This Australian Open, watch out for the coaching subplots

Mumbai: Coaching changes for top women players Gauff, Swiatek, and Rybakina add intrigue ahead of the Australian Open, impacting their game strategies.

Mumbai: As far as coaching changes go, Andy Murray blending into Team Novak takes the cake, and it whipped up lots of chatter heading into the new tennis season. Look through the other side, though, and three of the top six women players will have new faces in the coaches’ box at the Australian Open beginning Sunday.

USA's Coco Gauff is now working with coach Matt Daly. (AFP)

World No.2 Iga Swiatek, third-ranked Coco Gauff and No. 6 Elena Rybakina pressing the button for a big coaching shake-up over the last few months is bound to brighten the spotlight on them and add a layer of intrigue to the women’s draw.

The three share seven Slams between them and are the only players in the WTA top nine apart from world No.1 Aryna Sabalenka to know the feel of winning Majors. Contrasting circumstances and flips in form through 2024 compelled them to move out of their comfort zone. Rybakina’s case is much more dramatic, and almost fittingly involves a Goran Ivanisevic entry, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

Let’s talk Coco first. Not just because she appears to be the closest challenger to two-time defending champion Sabalenka in Melbourne, but she’s also been the form player coming in. Much of that is down to her coaching change.

The American, then in her teens, had turned the toast of her country when she captured the 2023 US Open. It all went pear-shaped after that for Gauff, who only managed one WTA 250 title between then and her return to New York for the title defence.

A fourth-round defeat there to compatriot Emma Navarro evidently rattled Gauff. She split with Brad Gilbert after a little over a year and brought in the little-known Matt Daly for a reset. And off they went, tasting immediate success at the WTA China Open. Gauff kicked on to become last year’s WTA Finals champion and lead USA all the way at the 2025 United Cup, where she brushed aside Swiatek.

Some changes, like to her grip and serve, have been subtle. The big shift has been in her approach. Gauff’s game was built around unrelenting defence, which she is now brave enough to mix it up with more proactive attacks.

“Before, I feel like I won a lot of matches just being able to get a lot of balls back. I realised that’s not the way to play if I want to have more success on the tour because girls are hitting harder and harder every day (and) being more aggressive,” Gauff said.

If the US Open was Gauff’s trigger for a revamp, it was the Paris Olympics for Swiatek. The runaway world No.1 and favourite for gold was stunned in the semi-final. That stung, and started a downward spiral for the rest of the season in which Sabalenka dethroned her.

While Gauff was quick with her shuffle, the Pole took plenty of time to zero down on replacing her long-time coach Tomasz Wiktorowski. In came Wim Fissette, whose body of coaching work includes a few former world No.1s in Naomi Osaka, Victoria Azarenka and Simona Halep, among others. Their association has fetched mixed results so far, but it’s clear Swiatek realised she had to do something different despite being top ranked for a large part of 2024.

“If you’re not going to evolve in tennis, the other girls are going to come after you and suddenly you’ll wake up as being, I don’t know, outside of the top 50 or something,” Swiatek told fellow pro Caroline Garcia in her Tennis Insider Club podcast.

Rybakina is still very much in the top 50 (6th, in fact) despite playing just 15 tournaments last year. Injuries and illness kept the 2022 Wimbledon champion more off the court than on it, and even there she seemed a shadow of herself. And her coaching situation continues to be grey.

Rybakina split with her long-time coach Stefano Vukov days before the US Open, before roping in Ivanisevic — the maverick former Wimbledon champion who most recently coached Novak Djokovic — for this season. This month, Rybakina announced Vukov would re-join her team, only for the WTA to reveal that Vukov was provisionally suspended pending investigation for a potential breach of conduct. Murmurs about Rybakina and Vukov’s troubled working relationship had been swirling around last year, although the former maintains he “never mistreated” her.

In all this, coach Ivanisevic is reportedly playing wait and watch. And watch we shall too, in what the coaching shake-ups brings to these top contenders in Australia.

EOM