Coach changes contribute to sport’s unrest
Venus Williams, Halep, Stephens seek new directions.
With eight different women winning the last eight Grand Slam events, women’s tennis has rarely been so unpredictable. The offseason 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 offseason was Venus Williams’ with David Witt, who had been part of her team fulltime 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 rigors 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 your 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 also decided to split with her hitting partner, Jermaine Jenkins.
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 Serena 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 a member of Stephens’ team and still in frequent contact with her, 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 two-time 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.
In the latest round of coaching changes, none of the top women has yet hired a female coach. In fact, the highest-profile coaching job to go to a woman came on the men’s tour, when 32nd-ranked Lucas Pouille hired former world No. 1 Amélie Mauresmo last week.
While Mauresmo previously coached Andy Murray on the men’s tour, several of the male coaches are working in women’s tennis for the first time.
Jim Madrigal, who coached Tennys Sandgren during his unexpectedly strong 2018 season, is one of them after joining Madison Keys’ team.
“I’d be arrogant to think that I know the differences between the two tours — I don’t,” Madrigal said. “What I do know is that I’ll adapt quickly.”
Tennis coaches have become more prominent in recent years as the WTA introduced on-court coaching and scheduled coaches for news conferences at several tournaments.
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 as a qualifier and assured herself a spot in the Australian Open main draw.