Wanted: female coaches

Only three players in the top 50 on the WTA ranking list have a primary coach who is a woman

Despite hints of change — such as Amelie Mauresmo’s recent tour of duty with Andy Murray — female coaches remain exceedingly rare in pro tennis. This is not just true in the men’s game. At the recent WTA Finals in Singapore, not one of the eight singles players in the season-ending event had a female coach. The numbers further down the pecking order are not much better. Only three members of the top 50 in the WTA rankings list a primary coach who is a woman.

“We would clearly love to see some more female coaches join the ranks,” said Steve Simon, chief executive of the WTA Tour.

The issue is long-standing and complex, linked to family commitments, an entrenched male-coaching culture and the practical reality that players end up with male coaches because they prefer male hitting partners — and it is more budget-conscious to hire one person to do both jobs.

But a number of new initiatives, many of them coming from governing bodies, are focused on implementing change.

“I think the biases have been too deeply ingrained in society, so I don’t think it’s been questioned much until now,” said Martin Blackman, general manager for player development at the US Tennis Association. “But I really do think we’re going to see some changes with more female coaches of top-100 players. I think federations are starting to get it.”

Players may be starting to get the message, too.

It starts with emerging talents like Daria Gavrilova, a 22-year-old Australian who has long been coached by Nicole Pratt and has added Biljana Veselinovic to her team, and Ana Konjuh, an 18-year-old from Croatia who reached the quarterfinals of this year’s US Open under her new coach, Jelena Kostanic Tosic, a former top-50 player.
“I think it’s important because men haven’t played the women’s tour,” Konjuh said. “The tennis is different, and Jelena’s been through all that, and she can help me that way. For a men’s coach, he might have watched all that on the side, but it’s not the same as being on the court and playing.”

Could there be a generational shift in attitudes?
Kathy Rinaldi, 49, a former top-10 player from the United States, is one of the most prominent female American coaches. Working at the USTA, she is the lead coach for the women on Team USA, helping young Americans outside the top 100 trying to make the transition to the elite.

“When I first started with the USTA, I was basically the only female coach there,” Rinaldi said. “And when I would go with the youngsters or with the pros to the tournaments, I was one of the only female coaches.

“Now, when I travel whether it’s junior Fed Cup or events for even younger players, you are seeing so many more female coaches, and I also think female coaches are reaching out to other female coaches.”

There is little leverage to impose change on individual players. They are independent contractors who have the right to choose their own private coaches, whatever their gender. National federations — often publicly funded — are a different matter. The USTA, Tennis Australia and Tennis Canada are among those attempting to recruit more female coaches, and the French Tennis Federation has embarked on a formal study of the subject.

In August, before the US Open, Blackman and the USTA invited 40 leading female American coaches at all levels to a two-day symposium in New York. The USTA plans to implement some of the recommendations from that meeting and share the findings on Monday with the participants in a webinar.

“We have a role to play in breaking down barriers and confronting biases that exist in our sport and the coaching community,” Katrina M Adams, the USTA’s chairwoman and president, said in an email.

Blackman, who played tennis at Stanford, said one of the obvious moves was to reach out to American college and professional players and make them more aware of their coaching options at an early stage. The USTA also plans to expand its small fellowship programme for female coaches and make hitting partners available on the road, which could encourage more women to hire what Blackman calls “a female master coach.”

“Given the increase in prize money across the board, I also feel more players will now have the ability to really determine whether it’s the most important thing to have a male coach who can hit,” said Pratt, 43, a former top-40 singles player who retired in 2008. “Because of the money, players will be in a position where they can choose the coach for being a coach, not for being a good hitter.”

Blackman agrees and wants to accelerate the hiring of female coaches in the USTA’s player development programme. But Pratt and others emphasised that change would start with having more female coaches at the introductory levels.

For now, the only members of the WTA’s top 50 who list a primary female coach are Ekaterina Makarova, Jelena Ostapenko and Gavrilova, although Ostapenko recently worked on a trial basis with Wim Fissette, a prominent male coach.

Other players have female coaches as part of their teams. Elina Svitolina, the talented Ukrainian ranked 15th, is working part time with former No 1 Justine Henin.
Two women who played in Singapore this year have had prominent female coaches: Agnieszka Radwanska briefly worked with Martina Navratilova on a consultant basis in 2015; Madison Keys, an American who will be making her WTA Finals debut, was coached by Lindsay Davenport last year, with help from Davenport’s husband, Jon Leach, and Lisa Raymond, a former WTA doubles star.

But with four young children, Davenport has expanded personal commitments, so Keys has hired one of the most successful male coaches in the women’s game: Thomas Hogstedt, a former coach of Li Na and Maria Sharapova.

The combination of family responsibilities and the demanding travel on tour is a major factor dissuading women from coaching. “The men can still go on the road if they have a family and not disrupt the family,” said Evert, who has advised many female players at the Evert Tennis Academy in Boca Raton, Florida, and is now mentoring CiCi Bellis, a young American.

Evert added: “It’s much harder for women. It’s 35 weeks a year, the weeks on the road and the weeks off the road training with your player.”

Pratt, now the head of women’s tennis at Tennis Australia, has tried to limit the absences by taking her partner and her young twin daughters with her to Europe for part of the year. But she will not be coaching Gavrilova on the road next year because she cannot commit to that level of travel.

“At this moment, I can’t commit to that level of travel I have in the last eight years, and I’m fortunate I have been given a role where I can have the broader brush,” she said.

Pratt said she remained convinced female coaches are an essential, undervalued resource who can provide a tactical advantage. She sees a double standard in women being dismissed as potential coaches on the men’s tour because they lack understanding of the men’s game while men are routinely hired to coach in the women’s game.