Allow on-court coaching

The opaque nature of the rule makes it redundant

A singular irony in the face-off between Serena Williams and umpire Carlos Ramos is that the US Tennis Federation was the first to experiment with on-court coaching in the qualification tournament for the US Open last year. The persistent aftershocks from the Williams-Ramos controversy a week after the event, however, point to the urgent need for the International Tennis Federation (ITF) to take a definitive call on on-court coaching.

There are compelling arguments for permitting the practice in all tournaments. First, it will end the subjective element in the umpire’s judgement. The rules states: “Communications of any kind, audible or visible, between a player and a coach may be construed as coaching.” Williams was at the far end of the court when her coach made the hand signal that Ramos spotted. She did not see it, thereby not fulfilling the “communications” requirement in the rule. Still, convention dictates that a player is responsible for her coach’s behaviour on court. As countless observers have pointed out, a soft warning from Ramos would have sufficed. Controversies inevitably surround every coaching violation call. Rafael Nadal has been so frequently subject to it that Toni Nadal, his head coach, stopped attending his matches. In a quarter-final match at last year’s Wimbledon, Svetlana Kuznetsova complained that Garbine Muruguza, to whom she lost, was being instructed by her physio throughout. She even complained to the umpire during the match, to no avail. Muruguza denied the charge, saying her physio was merely encouraging her, but Kuznetsova follows Spanish. 

 

This controversy raises the second reason for allowing on-court coaching: It is impossible to detect. The Muruguza-Kuznetsova spat showed that language is one issue and that coaching need not emanate from the coach. Pre-agreed hand-signals or gestures from anyone in the player’s box — a physio, a spouse, relative or friend — can work too. Which raises the third argument: Everyone does it. Williams’ coach, Patrick Mouratoglu, admitted in a post-match press conference that he was coaching. He did so, he said, only because Naomi Osaka’s coach, Sascha Barjin, was visibly coaching her on every point without censure. And in the barrage of after-match commentary, several players attested that illegal on-court coaching has been rampant for decades. Chris Evert-Lloyd, the 18 Grand Slam title winner who played professionally from the early seventies to the late eighties, said illegal coaching happened all the time in her playing days. Fourth: The ITF has diminished the no-coaching rule over the years. It introduced on-court coaching for the women’s tours (excluding Grand Slams) from 2009. As in badminton, coaches have to agree to wear microphones so that TV audiences can hear the conversation, and are allowed on once per set (interestingly, Williams never used this perk). The Davis Cup and Fed Cup also allow on-court coaching, and the coach is designated a “non-playing captain”.

The purists’ argument that coaching detracts from the thrill of a game is specious. A coach can instruct till she’s blue in the face; the player still has to demonstrate the skill to execute the plan. It is better to enable the practice to flourish openly, as it does in most other sports, than with hypocritical subterfuge. Indeed, the argument extends to cricket, where on-field coaching, also disallowed, goes on quite openly. Not everyone has to resort to the Bob Woolmer-Hansie Cronje 1999 ruse of a pavilion-to-field earpiece. Hand signals, the 12th man running on with a kit change or during the drinks break are all ways for coaches to send messages to players. Too much money rides on professional sport these days to allow for imprecision in rules and regulations that rely on individual ethics. At the very least, the ITF should thank Williams and Ramos for clarifying this issue.