Tennis Has a Coaching Problem

Because it's a problem when you can't problem-solve

Courtesy: Getty Images

Of all the things that we sports media types spend a lot of time speculating on, our assessment of coaches is among the least informed. We can read certain tea leaves in terms of vibes — sometimes you can tell when a team is disjointed, or when someone’s “lost the locker room” or whatever — but that’s about it.

The reality is that we’re not that good at discerning a coach’s impact, and part of that is a lack of clarity on how important the coach is to begin with. This is true within a sport — I would direct you to the everlasting Belichick-Brady debate, or the shift in the Joe Mazzulla discourse in one short year — and it’s true when comparing different sports.

I’d be tempted to say that a head coach in football has more strategic responsibilities than a head coach in basketball, but what about the elemental job of managing players’ personalities and egos? Is that conversely harder with a smaller group where the star power is more concentrated? I don’t know, man, and I think we ought to get comfortable admitting that.

Tennis presents an unusual case. Until very recently, seeking input from your coach was an infraction. Many will remember that happening to Serena Williams in the 2018 U.S. Open final, which might not have actually been coaching— it was a thumbs up, after all — but definitively impacted that match in a negative way when it sparked an argument between Williams and the umpire who called it.

At the time, many fans and players would’ve told you that coaching was always happening, and it was thus silly to penalize players for something everyone was doing to varying degrees and was also pretty much harmless. I still mostly agree with that.

Then I watched a lot of Wimbledon these past few weeks, and I’m coming to a sort of distressing realization. When did so many of these players become so reliant on their coaches?

I saw this on a few occasions, the most disappointing of which was Coco Gauff. She’s a brilliant player, but she looked lost and frustrated against her fellow countrywoman Alex Navarro (who was awesome, by the way, so this is to take nothing away from her).

As that match was slipping away in the second set, Gauff was looking up at her box between seemingly every point. You could see her repeatedly saying “Tell me something,” as in tell me what to do differently to win this match.

Gauff spoke after the match, as did Navarro, as recorded here in The Athletic:

“They usually give me something,” she said. “I felt today that we weren’t all in sync. It’s no one’s blame except myself. I mean, I’m the player out there. I have to make decisions for myself on the court.”

Navarro, who shows little emotion regardless of the numbers on the scoreboard, kept her cool and stayed steady. She saw Gauff going back-and-forth with Gilbert and knew what was happening. 

“Definitely a confidence boost,” she said. “Gave me some momentum and I was able to take advantage of it.”

So, one way you could read those two quotes in the context of the match is that Gauff’s game plan wasn’t working. She wanted to overpower Navarro, who thoroughly rebuffed that strategy. Gauff got mad about that — which may betray some tension over that plan — and when she wasn’t presented with a new game plan, she got even more mad. Instead of making an adjustment on her own account, in the moment, she cast her blame elsewhere and lost as a result. Gauff is a fantastic tennis player, and she is much, much better than that match.

I was prepared to take that as a one-off, but I kept seeing it. Arthur Fils was losing to Alex de Minaur, and while the most petulant of his interactions with the coaching box did at least produce a mini-comeback, he still seemed to lose the plot in the grand scheme of that match. He lost.

Back on the women’s draw, Yulia Putintseva seemed furious with her coaches as she just couldn’t figure out Julia Ostapenko. She too had more than a little petulance to her as she pouted through the last few games. She lost.

Then it happened to Taylor Fritz in the quarters, as he struggled to get much of anything by Lorenzo Musetti.¹ He won the first set, and almost stole the second. But you know what happened? He lost.

You may sense a theme emerging here.

Look — I was never a good tennis player, but since I used to be one, take it from me: a staggering proportion of tennis players are total head cases. It’s not a sport for the faint of mind, and yet, it sort of is. Andrey Rublev, anyone? John McEnroe? Something about being out there all by yourself with nowhere to hide, your own fiercest critic as the pressure builds, allows for some truly epic self-inflicted freakouts.

It’s an unfortunate part of the game. Those that overcome it tend to succeed, and that’s not exactly a novel conclusion. There’s a rather famous book about that.

I think it would also be wildly overstating things to suggest that this rule change, still fairly new, is structurally responsible for mental weakness in today’s young players. We see ready-made counterexamples in the best of the sport right now, many of whom are in their early 20s.

The question I would raise is whether this rule change is good or bad for the game. Right here, right now? I’m gonna go with bad. I wouldn’t call for re-banning it, based on the rationale above. It’s going to happen regardless. But uh… maybe it should be happening less.

I like Daniil Medvedev’s attitude on this, which he shared in 2022. He wasn’t up to Carlos Alcaraz’s level at this tournament, because no one was once he locked in, but the Octopus is right about this.

“I was never against coaching but I know I’m not really going to use it with my coach because we know how we work together.”

That seems like the right approach. It’s there, but you shouldn’t be reliant on it. Not if you’re planning on winning, that is.

Also, This

🎾 Carlos Alcaraz dismantled Djokovic in that final. Totally wrecked. Djoker doesn’t typically lose like that, and he is a diminished version of himself at this age, but it still underlines just how good Alcaraz is when he’s at his best and limiting mistakes. He has every ingredient to be an all-time player, and what may be the biggest surprise emerging about his game is that clay doesn’t even look to be his best surface. Might be grass, folks. This guy’s gonna be around for a while.

⚾ I missed the entirety of the All-Star Game on vacation and I’m pretty okay with that. I did go back and hear the anthem, though, so don’t worry. I checked in on the big developments. How about this Skenes guy though, eh?

🌲 I have had occasion on this trip to see the rooting interests of two PNW fan bases up close and personal. Two observations: people in Oregon love LaMarcus Aldridge, and people in Washington love the neon green Seahawks fit. And I’d just like to say that I agree on both counts.

1. And by the way? What an incredible generation of Italian tennis talent coming up right now. You’ve got Sinner, you’ve got Musetti, and you’ve got Jasmine Paolini on the women’s draw who aaaalmost pulled it off in the final herself. Good stuff from the boot.