Renowned coach Ricardo Piatti picked Maria Sharapova as his most impressive pupil from a host of elite players he has trained. The Italian has worked with Novak Djokovic, Ivan Ljubicic, Jannik Sinner and many others. However, despite their short association, he revealed that the Russian was his best student.
Piatti was Sharapova’s last coach before she retired in early 2020. He only joined the five-time Grand Slam winner’s team in late 2019. Before this collaboration, he was on Borna Coric’s team. In the final stretch of her career, Sharapova fell outside the top 350 with consecutive first-round exits from Majors. Despite working together for less than a year and achieving no success, Piatti believed his only WTA protégé was also his best.
In an interview with TV Monaco (via Tennis World USA), he said the partnership with Sharapova was special since she had already decided to retire. He said she wanted to explore tennis with a different approach.
“Unfortunately, the player who impressed me the most is the one I coached the least. I trained her for about 10 months. It is a woman, Maria Sharapova. I mainly trained men, Djokovic, Ljubicic and so on. But with Sharapova, it was really very special because she was about to end her career and she wanted to know another side of tennis.”
He praised Sharapova’s thought process and ability to prioritise the correct things. Piatti said the 2004 WTA Finals winner is dedicated and friendly with everyone.
“I had the opportunity to work with her and honestly we spent 10, 11 months together during which I was able to appreciate her way of thinking: You have priorities and you know them very well. She is very dedicated to her work. There was a lot of affinity with her and with her entire team.”
The coach remarked Sharapova was the only pupil of his he did not get good results with. However, he added that she was the one he felt most comfortable with.
Ricardo Piatti’s incredible coaching CV ft. Novak Djokovic and Jannik Sinner
Ricardo Piatti got into tennis coaching as early as his 20s. He joined the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, learning how to coach players from the famous mentor who would go on to train the likes of Andre Agassi and the Williams sisters. He started working individually with professional players in the 1980s and some of his earliest pupils got into the top 20 of the ATP Rankings.
Piatti joined hands with Ivan Ljubicic in 1997, a year before he turned pro. He worked with the Croat for the entirety of his career until he hung up his boots in 2012. He took the player from World No. 954 to a career-best of World No. 3, including a semi-final finish at the 2006 French Open.
Amid his association with Ljubicic, Piatti trained a young Novak Djokovic for a year from 2005 to 2006. The duo, though, ended their partnership since the Italian refused to leave his existing commitments and join the Serb full-time. However, the coach rightly predicted in 2006 that Djokovic would match Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer and become the World No.1.
Later, Piatti also worked with Richard Gasquet, Milos Raonic, and Borna Coric. The former two reached their career-best rankings under him. In addition to Maria Sharapova, he also worked with Jannik Sinner until 2022. He spotted his young compatriot as a teenager and mentored him for eight years. Sinner won his first ATP title with Piatti before his current team elevated his game to the next level. The senior Italian played a vital role in developing the World No.4 and it was under him that Sinner won the 2019 Next Gen ATP Finals
