Telling Us Something We Don't Know

Which moment in a tennis match makes you turn the volume up on your TV set and concentrate your full attention? Is it when a player serves for a set? Or when one of them reaches match point? Or when a tiebreaker begins? Those times obviously call for focus, but if you’re like me, you make the sound loudest for an occasion that didn’t even exist in tennis until eight years ago: the on-court coaching visit.

On Friday, I rushed for the remote and hit the volume button when Garbiñe Muguruza called for her coach, Sam Sumyk, during her quarterfinal match against Petra Kvitova in Stuttgart. This was must-listen TV. Earlier this year in Doha, Sumyk and Muguruza had engaged in one of the most note-worthy, and cringe-worthy, coach-player exchanges since the WTA began allowing on-court visits in 2008. When Sumyk tried to encourage a struggling Muguruza, she snapped, “Tell me something I don’t know.”

The fact that her words were heard around the world must have been especially mortifying for Sumyk, who has protested the idea of allowing these ostensibly private conversations to be broadcast publicly; in the past, has even muted his microphone. But in Stuttgart, his voice was clear, and his conversation with Muguruza was snark-free. He told her not to “fear” Kvitova’s serve, to keep the ball out of the middle of the court, to send her second serve down the T more often, to try to match the Czech’s pace from the baseline, and to “play every point.”

Like most on-court coaching advice, this litany of suggestions helped, until it didn’t. Immediately after Sumyk’s visit at 3-2 in the second, Muguruza broke Kvitova at love and went on to win the set. But she ended up losing the third 6-0. Instruction, even when it comes in the middle of a match, only goes so far in tennis; the player still has to hit the shots.

Sumyk, of course, isn’t the only skeptic when it comes to on-court coaching. Since its inception, the WTA’s rule has been adamantly opposed by tennis purists. To them, the beauty of this individual sport is watching the players solve, or fail to solve, their own problems. (Never mind that the players are free to get advice from their coaches the other 22 hours a day, right up until the minute the match begins.) Others think it makes the women look “weak,” as if they need more help than the men, who aren’t allowed to call anyone on court. (Never mind that many of the men get advice from their support teams in the bleachers, or that nobody has ever called Steph Curry or Tom Brady weak for running a play called by their coaches.)

To me, the WTA’s rule goes just far enough, but not too far. Coaches can be called out once a set. This is better than having them sit on the sidelines and bark a constant stream of suggestions; that really would make tennis look like a team sport. Coaches also can’t come out during the Grand Slams; keeping the majors old-school makes sense. Darren Cahill has said that he feels “iffy” about on-court coaching, because the women can become over-reliant on it. He would know; he regularly tries to help his charge, Simona Halep. But whether or not a player is relying on her coach too much seems like a decision that can be made by the player herself. Angelique Kerber, who talks often to her coach, Torben Beltz, during WTA events, had no trouble figuring out how to win the Australian Open without him.

What’s best about on-court coaching from a fan’s perspective is exactly what Sumyk dislikes most: It’s a small window into a player’s life and work that we normally don’t get to open. After hearing TV commentators speculate about the tactics the players are using, we hear the real thing from their coaches. After seeing the players give canned answers at press conferences, we see what their personalities are like when they interact with someone they know well. We learn from what we watch, even if we're not sure we should be watching it. Probably the biggest lesson is that no two coach-player relationships are alike.

We’ve seen how easy the give-and-take was between Petra Kvitova and her former coach, David Kotzya; today in Stuttgart, Kvitova seemed to have the same vibe with her new mentor, Frantisek Cermak. On the other hand, we’ve seen the one-way traffic that exists between Caroline Wozniacki and her father, Piotr; he talks, and she stares. (Now that Kotzya is coaching Wozniacki, it will be interesting to see their dynamic.) We’ve seen Jelena Jankovic moan to her coach about the heat; Maria Sharapova express the uncertainty she normally hides; Kerber and Beltz have spirited exchanges; CoCo Vandeweghe tell her coach she can hardly hit the broad side of a barn; and, best of all this year, Sloane Stephens and her coach, Kamau Murray, patiently work their way to three WTA titles.

The exchanges aren’t always pretty or productive. The coaches can seem domineering, and they can throw too much advice at their players at once; for their part, the players can seem unduly skeptical and sarcastic in response. And you have to wonder why a player would call her coach out when she’s just cruised through a set.

But that’s the human side of tennis, and these visits give us a chance to see each player’s strengths and flaws a little more clearly. They tell us, as Muguruza might say, something we don’t know.