Coaching game can be a tough racket
This off-season has seen many top-ranked women replacing their coaches
With eight different women winning the last eight Grand Slam events, women’s tennis has rarely been so unpredictable. The off-season did little to calm the turbulence, with many top players making changes to their coaching arrangements as they prepare for the 2019 season. Top-ranked Simona Halep and Darren Cahill ended their partnership. No. 2 Angelique Kerber is no longer working with Wim Fissette. No. 6 Sloane Stephens is currently “on a break” from her coach Kamau Murray, he said.
The longest coach-player relationship to end in the off-season was Venus Williams’ with David Witt, who had been part of her team full-time for 11 years. After starting as a hitting partner, Witt became a trusted member of the tight-knit Williams team, and took on a larger role as the family patriarch Richard Williams stepped back from the rigours of the tour.
In an interview, Witt called the separation “a total surprise,” saying that he had been planning his travel to Williams’ planned first tournament of the season in Auckland, New Zealand, before she ended the partnership in a phone call last month.
“When it happened, both of us were emotional about it,” he said. “After, you sit there and go: ‘Man, after 11 years, it’s over after a two-minute phone call. Wow. After 11 years.’ Part of you sits there and says that, and the other part says that it was a business decision, which I totally understand, and I respect her decision. I don’t even need to know why; it’s just her decision. It is what it is, and we had a great run, and nothing lasts forever.”
Williams won her most recent Grand Slam singles title at Wimbledon in 2008, but she had a resurgent season in 2017. She reached the final at the Australian Open and Wimbledon, and ended the year with a top-five ranking and as the WTA’s prize money leader. But in 2018, her results dipped significantly: she lost in the first round of the year’s first two Grand Slam events, and in the third round of the next two.
Williams, who turned professional in 1994, is now at 38 in age and ranking, and she has not played a tournament since a lopsided loss to her sister Sere- na at the U.S. Open. Witt said he did not think Venus Williams’ retirement was imminent.
“As far as I’m concerned, and from what she told me, she’s not retiring,” Witt said. “What I’m guessing, with how old she is — obviously she’s not getting any younger or any faster or any of that — maybe she’s planning on playing a limited schedule.”
While Venus Williams decided on a change after a disappointing season, other players made changes despite some of their best results.
Halep, who broke through to claim her long-awaited first major title at the French Open this year, is poised to enter next season without a coach. Cahill said he had ended the partnership “purely for family reasons on my part,” wanting to spend more time with his children.
“I had the dream job and I want to thank her for making it that way,” Cahill wrote on Instagram.
While Murray said he was still amember of Stephens’ team, he will not be with her when the season starts in Australia. In her three years with Murray, Stephens won the 2017 U.S. Open, reached the 2018 French Open final, and achieved her career-best ranking. Fissette coached Kerber through a resurgent year that included a Wimbledon title, but he is now working with twotime Grand Slam champion Victoria Azarenka, now ranked 51st. Fissette, who has had successful-but-brief runs with many players, also coached Azarenka in 2015 and 2016, before she became pregnant and stepped back from the tour. Kerber has hired Rainer Schüttler, the former German player and a runner-up in the 2003 Australian Open men’s event, to succeed Fissette.
Michael Joyce, who was a longtime coach of Maria Sharapova, said the depth of the tour has been the biggest factor in creating the upheaval in women’s tennis.
Joyce has been coaching Canada’s Eugenie Bouchard since her last tournament of 2018, in Luxembourg, where she reached the semifinals and assured herself a spot in the Australian Open main draw.
“I feel like we seem to be clicking pretty well, and have a clear idea of what her game style is,” Joyce said. “She went through a lot of different voices, different coaches, and felt a little confused,” Joyce said.
“You can work with great coaches, but if you keep changing them, you’re going to get a lot of different messages, and it ultimately hurts you a lot.”