Stuttgart Open champion Taylor Fritz has voiced his strong disagreement with the on-court coaching rule, expressing his views in a conversation with Caroline Garcia on the "Tennis Insider Club" YouTube channel, where the former world No. 4 conducts intimate interviews with ATP and WTA stars.
The American defeated Alexander Zverev in the Stuttgart final this Sunday to claim his first title of the season and the fourth grass-court title of his career. Fritz begins the grass-swing inspired, and will surely have high expectations for his participation at Wimbledon.
During the interview, Garcia asked Fritz for his opinion on on-court coaching, to which the American expressed his disapproval, emphasizing the individual aspect of tennis. "I understand it. I think it’s bad for the game; the game of tennis, it’s definitely bad," he claimed. "But for, like, fans and stuff, if there’s a way to, like, hear what you’re saying to your coach, if fans could hear that stuff, maybe that’s more entertaining, but we don’t even do that anyways. So it’s like, we’re already missing out on that."
"Tennis is so much like… this is an individual sport. Why can someone else tell me what to do when the strategy of tennis is such a big part of the game, like, understanding what my opponent’s doing, and maybe this is the pattern that they’re playing? Maybe I need to get out of this pattern, maybe how I’m structuring the point isn’t a winning point structure for me. I need to change something else."
"Maybe I’m doing something that’s beating them, how is it fair that someone, if they’re not smart enough to figure out that they need to change what they’re doing, it’s complete BS that someone can tell them what to do."
Cristhián Ávila is a tennis journalist based in Santiago, Chile, and has been part of the TennisUpToDate team since early 2023. He covers the ATP and WTA Tours as well as all four Grand Slams, producing breaking news, match reports, analysis, and regular liveblogs from major tournaments.
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