Federer, Nadal express views on in-match coaching

Naomi Osaka became the first ever Japanese women to win a Grand Slam at the US Open, while Serena Williams was awarded three code violations, one of which was due to the gestures by her coach. Now, Federer and Nadal have revealed their views on the topic. 

The 20-time Grand Slam champion felt that the rule should not be put into practice. “I’m not all for it [allowing coaching],” Federer had said during the 2017 Wimbledon. “I find it kind of cool that in tennis, you know, you’re sort of on your own out there.”

Federer added that not everyone had the same facilities for coaching and it wouldn’t be useful for all the players on the circuit. 

World No.1, Rafael Nadal, felt that it is senseless if the coach can not help the player at a crucial moment as he is there with a player during their entire career. He also believed that some amount of talking between the player and the coach should be allowed during a match. 

The men’s champion at US Open, Novak Djokovic, opined that integrating technology in tennis would suffice the player’s needs at that point in time.

He suggested introducing headsets to communicate with the coach and felt that many companies would be interested in investing in tennis.

Belarusian Victoria Azarenka Believed that the Serena issue could have been dealt with some tenderness. “We either have a rule for everybody or we don’t. That’s my problem with it,” she wrote on Instagram.

“Going straight from coaching to code violation without warning a person – I think that’s messed up. You can say, “Hey next time you’re going to get a warning, a coach violation.”

Introducing coaching during the course of a tennis match might help bypass the mental challenge involved in the game. The technical deftness may not suffice to pull off a match but the mental support might just help someone pull through.

The player, who is all alone on the court, engages himself/herself and a little advice during the match might produce some surprising results in tennis.