak Djokovic. She is likely to feast on the most obvious weakness in Dart’s game: a milk-float of a second serve, which averaged 69mph on the speed-gun during her dramatic first-round win over Misaki Doi.

But Dart feels she is a different player to the one who left Melbourne Park’s biggest stadium in tears last year. “I have come on a lot since then,” she said. “I feel a lot physically stronger. My physical trainer [Ian Aylward of the Lawn Tennis Association] beats me in the gym all off-season. So I am recovering better and able to deal with the weight of shots.”

Another backstage figure whom Dart praised this week is her experienced Serbian coach, Biljana Veselinovic. It is unusual for a British player of grand-slam standing to work with a woman, although Judy Murray helped Heather Watson during the 2016 Australian Open, and Andy Murray shocked the men’s locker room when he hired Amelie Mauresmo in June 2014.

Tennis’s gender prejudices run so deep that many players thought Murray’s announcement was a belated April fool. One even said “Maybe you should tell [the press] tomorrow that you’re considering working with a dog.”

Male coaches do have one practical advantage. On a purely physical level, they can usually sustain their own hitting skills well enough to act as a hitting partner. But then, as Dart pointed out on Tuesday night, the natural empathy between women acts as a counterbalance, and perhaps explains why we are seeing more and more all-female partnerships on the WTA tour.

“With a female coach, the dynamic is different,” said Dart. “She definitely understands a lot more things. This is all very new to me and I am really enjoying it. I have mostly worked with male coaches all my life so it’s very different. It’s great to have her around. She’s got amazing experience at the top level. For me it’s just being able to use all her expertise, and I definitely think it’s helping me.”

Veselinovic – who joined the LTA as a national coach just before Wimbledon – has a long list of eminent former clients that includes the former French Open finalist Lucie Safarova as well as world No 14 Petra Martic, the experienced Frenchwoman Alize Cornet and fellow Serb Aleksandra Krunic. As Judy Murray put it on Wednesday, “Biljana is fab. She is one of the few female coaches who have stayed the course on the WTA tour for many years.”

Veselinovic used to be an anomaly, but we see an increasing number of women working in these roles. Karolina Pliskova, the second seed here, split with her coach Conchita Martinez – the 1994 Wimbledon champion – just before Christmas, but is now working with Olga Savchuk.

Another top-ten player – Kiki Bertens of the Netherlands – recently hired Elise Tamaela, a compatriot whose own playing career ended in the most appalling circumstances. In 2011, Tamaela was playing at a second-tier tournament in Germany when she was punched in the head by her opponent’s father. She suffered from concussion symptoms for three or four months, and entered only one more professional tournament. Tamaela then earned a physiotherapist’s degree, and was just starting practice when Krunic persuaded her to try coaching instead.

To return to Dart, her meeting with Halep will start soon after 7pm on Thursday – which is 8am GMT. She is the second Briton on the schedule, as Watson is due to face 16th seed Elise Mertens in a match being played overnight.

Watson dealt magnificently with gale-force winds in Melbourne, which gusted at over 50mph, as she overcame the other Pliskova twin – Kristyna – by a 4-6, 6-3, 6-1 scoreline. “It is very [windy in Guernsey],” said a beaming Watson afterwards. “I don’t mind the wind at all, and the way I play – slice, drop-shots, and change of pace balls – I think it works well.”