Tennis players and coaches have one of sports’ most complex relationships. Some go alone

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — In the middle of a chastening 6-1, 6-1 defeat to Amanda Anisimova in the California desert, Emma Raducanu walked over to her coaching box in search of guidance. Raducanu has declared a desire to play a more front-foot, aggressive style, the one that she used to win the 2021 U.S. Open as qualifier, but Anisimova overwhelmed her in a 52-minute demolition.

“I have to, you know, look at what I achieved in the last nine days of practice when I arrived here,” Raducanu said of the match, which she said showed how much of a transition becoming more aggressive against the top players will require, on the practice court as much as the match one.

On the eve of the BNP Paribas Open, Raducanu, who is working Mark Petchey as an ad-hoc coach during the tournament in Indian Wells, Calif., said during an interview that she thinks she will go through periods of her career with no coach at all, because finding the right fit at the right time is not straightforward.

Top players using traveling coaches only became commonplace in the 1970s, and the commitment is such that the people in demand among top players — often so-called super coaches who had successful careers of their own — are not always willing to dedicate the time along with their other commitments.

The relationship between tennis players and their coaches is also one of the most complex in sports. The player is the employer, not the employee; players and coaches who travel full time will spend 10 months or more together, but the player is left to their own devices on the court when it matters most — even though tennis has embraced on-court coaching in recent years.

Some coaching partnerships last decades, and others weeks. Most coaches are hired like any employee, but some are mothers or fathers, or brothers or sisters. Others are romantic partners; some relationships become inappropriate or abusive. And for a tennis player, the decision on who they choose is part of just one shot at a dream, while coaches may help steward the dreams of myriad players.

Juan Carlos Ferrero, who split with seven-time Grand Slam champion Carlos Alcaraz at the end of last season, has described the emotional impact of parting with a player he coached to the pinnacle of the sport as one of hurt and emotion, akin to a breakup; when a partnership does not work, the jettisoning can be brutal and swift, on either side.

Working without one can be appealing to players for many reasons, and Raducanu’s belief in going her own way has precedent across tennis history.

Twenty-time major champion Roger Federer is often cited as someone who thrived solo. At the end of 2003, Federer was 22. He had won his first Grand Slam title that year, at Wimbledon. Then he split with Peter Lundgren, his coach of three years, and the following year won three majors without a coach, claiming the world No. 1 ranking for the first time.

Federer had to defend his decision ahead of the 2004 Australian Open, and when he won it, he said in a news conference: “For me at that moment, it was very difficult to take that decision. But looking back … I wouldn’t say it was the right one, but it was an important one, because I want to improve.”

He then hired Tony Roche to work with him on a limited basis the following year, before working with Severin Luthi on a similar basis a couple of years later. Federer did not employ another full-time coach until he hired Paul Annacone, formerly coach of Pete Sampras, in 2010.

Federer broke Sampras’ record of 14 major titles during his time without a formal coach, and Annacone said that Federer’s trust in other parts of his entourage was key to that success.

“He had had a very stable relationship with Pierre Paganini,” (Federer’s fitness trainer) Annacone said.

“He was pretty clear on what he wanted to do and needed to do. And I think people are different — not better or worse, just different.”

Federer’s great rival, Novak Djokovic, has shifted his approach to coaching throughout his career.

Djokovic worked with Marián Vajda from 2005 to 2022, with a short break between 2017 and 2018, and had lengthy spells with people in the super coach mould: Boris Becker and Goran Ivanišević.

After splitting with Ivanišević two years ago, Djokovic considered going solo, and said in a news conference in April 2024 that: “I am considering whether I should or shouldn’t have the coach.

“It’s not like I think I don’t need a coach at all. I think there’s always value in having that quality team. … But I think I’m in the stage of my career where I can afford to maybe think having no coach is also an option.”

Djokovic chose to retain Boris Bošnjaković, a longtime assistant coach and analyst, rather than making a formal appointment. Bošnjaković supported Andy Murray during his brief spell in the 24-time Grand Slam champion’s box last year and, Djokovic said Saturday during a news conference at Indian Wells, is currently “filling in the role of the tennis coach.”

“But I don’t have anyone who I can call my primary tennis coach at the moment, and I’m OK with that,” he said.

“I feel I have what I need. I don’t think that right now I’m ready to, again, at this stage of my career, bring somebody completely new and go through the same process of getting to know each other.

“That doesn’t mean that I’m not trying to improve my game or innovate and look for ways to get better on and off the court.

“In the offseason I brought different people in, and spent some weeks analyzing, deconstructing and reconstructing my game in a sense.”

Djokovic cited his run to the final of this year’s Australian Open, in which he beat Jannik Sinner for the first time in six meetings, as evidence of his approach working.

For Raducanu, key to the decision on when to have a coach is her understanding and intuition for her own tennis. The 23-year-old split with former coach Francisco Roig after expressing a desire to reclaim her tennis identity and recenter what she thinks her on-court style should be. This is common among players who have spent time going it alone, who believe that doing so has allowed them to understand themselves better.

“I felt it helped me to reconnect a little bit with myself,” Gaël Monfils, the mercurial Frenchman who will retire at the end of the season, said during a news conference Friday.

“A lot of people wanted me to do stuff that I don’t really see in my game. I (wanted to) reinforce my belief, my own strategy for my identity on the court, because most of the time coaches want to impose a little bit of identity.”

Eugenie Bouchard, a former Wimbledon finalist and world No. 5, said she got that security in her own game from a hybrid setup early in her career. Her main coach at the time, Nick Saviano, could not travel with her full-time, because he ran an academy in Florida.

“I was OK with that, because it gives you a chance to learn on your own and be a little more independent,” Bouchard said during an interview Friday at Indian Wells, where she is working as a Tennis Channel analyst.

“I would obviously talk to him on the phone and he’d watch my matches, but it also allowed me to direct my career and make decisions the way I want to,” she said.

“Seeing the same person week in, week out is tough.” Bouchard added, with a smile: “Humans get annoying.”

The push-pull dynamic in coaching extends to what players fundamentally think about it, and those thoughts can shift as their careers ebb and flow.

Frances Tiafoe, who has had spells without a coach, now feels like he benefits from having someone to push him, rather than traveling with friends.

“You go through different stages,” he said during a news conference Friday.

“There was a time when I was (younger) where I didn’t want it. But sometimes you have to look in the mirror and be like: ‘What do you actually really need, how much (do) you actually want (it)’?

“I was a really selective competitor for a long time. It’s easier with someone, whatever, a homey, (to say) ‘I don’t feel it.’ They’re not going to push you because they’re your homey.

“If you have a coach that’s stern and on you, man, you’re like, ‘I’ve got to wake up, and I gotta do it. You got your dos and don’ts a little bit.’”

One criticism of the shift toward formal on-court coaching in tennis has been the alleged elimination of a player’s need to solve their way out of difficult situations on their own. Annacone said that this perception is a misconstruing of the coach’s role.

“Our job isn’t to give players solutions while they’re playing. Our job is to give them all the tools so that they can figure out the solutions when they’re playing,” Annacone, who is part of Taylor Fritz’s team alongside lead coach Michael Russell, said.

“My job is give Taylor everything he needs so that in the heat of the moment he can soar through it. Not so that I can sit here and tell him what to do.”

Rennae Stubbs, the six-time doubles and mixed doubles Grand Slam champion who has coached Serena Williams, Sam Stosur, Bouchard and Karolína Plíšková, said in a recent phone interview that “high-level coaching is about how you communicate to your player, and understanding their human issues.”

Stubbs, who is now a commentator and analyst, finds herself frustrated by some player-coach relationships. “It drives me crazy when I see coaches out on the court and their players are doing the shot incorrectly and they do it 10 times but don’t get told, ‘That’s not right,'” she said.

She cited two-time Grand Slam champion Coco Gauff’s serve and forehand as shots requiring reworking, something of which Gauff is deeply aware.

“I feel like with all the changes I’m making in my game, I think I would get pretty lost without a coach,” Gauff, who has gone through some coaching turbulence in matches, said during a news conference Friday.

“There are tournaments where I maybe don’t listen to my coach that much at all, so maybe it is self-coach.

“I feel like it’s always good to have some direction. The team I have now, they don’t over-coach. They let me think it through. Today I didn’t look at my box for advice once. That’s how I usually prefer it.”

During a defeat to Emma Navarro at Wimbledon two years ago, Gauff told her team to tell her something, and said afterward that she did not think “we were all in sync.” She parted with then-coach Brad Gilbert a couple of months later.

Gauff’s main coaches are now longtime team member Jean-Christophe Faurel and biomechanics expert Gavin MacMillan, who she brought on to remodel her serve. Last month, after hitting a double fault during a semifinal defeat to Elina Svitolina at the Dubai Tennis Championships, she appeared to say to MacMillan: “I’ve been doing everything you’ve wanted for the last six months, and it’s not getting any better.”

Given their intertwining, the most striking thing about the way players and coaches think about each other is how much those thoughts can change over time.

“I do think having someone is important — whether they’re the head coach or the hitting partner or even fitness trainer — just for that moral support,” Bouchard said.

“It’s such a tough life and so to really do it alone is brutal. I would not want to do it if I had to it completely alone. But having the autonomy and the space to do your own thing and decide where your game’s going, which feels like Emma (Raducanu) is kind of alluding to … I do understand that, because at the end of the day it’s you on the court, right?

“And it’s your one chance for your career. My mom would always say this: ‘A coach has 10 chances at having a career. They can coach 10 different players over 30 years.’

“We have one short window, 10 years or 15 years, and that’s it. So you have to realize the weight of your decisions.”

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