The coach's “other'' theory is a truism in the sports world.
There are so-called “player's coaches,'' coaches who specialize in interacting with athletes and creating an easy-going atmosphere, and if the team is losing more than winning, a disciplined person can take their place. It happens often. Unsuccessful, reserved coaches are replaced by highly motivated, high-energy, emotional types. Bookish types who focus on the X's and O's return when the act wears off.
Tennis players are no exception, with Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka being the latest to be infected. They competed in Beijing on Tuesday in the penultimate WTA 1000 tournament of the year.
Both players entered this year with high expectations, but were unable to live up to those expectations. After early exits at the US Open, Gauff losing in the fourth round and Osaka losing in the second round, both announced coaching changes.
Gauff ousted Brad Gilbert, one of the biggest names in the sport. He is an ESPN commentator, former coach of Andy Roddick and Andre Agassi, and a proponent of the Grand Unified Theory of Tennis, also known as Winning Ugly. Gauff then brought in Matt Daly, a little-known grip specialist, to work with Jean-Christophe Faurel, a low-profile French coach who had worked with Gauff on and off since she was 14 years old. .
Mr. Forel most recently returned to Mr. Gauff's inner circle last spring and worked with Mr. Gilbert. Gilbert and Gauff barely knew each other when Gilbert hired Gilbert in the summer of 2023. A few weeks later, she became the US Open champion.
Meanwhile, Osaka pivoted away from Wim Fiset, the quiet and intelligent Belgian who helped her win two Grand Slam titles in 2020 and 2021. Fiset will probably be fine without appearing on TV. Osaka's new coach is Patrick Mouratoglou, Serena Williams' former coach. With a talent for motivation and self-promotion, he runs a brand empire that includes an academy in the south of France, as well as the freewheeling Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS) tennis exhibition event and coaching camps at luxury resorts. .
Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka changed coaches, but it was from a different tennis perspective. (Yanshan Zhang/Getty Images)
He was too famous for Osaka. Mouratoglou's history with Williams and his presence at the match made her want to avoid him.
“His personality is huge,” Osaka said at a press conference in Beijing. He was such a great player that she doubted his coaching ability. Anyone coaching the best women's players of our time might have relished their role in Williams' success.
“Then I met him and talked to him and worked with him on the court,” she said.
“He's definitely a really good coach.”
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John Kerry, the longtime senator, U.S. secretary of state, and U.S. climate change leader, once defined his philosophy on governance, war, and diplomacy as essentially “when it's wrong, make it right as quickly as possible.” It was summarized as.
Sports aphorists often quote the “first law of holes.” “If you're in a hole, stop digging.”
Both essentially encapsulate Osaka and Gauff's coaching axes. Players usually make these moves after the season is over, rather than with two months left. Gauff and Osaka are riding a whirlwind in Asia, which is especially important for Osaka, who was Japan's torchbearer at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago. After that, there's the WTA Finals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where Gauff could qualify, and the Billie Jean King Cup in Malaga, Spain, where Osaka is scheduled to play.
But by mid-September, they already had all the data they needed to conclude that they were either heading in the wrong direction (Gauff) or stalling (Osaka). .
While Gauff's performances were off the mark — she lost in the fourth round to Emma Navarro at Wimbledon, and Donna Vekic beat her in the third round at the Paris Olympics — the bigger problem was her technique. One of Gilbert's greatest strengths as a coach, his ability to cover weaknesses, was waning.
The better opponent figured out how to counter the looping forehand he introduced to cover her upset on that front. They step on the ball on the rise and receive the ball before it bounces high enough to trap at the back of the court.
During her match against Navarro at Wimbledon, she begged Gilbert to say something, but in that moment she realized she didn't have the tools she needed to escape Navarro.
Then there's her serve. At the US Open, he lost to Navarro in the fourth round, which included 19 double faults.
“I don't want to lose another game like this,” she told reporters after the match.
Gilbert, who has forgotten more about tennis than many people know, will never sell herself as a serve specialist, and someone like Gauff who is at her technical limit is now Not even the kind of coach you need. Even during Gilbert's tenure, Gauff worked with Roddick to fine-tune his serve.
In an interview last week, Gilbert didn't reveal specifics about working with Gauff, but said it was a good experience overall.
He believes that the ultimate parameters of tennis have not changed. Players need to understand their strengths and then what their opponents are good at. They then plan to impose their strengths on the match and nullify their opponent's strengths. but Gilbert, 63, knows the drill well after playing professionally for more than 40 years. Even though competition remains fierce, expectations rise when a player wins one of the Grand Slams. Everyone wants to win, but there are only four major tournaments a year.
There's a little more unpredictability in the women's game, but still “there aren't as many chances,” Gilbert said.
“Each coaching experience is a unique experience and allows you to move on,” he added. “That's a beautiful thing.”
Only 20 years old, Gauff is eager for success, but she's taking the long view. She is playing fall tournaments in Asia as an extension of the preseason, but she is prioritizing improvement over winning and a season-long top-eight finish that would qualify her for the season finale, the Tour Finals. There is.
Coco Gauff's forehand has long been a weakness against top-level opponents. (Yanshan Zhang/Getty Images)
Her team prefers that their coach say little about her. She has noticed that the subtle changes Daly has made are already starting to pay off.
Daley, 45, played at Notre Dame and briefly coached Denis Shapovalov. He is the founder of a company that sells a gadget called GripMD that wraps around the handle of a racket and allows players to use a traditional Continental grip.
Gauff essentially holds the racket under the handle and hits a forehand with a heavy Western grip. Don't expect her to switch to a forehand continental grip right away. That won't work. Her immediate focus is on serve, but It may take some time for dividends to appear on the statistics sheet. She committed six double faults and 27 unforced errors through two sets on Tuesday, which separated her and Osaka before Osaka retired with a lower back injury.
If Gauff is looking at the long term, Osaka wants results now. It wasn't always like this.
She has suffered some tough draws throughout the season, most notably at Roland Garros, where she eliminated Iga Swiatek by one point. At the time, she was introspective and created her own little sayings. “There were no results,” he told reporters. Fissette and Osaka have been keeping a long view of her comeback this season and over the next five years. The motto was to wait for the summer and fall, when tennis would move to the hard courts where Osaka had made her name.
The wait steadily chipped away at Osaka's confidence. After Karolina Muchova defeated her in New York, she told reporters that losing would kill a part of her. That Osaka was not a melancholy and generous Osaka like Paris. Roland Garros was a lifetime ago for her and she believed she could achieve more success on her favorite surface. Muchova made it to the US Open semifinals and was likely one stick volley away from the final, but she did pretty much what Osaka wanted her to do.
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Osaka and the rest of the locker room know she needs to return better, improve her second serve and regain the confidence that has made her an absolute banker in crucial moments. More than anything, that was her superpower, and this year it's all but gone.
That's why she moved to Mouratoglou with two months left until the 2024 season. She is ranked 73rd in the world and is hoping to break into the top 32 to earn a seeding at January's Australian Open.
Her former coach, Fiset, is known as an excellent strategist and tennis technician. Confidence comes from his results in the world. He shares with Mouratoglou the belief in playing offensively and increasing its intensity when it produces results, but he is not a hype man by anyone's definition. Mr. Mouratoglou was able to inspire mail carriers to be passionate about mail delivery.
The China Open will be the first official tournament for Naomi Osaka and Patrick Mouratoglou. (Robert Prange/Getty Images)
When Osaka was planning her return from maternity leave, she considered using Mouratoglou before re-teaming with Fissette. She accompanied the Belgian because of his history of success. If you don't come back, She and Mouratoglou worked together in California after the U.S. Open and then decided to try out for the women's tour together.
“I don't want to have any regrets,'' Osaka added in Beijing last week.
“You need to learn as much as you can at this stage in your career. Patrick seemed like a man with information.”
Osaka got off to a strong start with three consecutive wins, including her first come-from-behind victory in over two years against Yulia Putintseva. However, eNo matter how good a coach is, he can't have much success with injured players.
After shaking hands with Gauff for a set-all, before Gauff carried her bag off the court, Osaka said her back stiffened to the point of stiffness during practice. Although she was able to start, her condition worsened as the match progressed.
“But it's worth it lol,” she wrote in the thread.
That's something Mouratoglou would say.
(Top photo: Yanshan Zhang/Getty Images)
