Tennis Mailbag: Revisiting Coach of the Year

Some housekeeping:

• This will do it for 2024. Happy holidays, everyone and best for the new year. As ever, tennis surges on, sometimes for the right reasons, and sometimes in spite of itself. The sport looks markedly different than it did a year ago. But we’re going to be O.K. here, folks.

• And as ever, if you get half as much enjoyment from reading this column as I do writing it, we’re all doing O.K. here.

• Matt Van Tuinen, a longtime and universally well-liked fixture in the Kingdom of Tennis, posted this. Keep him in your thoughts. And we’ll keep you posted on relevant news going forward.

• We had a great time doing this week’s Served podcast from the Bahamas. Thanks to the Baha Mar for the hospitality. Thanks to John McEnroe, who put down his racket and guitar and was our guest. And it was a pleasure meeting so many of you.

Onward …

Jon, I disagree with you about Coach of the Year. It happens all the time the Coach of the Year in a sport is not the coach of the championship team.

Jess E.

• Backstory: I saw Novak Djokovic in Serbia a year ago and he was displeased that his coach at the time, Goran Ivanišević, was not named the ATP’s Coach of the Year. Here was Djokovic, finishing No. 1 and coming within a few points of winning the Grand Slam. He was the clear-cut MVP. How could another player’s coach have had a better year?

I’ve long thought similarly. Especially in an individual sport—one that forbade actual coaching during matches—shouldn’t we at least proceed on the assumption that the top coach is the one employed by the top player?

I think you guys talked me out of this. There were enough thoughtful responses—including cases made by top players and coaches—to suggest that this isn’t necessarily so. A coach of a player like Jasmine Paolini who plays a critical role in a good-to-great jump is a worthy winner. So apologies to Renzo Furlan. Well deserved.

I had a good time at the Charlotte Invitational Tennis Exhibition. Madison Keys and Sloane Stephens played some solid tennis, especially considering Keys is recently married and Stephens mentioned she had not played a match in a while. [Frances] Tiafoe and [Carlos] Alcaraz are more outgoing and try to be "entertaining" also with things like underhand serve by Tiafoe and behind the back between the legs shot by Alcaraz. They also got a few local celebrities (former and current Panther) players to get out and hit a couple of shots. [By the way], Panther QB Andy Dalton had good tennis form. Nice touch by Tiafoe to wear a Charlotte Hornets jersey for the match.

While the event did not sell out the arena, it still had a crowd of a little over 16,000. My question is what do cities like Charlotte have to do to possibly get ATP or WTA tournaments into the city? Does having an event like this help show there is tennis interest in the city? What determines whether a possible tournament is a "250" or "500" event?

Bob Diepold, Charlotte NC

• Sure. Remember: Charlotte came very close to taking over as the host city of the Cincinnati event. (I’m told that were it not for some dubious political games and a reluctance for some legislators to deliver a win to a rival who was supporting the funding, this would have happened.)

But, yes, one hopes both tours see this groundswell of support in Charlotte.

How does an event become an event? First, a promoter or group demonstrates that they have funding. Depending on how much money they commit—most obviously prize money, but also funds toward facilities and promotion—the event is assigned a tier value. With the tour’s blessing, the promoter either gets an event or, more likely these days, buys an existing sanction (and week on the calendar) and relocates it.

Sidebar: For all its problematic issues, this is one of the virtues of tennis’s business model. It can expand and contract, accordion-style to accommodate changes in the marketplace and shifts in supply and demand. There’s a surge of interest in Italy? We can add events there and reward the country with both the ATP Finals and the Davis Cup. There’s a popular major champion or Olympic gold medalist from China? Tennis can take advantage. A market like Charlotte reveals itself to show an interest in tennis? Tennis can deliver.

Jon, I saw the announcement that the Big Ten will hold its [women’s] conference championships in Ojai. I am from California and love Ojai and applaud this. But how will it work for schools in places like Iowa City and State College, PA to come all the way out here for a conference championship?

Anon

• Here’s the announcement. I would be remiss not to note that the great Ted Robinson and I recently wrote a piece in Sports Illustrated about the decline of the Pac-12 that outlined much of this. Scattered points:

A) Trivia: Then-Big Ten commissioner, Kevin Warren was actually at Wimbledon as a fan when he negotiated the inclusion of USC and UCLA, which essentially set the stage for all of this.

B) Conference realignment is easy for football. Most football programs only play five or six road games each season. The teams fly privately. The games are usually on Saturday so—even if you are flying cross-country—it’s a weekend trip. When, say, Washington has a cross-country meet or soccer game or tennis match on a Tuesday in Indiana, it’s more problematic.

c) College sports have turned into a free market. For some tennis recruits, the opportunity to play in a nationwide conference and compete at holy sites like Ojai is of appeal. To some, the notion of taking multiple planes and crossing multiple time zones to play a match is a turnoff.

A case can be made for Agassi's inclusion in the list of best men's forehands. — A case can be made for Agassi's inclusion on the list of best men's forehands in tennis.

I cringe every time a columnist publishes a Best Of list and then the peanut gallery erupts with anguished cries of "What about [this]!" But now, for the first time in my life, here I go. In your top five forehands and the various honorable mentions that came after, I'm really surprised that nobody thinks Andre Agassi is even in the conversation. Roger Federer had the most elegant game I've ever seen and probably the greatest forehand. But whenever I played tennis, the image in my head that I tried to emulate was always Andre Agassi.

Rich, New York City

• We should have just altered the reader question and made it top 10. Fair point on Agassi. Would you take his forehand over Federer? It’s situational. No stroke exists in a vacuum. Federer’s serve-plus-forehand one-two punch was often devastating, a piston driving his entire game. As a function of returning, pure ball striking and tone-setting precision, maybe you go with Agassi? It’s a good question for me to ask Andy Roddick who, of course, faced both.

"Your overall point is well-taken. There’s no good reason there are not more female coaches. As long as we are here: Why are there not more female agents? Finding endorsement opportunities and revenue streams … spotting and mining promising talent? .... managing a career … helping with scheduling, personal moves and travel details? Stop me when I get to a task that is gender-specific …"

Hi Jon. In answer to the above. I don't know if this qualifies as a good reason but the reason is really simple: CHILDREN

Victor K.

• Without turning this into a gender studies seminar … a quick mental inventory suggests that a good many male sports agents have children. Somehow they have managed the balance. With the help of agencies making necessary accommodations, surely female counterparts can make this work, too.

Jon:
Thanks for the recommendation of The Racket by Conor Niland in your last mailbag (or maybe the one before last).
I have read about 1/3 of the book so far and am really enjoying it and finding it so interesting. This is the book I have been waiting for—one that explains what life is like growing up a very young tennis star but then struggling through the loneliness of the Futures and Challengers tours in a quest to get to the point where you can even just play in the qualifiers on the ATP tour, let alone an ATP match or at a major. Someone who is the 300th or 200th best at almost anything in the world should not have to struggle as much as these players do. Niland's description of his journey adds to the respect I already had for these players outside the top 100.

While Andy Roddick provides great insight on life at or near the top (and on many other topics, as do you), I think having Conor Niland on the Served podcast would be very interesting and informative for tennis fans, who really don't know that much about the life of players outside the top 100.
Thanks again. Love all your work.

Andy

• Thanks. In the elaborate theater of sports, there is a lot to learn from excellence. There can also be just as much to learn—and often more —from the others in the arena.