Elena Rybakina sprung up quite a surprise recently by naming Goran Ivanisevic as her new coach. The development came after she tore up her contract with her coach of five years, Stefano Vukov. As Rybakina prepares to play in the WTA Finals from Saturday in Riyadh, Ivanisevic has indirectly revealed the reason behind agreeing to coach the 2022 Wimbledon champion.
The Tennis Podcast’s David Law, in their latest episode, spoke about it widely. Law claimed that he interviewed Ivanisevic soon after he made his decision. Ivanisevic has two reasons for the same, and interestingly, it’s got nothing to do with how much he would be paid for the job.
The first reason obviously is that Rybakina is a ‘great player’. So it is an honor for him to get to coach a star women’s player, which is a first in Ivanisevic’s 10-year-old coaching career.
But the second reason is all the more fascinating. Ivanisevic compared his time with Djokovic. Although it will be considered one of the greatest coach-pupil partnerships of all time in the history of the sport, it wasn’t hunky dory for the 2001 Wimbledon champion on many occasions.
Djokovic would often call up Ivanisevic out of nowhere in the middle of the night, worried that there was something missing from his game that he needed to work on. Those competitive juices of the Serb were also visible when he was playing a match, and he would randomly remove his frustration by shouting something in Serbian or the Croatian language at Ivanisevic, using him as a ‘human stress ball’.
This is despite Law putting a disclaimer of sorts that he wasn’t quoting Goran specifically.
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Ivanisevic, who once called Djokovic ‘the Real Madrid of tennis’ to explain what it was like to coach him, believes that Rybakina is a far different character. Law added that the Croatian legend would be a fun, entertaining, and calm influence on Rybakina, also because he would not have to deal with the same level of stress as he had to with Djokovic.
Back in his playing days, Ivanisevic was known for his booming serves, and even as a coach, he was the reason Djokovic improved upon that aspect of his game. But in Rybakina, Ivanisevic already has a pupil who is good at it, so he just needs to manage her and focus on being more of a manager for her. As Rybakina had an uncomfortable experience of sorts with her previous coach, this partnership might turn out to be a long-term one and a win-win for both parties.
But with Law citing this as a reason for Goran choosing to coach Elena, it puts a huge question mark on working with someone like Djokovic.
Is Djokovic really difficult to work with?
It is often said that to find success, one has to be stubborn in believing in themselves and doing what it takes to get there. Djokovic built himself up to change from a player who often retired hurt in the 2000s to becoming a lean, mean machine from the 2010s who went on to break almost every record in the men’s game.
But all this seems to have come at a cost. It is never easy to coach or work with a superstar in any field because of the expectations they carry on their shoulders, and especially in tennis, where they pay their staff directly for ’employing’ them.
Djokovic had legendary coaches like Boris Becker and Andre Agassi before Ivanisevic, but none of them lasted beyond three years. This is largely because of the Serb’s working terms and conditions.
Ivanisevic’s man-management abilities did make him last seven years in a team that also included Marian Vajda. However, in the 2024 season, Djokovic fired a major chunk of his team, including Marco Panichi and Ulises Badio, his fitness trainer and physio, respectively, who are now with Jannik Sinner.
Now that Djokovic is pretty much coaching and conditioning himself, it could be because he is realizing that this is possibly the last leg of his career. So it makes Ivanisevic’s revelations interesting as not everything we see or hear is true.
