WTA reportedly investigating complaints levied of misconduct surrounding Peyton Stearns' new coach

Nearly a year on from the storm that surrounded Stefano Vukov and his suspension from the WTA Tour which was lifted towards the end of the season surrounding misconduct has come another storm with the new coach of Peyton Stearns being under investigation.

Rafael Font de Mora is the new coach of Stearns, the 24-year-old American who is still in Australia playing in doubles with Hailey Baptiste and a singles run that ended against Amanda Anisimova pretty emphatically in the third round in a superb win for the latter.

But according to The Athletic, the WTA have received complaints to the WTA Tour's director of safeguarding surrounding Font de Mora including 18-time Grand Slam doubles champion Pam Shriver surrounding her coach with most of these allegations being historic as opposed to recent given that he hasn't been seen on tour up until recently.

The sources most of whom weren't named by The Athletic said that they reported him after learning he was back on tour and did so out of concern for Stearns in the future. He has denied any wrongdoing and Stearns has spoke highly of her new coach seemingly splitting with Blaz Kavcic of whom she had great success with towards the middle part of 2025.

Shriver's complaint surrounded his coaching of a player who was 13 when their association began in Meghann Shaughnessy who separated herself from her family and moved into his house. When she was 19, they became engaged with her being 12 years younger than him when they met.

Shriver's career ended just as Shaughnessy's was starting and she said that seeing him in Melbourne brought it back and then she informed the WTA about his history with her own dealings with her coach Don Candy in which he was 50 and she was 17 when it moved beyond coaching. So observing their relationship brought parallels her direction.

Shaughnessy and Font de Mora never married and they split in 2005. The former has never alleged wrongdoing from Font de Mora and further complaints came from a player who worked with him saying he was aggressive both physically and verbally in his coaching including swearing in her face and hitting balls aggressively in her direction. A third player also confirmed this as per The Athletic.

Font de Mora did respond through his attorney to The Athletic. “Your questions are statements that are not true,” he said. “I coordinate my training and sprints with professional trainers and biomechanist(s) and I am a very positive coach.”

He was not aware of said complaints to the WTA and said to ask Stearns, her mother and his current charge's trainer to see what they think about the training methods and that he had known Stearns a long time as well as that they were travelling together for the 2026 season. Stearns herself praised her new coach.

“One thing he’s been big on is, you know, what can you control?” she said of Font de Mora’s coaching.

“You know, I can’t control the wind today, so what are you going to do? What can you control about it? You can control your attitude, you can control your emotions, you can control how intense your feet are, you know, get to the ball because it’s windy.

“That’s been huge because it’s not about the results,” she said.

Albeit after reportedly saying that she didn't want to discuss the issue, she was asked around the issue and whether she was familiar with his history on the WTA Tour, Stearns said: "Yeah, I mean, it’s been around, but, I think right now, just not really going to dive into that, no comment.”

What comes of it is unlikely to be corroborated for a while with the WTA not disclosing complaints it receives and the Vukov case took some time to be resolved. But an interesting one to break towards the back end of the Australian Open.