Someone to Talk to. . .

Okay, I'm not supposed to like this on-court coaching thing. I know. But the experiment that has traditionalists apoplectic has borne some strange - and funny - fruit here. Just this morning, in the round table with Larry Scott, CEO of the WTA Tour, he made his case for coaching:

Hmmmm. . . The strongest example there is boxing, which is the most underrated of sports. Many ill-informed people see the Sweet Science as a mere exercise in manslaughter. Is anybody going to suggest that a boxer is somehow less of an athlete (talk about a "warrior mentality!") because he has the equivalent of "on-court" coaching? Maybe the real point is that boxing is such a visceral, savage and lonely enterprise that it would be downright inhumane to send a puncher out there with no support system whatsoever.

But there’s an interesting, alternate view to consider here: In resisting on-court coaching for so long, tennis is not merely traditional, it’s also unique - the boxing analogy makes that very clear. The sport has resolutely refused to add features that lessen the mental, emotional and physical strains and challenges of the game. There is, of course, a slippery slope here. Once you allow injury timeouts for massage (look under “P” for Pierce), is it so unreasonable to ask to be allowed some quality face-time with your agent, astrologer or personal shopper during a match? I guess I come down on the flip side of Scott’s perspective. If tennis is behind the times in this coaching matter, it’s in a good way.

If you’re anything like me, you tend to ignore things you don’t like. So I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to the ins-and-outs of on-court coaching until it appeared to have an impact to today's match, thanks to which the Pacific Life Open losts its top female seed, Maria Sharapova. She was leading Vera (Waaaaah!) Zvonareva by a set and 5-3 when the wheels fell off Sharpy's game. It’s hard to say exactly what happened, and Sharapova had no better theory than anyone else when the smoke finally cleared. “I just deflated a little bit,” she said in her presser. “I wasn’t moving well, I missed a lot of first serves and that obviously gives your opponent so much confidence. She just started swinging and wasn’t making a lot of errors.”

One thing that did happen was that Zvonareva, who has had a disconcerting habit of physically abusing herself with the racquet (Take that, knee! How do you like that smack, ankle!) and bursting into tears amid emotional meltdowns (it’s not a question of if! It’s a question of when.) really pulled her game together following her post second-set consultation with her mentor, Sam Sumyk.

I’m not sure how much to make of that factor, because Sharapova understated the effect of her service struggles; this is a player who’s lost in the desert without a canteen when she’s not bringing the hard, high one. Today, she threw in some stinkbombs that would make her countrywoman Elena Dementieva green with envy. But British journalist David Law was onto something when, noting that Zvonareva has suffered from nerves in past matches, he asked Sharapova if the cordial visits Zvonareva had with Samyk had anything to do with the outcome.

Maria, who is a stonewaller of the highest order, gave the usual stock answer about not worrying about what her opponent is doing and how she’s handling her nerves and blah-blah-blah. Zvonareva’s take was a little different.In her presser, she said:

Later, she added:

So I guess it was mere coincidence that Zvonareva wasn't wailing or trying to use her racquet as a meat tenderizer on her thigh as the third set unrolled.

My buddy Steve Tignor likes the idea of on-court coaching because it helps level a WTA playing field that is closer in degree-of-pitch to the Santa Rosa mountains rather than the flat plain of the Coachella
Valley. It's a good point, I suppose.

If you don’t know about the on-court coaching system, here’s how it works: A player can designate a coach for the entire tournament, or name one on a –day-to-day basis. The player and coach both have to sign-in with the WTA, either at the start of a tournament or before a match if the coach is different from the one the player used in her last match.

The coaches sit in the courtside boxes in either corner behind and to the right and left of the umpire, and they enter the court through a little swinging door like the kind you find in a jury box. A coach can consult with his player at the end of each set, or while a player’s opponent is receiving medical treatment or on a bathroom break (now there’s one good reason for allowing on-court coaching; if you find that seeing your 5-1 lead melt away suddenly makes you need to pee, you pay!).

I was sufficiently intrigued by the complexities of this system to ask the WTA to provide me with the official on-court sign-up sheets. Examining them, I learned some interesting things besides the fact that there’s a coach named Francesco Palpacelli (he coaches Roberta Vinci, whose last coach [according the current WTA media guide] was the even more formidably named Roberto Meneschincheri). So here’s a list of some of the player-coach pairings; I’ll also put the name of the coach listed in the current media guide in parenthesis behind the team, if it differs:

Marion Bartoli– (father) Walter Bartoli

Peng Shuai – Michael Chang (Karel Fromel)

Maria Kirilenko – Thomas Blake (Yuri “I’m not that Yuri!” Kirilenko)

Maria Sharapova – Mike Joyce (Yuri “I am that Yuri” Sharapov and Michael Joyce)

Anabel Medina Garrigues – Conchita Martinez (Gonzalo Lopez)

Kateryna Bondorenko – Alona Bondorenko (Vladimir and Natalia Bondorenko)

Gisela Dulko – Alejandro Dulko

Iveta Benasova – Lukas Dlouhy  (Petr Luxa)

Vania King – Robert Lansdorp (David King)

Camille Pin – Eric Bremond

Carly Gullickson and Bryanne Stewart (yes, there is o/c coaching in doubs!) – Shenay Perry* (I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure Perry isn’t their full-time coach!)

As you can see, there’s a coach-for-the-day vibe going; as Zvonareva said, it’s nice to have somebody to talk to. From the looks of things, it's nice to have anybody to talk to.  So if you’re attending one of these coaching-allowed events, just go hang around the player lounge. You never know, right?

* Gullickson/Stewart was the only doubles team that I found signed up for on-court coaching.