Coaches Corner: Juan Carlos Ferrero proves essential to Carlos Alcaraz's Roland Garros success

During his semifinal with Jannik Sinner at Roland Garros last week, Carlos Alcaraz stepped up to the baseline to serve on an important point. At the same time, his coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero, sat forward in his seat on the other side of the court, put his hands together, and thumped them on the left side of his chest.

One of the commentators, who may still have been living in the days when tactical signals were verboten in tennis, speculated that Ferrero was urging Alcaraz to play from the heart. But anyone who has followed the interactions, and heard the non-stop chatter, between this coach and player over the years may have had a different interpretation: It looked like Ferrero was calling for a body serve, to the opponent’s backhand side. A few seconds later, that’s exactly where Alcaraz put the ball, at upwards of 120 m.p.h., and won the point.

Before the summer of 2022, the advice that Ferrero dispenses throughout Alcaraz’s matches would have been illegal. For most of tennis’s history, few players travelled without full-time coaches, which helped the sport develop an ethos of self-sufficiency. When coaches did begin to appear in the 1970s, they were banned from giving advice during matches. “You have to do it all by yourself,” became the burden, and the pride, of the people who played the sport.

It’s an ethos that will die hard for many of us.

In the vast majority of cases, I apply what Juan Carlos advises me to do. The coach is there to support you and to give you the best instructions for you. So, I apply. There are plenty of moments where I don’t really know what to do on the court. Others where I get frustrated because I can’t find the right way to play. Carlos Alcaraz in an interview with L'Équipe

In the nearly two years since coaching was legalized, I thought I’d made peace with it. The biggest benefit, to me, is not having to wonder whether a coach and player are cheating whenever they communicate. Now we can hear their chatter and just get on with the match. Also, however much their coaches are involved in their decision-making between points, the players are on their own during them. They’re the ones who have to trust their instincts under pressure, and adjust on the fly.

Yet watching Alcaraz follow Ferrero’s advice, at key stages of a Grand Slam match that he would eventually win, was…odd. I know coaching is part of virtually every other sport, but I’m still not used to seeing it so clearly and publicly practiced in our own, on such a big stage, in a way that might have affected the outcome of a major.

For decades, “sending signals” had an underhanded—and over-controlling—ring to it in tennis. Accusing a player of getting in-match advice was akin to accusing him or her of not being a problem-solver in the proper tennis tradition. Remember the scandal that erupted when Maria Sharapova ate a banana at the behest of her team during the 2006 US Open final?

That was obviously then, and this is now. Iga Swiatek has chats with her sports psychologist during matches. Coco Gauff gets an earful from Brad Gilbert whenever she plays. Every player can and should take advantage of the new rules, if it helps. At this point, I’m wondering how long it will be before officials allow coaches on the court with their players. Would it be any different from what we have now?

I’m singling out Alcaraz not to criticize him or call his greatness into question, but because (a) he’s the face of tennis’s future; and (b) he and Ferrero jabber back and forth as much or more than any other team on tour.

“Sometimes I do whatever they told me, and sometimes [I] depend on my feelings in that moment,” Alcaraz said of his coaches at Roland Garros.

“In the vast majority of cases, I apply what Juan Carlos advises me to do,” he elaborated to the French sporting journal L’Equipe. “The coach is there to support you and to give you the best instructions for you. So, I apply. There are plenty of moments where I don’t really know what to do on the court. Others where I get frustrated because I can’t find the right way to play.”

Alcaraz obviously doesn’t feel any shame in admitting that he needs help, and there’s no need for him to. Old school fans will eventually get used to it, and other players might want to imitate it. Right now, Ferrero talks to his player more than just about any other coach; maybe, seeing Alcaraz’s success, the pros will want more tactical input from them in the future.

Which makes me wonder: Will the new attitude toward coaching change the way we assess players from now on? After his roller-coaster win over Alexander Zverev at Roland Garros, I wrote about how good Alcaraz was at shrugging off a bad set and moving on from it. Looking back at the final, though, his attitude began to improve at the end of the third set, when he was on Ferrero’s side of the court, and could hear and see his support. At the Australian Open this year, when Ferrero didn’t make the trip Down Under, Alcaraz lost to Zverev in four sets in the quarterfinals.

We’ll see whether Alcaraz is a trend-setter, and tennis becomes more of a duet than a solo act. If it does, and the ability to problem solve on your own isn’t as essential, something will be lost. As I wrote above, the trade-off is that no one will gain an advantage illegally, and I’ll take that.

Either way, Ferrero’s coaching doesn’t make Alcaraz any less admirable or fun to watch. Maybe he should be assessed less like tennis greats of the past, and more like team-sport superstars such as Lionel Messi or Steph Curry. We know they have coaches who call out plays for them, but that doesn’t lessen our amazement at how they brilliantly, and often, they make them work.