Special from Zoo Tennis

All levels of tennis deal with the sport’s myriad variables from one tournament to the next: court surfaces and speeds, balls, scoring formats, weather.

Now, another wrinkle has been added in the realm of coaching, with top American juniors and their coaches navigating three distinct varieties. The United States Tennis Association has long permitted coaching before a third set; the four junior slams are now part of a trial that allows coaching based on the ATP and WTA Tours’ model; no coaching of any kind is permissible on the International Tennis Federation Junior Circuit.

The coaching trials at the 2023 junior slams, which are expected to extend through 2024, correspond to the current ATP/WTA coaching rules. Brief interactions from a designated player box by an accredited person are allowed, but no conversations can take place between coach and player except during an opponent’s bathroom break or medical timeout; gestures are acceptable when a player is on the opposite end of the court from the box.

“I think they’ve done it in a really smart way, where it’s not too overpowering, not too heavily involved,” said Morgan Phillips, an LTA coach who works with 2023 Wimbledon boys champion Henry Searle of Great Britain. “I really like the system of being able to coach. I always like to be involved in the match in a good way, as much as possible. In an individual sport, there’s so much work that goes in with the coaching team before and then it doesn’t feel right sometimes when you can’t be involved in the actual match.”

Top American junior Cooper Williams, now a freshman at Harvard, appreciated the tips he received from former USTA National Coach Brian Baker at this summer’s junior slams.

“It’s definitely helpful,” said Williams, who is now experiencing a fourth variant, with unlimited coaching interactions allowed in college. “We’re not talking extensively, but every now and then it would be, ‘play aggressive here, step forward on some second serve returns, hit a few body serves, slice a little more’, stuff like that.”

Stanford freshman Kyle Kang also valued the adjustments suggested to him while he was competing.

“Little things, here and there on certain shots, covering certain serves that I haven’t been covering too well, mixing up my serve spots when needed, so I don’t get stuck on one particular serve,” Kang said. “Just giving me energy on break points, being there in the corner.”

Not all juniors want the input of a coach during the match however.

“I prefer being by myself,” said Alex Razeghi, No. 23 in the ITF junior rankings. “I’ve always been a guy to figure it out. I don’t really like someone talking as I play. It’s obviously good information, but honestly I’d just rather do it myself. No matter what the rules are, no one talks to me. They know.”

Although they now have more opportunities to be actively involved in a match, coaches acknowledge ambivalence about ending the sport’s long and unique history of not permitting their intervention.

“I’m getting older and thinking more that you should figure this out on your own,” said USTA Lead National Men’s Coach Sylvain Guichard, who this year traveled to junior slams to assist in coaching the American boys. “It’s tennis, that’s the way it is. It’s not about size, but skills, temperament. You figure things out, and you win, and for me, that’s the beauty of the sport. I’m not against it, I would prefer we don’t have it, but I still have an open mind; I understand sport has to evolve in ways we don’t always like necessarily.”

The trend toward allowing coaching at all levels of the sport is accelerating, with the ITF currently conducting coaching trials at many of its tournaments on the men’s and women’s circuits this fall. Yet many juniors, and their coaches, don’t see it as a major departure from what they’ve witnessed throughout their careers.

“I think it was going on anyway, a lot of the time, especially at the levels where we’ve been competing at most often, Futures, ITF Junior level,” said James Allemby, a Rafael Nadal Academy coach who works with ITF junior No. 4 Yaroslav Demin. “It’s obviously tougher to monitor, you don’t have line judges who are closer by, you’ve just got a chair, and in qualies, you have no chair. So in qualies it’s pretty much a jungle in terms of coaching, you can say whatever you like.”

American Alex Frusina, who has traveled extensively on the ITF Junior Circuit and is now No. 20 in the rankings, believes the rules against coaching are viewed differently elsewhere.

“I think when you do travel outside of the country, play junior events in other parts of the world, it tends to happen anyway,” Frusina said. “So I think everyone being more open to it is just better, so everyone has the same advantage.”

Maya Joint of Australia said she is not bothered by her opponents receiving impermissible coaching at ITF junior events, but would prefer to see the practice standardized and out in the open.

“If the rules were all the same, it would definitely be smarter,” said Joint, No. 29 in the ITF junior rankings. “As for the no coaching rule, most people have their own signals, little things that they do anyway. I think that’s probably happening, and if not, then great. But I also think it’s good if players have to figure it out for themselves, what they need to do, what they need to fix.”

USTA Women’s National coach Tom Gutteridge believes it is important to know beforehand how a player will react to in-match coaching.

“Some can get a little bit overwhelmed with too much coaching, so if you think there’s something glaring, you might point it out. But other than that, you might just go with some positivity and try to keep their energy high,” said Gutteridge, who was involved in the more extensive on-court coaching previously allowed on the WTA Tour when he worked with Allison Riske. “Others might look for more coaching. Personally, in the juniors at least, I prefer not to hold their hand too much throughout the match. I would prefer that they figure it out. I think it does a little disservice to the player if we’re giving them too much information.”

“You don’t want to force the tactical changes, you want them to understand,” Gutteridge continued. “They’re out there, they could be incredibly nervous, incredibly tight, and you’re asking them to do something that, realistically, in that situation, they’re probably not going to be able to do.”

Although no communication is allowed during play, few other regulations exist in the USTA’s 10-minute break between full second and third sets or a three-minute break prior to playing a match tiebreaker in lieu of a third set. Players are free to call a coach if one is not traveling with them, or talk in person with their parents or coach, although the value of those conversations is open to debate.

“My record during that coaching is very bad,” said Guichard, who coached at Mississippi State and then privately before joining the USTA. “When I was in Chicago, I went to (USTA) sectionals, nationals, and when they split sets, I would talk to them saying, ‘you’ve got to do this, this and that,’ and it didn’t change anything. What does it say about my coaching? I don’t know, I’ll let you be the judge.”

Guichard downplays the notion that on-court coaching will result in dramatic changes in the outcomes of matches.

“In a lot of this, coaches and parents feel like they know what to say,” Guichard said. “I’ve changed one match in my life. I turned it around for [former WTA player] Jamie Hampton at Indian Wells; that’s the only time, and that was going out on the court.”

Coach Bryan Smith recalled several instances when he helped guide a player to victory after one of the USTA’s 10-minute rest periods, but he too would prefer players acquire the skills to make those adjustments themselves.

“I’m more about the learning aspect of it,” said Smith, who has coached ATP doubles star Rajeev Ram for decades and has worked with Stanford sophomore Nishesh Basavareddy throughout his junior career. “You go out there and you try to figure things out. I think that serves players better in the long run and I think that’s a great life lesson.”

Smith also sees the trend to more coaching tilting the playing field for those who, through financial circumstances or geographical luck, have access to good coaching.

“There’s already a huge advantage to have better coaching, and if you add on-court coaching to the mix, you’re making it even more of a disadvantage to those who don’t have that,” Smith said. “But I think [those making the rule changes] think there are going to be less complaints.”

Gutteridge believes on-court coaching can benefit both players and coaches, with the latter needing to balance their knowledge with the needs of their players.

“You have to know your player, know what’s realistically is in their comfort zone and try to latch on the things that you think will make the biggest difference at the right time,” he said. “It’s fun for a coach, it’s a different way. If you stay silent, it really is down to the player, which is also a great thing. But I think people that are against it, who want the one-on-one combat, it’s never going to be that again.”

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About Colette Lewis

Colette Lewis
has covered topflight U.S. and international junior
events as a freelance journalist for over a decade.
Her work has appeared in Tennis magazine, the Tennis
Championships magazine and the US Open program. Lewis is active on
Twitter,
and she writes a weekly column right here at TennisRecruiting.net.
She was named
Junior Tennis Champion
for 2016 by Tennis Industry Magazine.

Lewis, based out of Kalamazoo, Michigan, has seen every National
Championship final played since 1977, and her work on the
tournament’s ustaboys.com website
led her to establish
ZooTennis,
where she comments on junior and college tennis daily.