Tennis Briefing: WTA coaching changes, Carlos Alcaraz’s mojo and Marin Cilic’s comeback

Welcome back to the Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court.

This week, the top of the women's tour continued its coaching carousel; Carlos Alcaraz bounced back from a defeat better than he has done lately, and withdrawals through injury just wouldn't go away.

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How will the WTA coaching shuffle shake out?

In many ways, tennis coaches are like their counterparts in any other sport. They probably get too much credit when things go well and too much blame when they don't.

The big difference is that a tennis coach is both in charge of their player and also employed by them. That makes the coaches an obvious target when players don't get the results they believe they should. It must be the coach's fault, right? The alternative is to blame themselves, and that's not something tennis players — or humans in general — are very good at.

That's partly how three of the top women's players in the world arrived at some high-profile coaching dismissals in the waning weeks of the 2024 season. Coco Gauff split with Brad Gilbert , Naomi Osaka split with Wim Fissette , and Elena Rybakina split with Stefano Vukov .

All three players won Grand Slam titles with those coaches. Now they are all looking for new employment. Each one represents a different approach to the job, and a different set of benefits.

Gilbert, who doubles as a tennis commentator for ESPN, has long specialized in using a player's strengths to exploit their opponent's weaknesses. He's probably not the right long-term coach for someone like Gauff, who needs to make concrete technical adjustments to her serve and forehand. Gilbert helped show Gauff how to use her largely unmatched athleticism and defensive skill to turn matches into wars of attrition that she would usually win, culminating in her first Grand Slam title at the 2023 U.S. Open .

Under Vukov, Rybakina won Wimbledon in 2022 , rose to No. 3 in the world and figured out how to channel her competitive spirit and combine it with her powerful serve and increasingly fluid strokes. She has also suffered from a spate of injuries and illnesses during the past 18 months, and some have suggested that Vukov's intensity has contributed to this.

He is no longer on the WTA's Coach Program list, which according to that organization is composed of "either active, registered members of the WTA Coach Program or current coaches of Top 20 players".

Fissette may be the most technically inclined of the bunch. He likes to get into the weeds about both the technical and aesthetic advantages of a proper open-stance backhand. The Belgian has a remarkable pedigree, having worked with Kim Clijsters, Angelique Kerber and Simona Halep as well as Osaka, all four of them major champions and former world No. 1 players. His initial advice is usually built on developing aggression.

Where these three end up may say more about the players who hire them than the coaches themselves. It will probably say the same when whoever hires them next ends up firing them.

.S. Open

Matt Futterman

Did team tennis act as a release valve for Carlos Alcaraz?

Carlos Alcaraz, perhaps the liveliest spirit in men's tennis, has rarely looked flat on his way to winning four Grand Slam titles before turning 22. When his smile has deflated, it has tended to do so after a chastening defeat, or a string of them. After he won his first Wimbledon title, he suffered bewildering defeats to Nicolas Jarry in Buenos Aires and Roman Safiullin in Paris. After that grinding Olympic final defeat to Novak Djokovic last month, he went out of the U.S. Open to a peaking Botic van de Zandschulp in three strange sets.

Alcaraz returned to the court in Valencia a couple of weeks later, coming through a cramping Tomas Machac and then dispatching Ugo Humbert — who gave him some trouble at this year's Wimbledon — to take Spain into November's Davis Cup finals. He was electric against Humbert, and then doubled down on that performance in the Laver Cup, handling Ben Shelton with kid gloves before taking apart Taylor Fritz, skittering to the net time and again to put away floaty balls earned by hammering the ball from the baseline.

In a press conference at that exhibition tournament in Berlin, Alcaraz lamented the tennis schedule, but added something telling.

"Sometimes, I don't feel motivated at all. As I've said many, many times, I play my best tennis when I smile and enjoy it on court. That's the best option."

Whether it's the camaraderie of team tennis, rest from an early U.S. Open exit, or some combination thereof, the smile is back. That normally means it's time for the rest of the ATP Tour to turn their own smiles upside down.

James Hansen

How will Elena Rybakina and Ons Jabeur come back to tennis?

Elena Rybakina started 2024 by serving a bagel set to the best hard-court player on the WTA Tour — on a hard court. The 2022 Wimbledon champion beat Aryna Sabalenka 6-0, 6-3 to win the WTA 500 event in Brisbane.

Rybakina then lost an agonizing 42-point match tiebreak 22-20 to Anna Blinkova at the Australian Open, before winning the Abu Dhabi 500-level event. After that, she lost to Iga Swiatek in the final of the 1000-level tournament in Doha, Qatar. Then came two withdrawals, another final defeat (to Danielle Collins in Miami) another title (in Stuttgart, Germany, which included beating Swiatek in the semifinal) and a defeat to Sabalenka in the Madrid semifinal.

Three titles and two finals is a pretty good return; so too is a French Open quarterfinal and a Wimbledon semifinal, though the defeats in those matches, to Jasmine Paolini and Barbora Krejcikova, could — and in the latter case, probably should — have been wins.

It's the five withdrawals that are more concerning, and Rybakina has since ruled herself out of both upcoming 1000-level events in China with a back injury, first in Beijing and then in Wuhan. As detailed above, she also split with coach Vukov.

"This has been a challenging year and I am grateful for the support from the tournament organizers and all of my fans," she wrote in a statement issued to the WTA . "My team and I will work on getting me back on the court before the season finale."

She is joined in the cycle of withdrawals and injuries by another former Wimbledon champion, Ons Jabeur, who has curtailed her entire season due to a chronic shoulder injury. While Rybakina's early-season form has sustained her place in the top five of the WTA rankings, Jabeur's results have suffered with her health, and she has fallen outside the top 20.

Both players will be looking to 2025 — or in Rybakina's case, possibly the season-ending WTA Finals in November — as a chance to reset and rediscover their tennis.

. By Ons Jabeur

James Hansen

Let's do the tennis time-warp again?

Last week was a good week for those with a keen interest in players who went deep at the 2018 Australian Open. Or players who have had rotten luck with injuries slowly trying to rebuild their careers. Marin Cilic, Kyle Edmund, Hyeon Chung... come on down.

Cilic, the 2018 Melbourne finalist who last won two matches at an ATP event more than two years ago, is coming back from knee surgery. He reached the final of the Hangzhou Open in China, beating home favorite Zhang Zhizhen in two tiebreaks to win his first title in three years. In an interview with The Athletic last month, Cilic, who turns 36 on Saturday September 28, said he is targeting a return to Grand Slam tennis at January's Australian Open. This late September run should give him the confidence that a proper comeback is in reach.

Edmund meanwhile had three operations on his left knee between October 2020 and July 2022, and was sidelined again last summer with a right wrist injury. Now 29, he was a semifinalist at the Columbus Challenger, his best run at an event since reaching the quarterfinals at the 500-level Mexican Open in Acapulco in February 2020. Back when he reached the Australian Open semifinals at 23 in 2018, it would have been hard to imagine that Edmund would now be ranked outside the world's top 400.

It would have been similarly difficult to foresee a situation in which Chung — then 21, fresh from winning the Next Gen Finals and considered one of the brightest young talents in the game — would be without a ranking point to his name and battling it out on the lowest rung of the tour. But that's where he finds himself, after a series of debilitating injuries, mostly back-related.

This week, he won his first main-draw match at a tournament since October 2019 as he reached the quarters at the ITF Japan event in Takasaki.

Small but hopefully significant steps for all three players as they slowly try and rebuild their careers.

As for Cilic, he's next off to Tokyo for the ATP 500 Japan Open, in which he will play Kei Nishikori in a rematch of the 2014 U.S. Open final.

.S. Open

Charlie Eccleshare

Shot of the week

The way he looks back suggests Alcaraz thinks it might have been unnecessary, but he still had to make it.

The winners of the week

ATP:

Shang Juncheng def. Lorenzo Musetti (1) 7-6(4), 6-1 to win the Chengdu Open (250) in Chengdu, China. It is Shang's first ATP Tour title. Marin Cilic def. Shang Zhizhen (6)

WTA:

Beatriz Haddad Maia (3) def. Daria Kasatkina (1) 1-6, 6-4, 6-1 to win the Korea Open (500) in Seoul. It is her first 500-level title. Rebecca Sramkova def. Laura Siegemund

On the rise / Down the line

Shang Juncheng moves up 12 places from No. 67 to No. 55 after his run to the quarterfinals in Chengdu. He will rise further on the September 30 update after winning the title on Tuesday September 24. Barbora Krejcikova ascends one spot from No. 11 to No. 10 after Maria Sakkari dropped her points from last year's Guadalajara Open. Emma Raducanu reenters the top 60 after rising 16 places from No. 70 to No. 54.

Maria Sakkari falls eight places from No. 9 to No. 17, dropping out of the top 10 for the first time since February 2024. Sebastian Korda drops from No. 16 to No. 15, with compatriot Frances Tiafoe moving back above him. Camilo Ugo Carabelli tumbles 21 spots from No. 91 to No. 112, dropping out of the top 100.

Coming up

Tokyo: Japan Open (500) featuring Taylor Fritz, Arthur Fils, Ben Shelton, Stefanos Tsitsipas. Beijing: China Open (500) featuring Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev, Lorenzo Musetti.

UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel Tennis TV

Beijing: China Open (1000) featuring Aryna Sabalenka, Zheng Qinwen, Coco Gauff, Jessica Pegula.

UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel

Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments below as the men's and women's tours continue.

(Top photo of Marin Cilic: ; design: Eamonn Dalton)