{"id":88788,"date":"2025-07-24T14:01:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T14:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/88788\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T14:01:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T14:01:13","slug":"tennis-fathers-and-sons-stefanos-and-apostolos-tsitsipas-and-other-ways-to-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/88788\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennis fathers and sons: Stefanos and Apostolos Tsitsipas, and other ways to coach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note<\/strong>: July 24, 2025: This feature has been updated following Stefanos Tsitsipas\u2019 decision to split with Goran Ivani\u0161evi\u0107 and resume his coaching partnership with his father, Apostolos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When Goran Ivani\u0161evi\u0107, who coached Novak Djokovic during 12 of his 24 Grand Slam title runs, decided to work with Stefanos Tsitsipas in spring 2025, he was effusive. Tsitsipas, a two-time major finalist undergoing a steep decline in form, could be a top-10 player again. He had the tools. But Ivani\u0161evi\u0107 also had one condition.<\/p>\n

His father, Apostolos, who knows Stefanos perhaps better than anyone in tennis, could not be part of the coaching team. So that\u2019s what happened.<\/p>\n

Ivani\u0161evi\u0107 signed on for a trial period. Tsitsipas played three matches at two events, losing two of them. Ivani\u0161evi\u0107 criticized his preparation. Tsitsipas spoke obliquely about wanting his team to be like a family. And then it was over, with Tsitsipas resuming his partnership with Apostolos and the intimate knowledge that comes with it.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s one advantage of being coached by your father. But the disadvantages have also been on full display in the past year \u2014 and probably a good deal longer \u2014 courtesy of world No. 29 Tsitsipas, and his complicated relationship with his father<\/a>. They broke up as coach and charge in early August last year, following an ugly confrontation during a loss to Kei Nishikori, the world No. 576, at the National Bank Open in Montreal.<\/p>\n

Tsitsipas told his father, who has never been shy about getting in his ear during matches, to leave his seat in the middle of the match. Then he blamed Apostolos for his career stagnation and his struggles with his forehand. The next day, he announced that his dad would remain his travel companion but would no longer coach him.<\/p>\n

Apostolos took a different view.<\/p>\n

He did not accompany his eldest son to that year\u2019s U.S. Open, choosing instead to work with his youngest boy, Pavlos, who is battling his way through the sport\u2019s Futures circuit. He had been coaching and traveling with Stefanos for 10 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just need to move on now,\u201d Tsitsipas said during an interview at the West Side Tennis Club in New York\u2019s Forest Hills district. The club was the home of the U.S. Open until organizers made the short move to Flushing Meadows in the 1970s and Tsitsipas was there to practice for the Ultimate Tennis Showdown, an innovative and lucrative competition established by Patrick Mouratoglou<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI need to grow up as well and take decisions based on my own gut feeling,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Just under a year later, his gut is telling him to go back to his dad.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t take Sigmund Freud to know that relationships between fathers and sons are often complicated in the best of circumstances, before factoring in the tensions and logistics of professional tennis.<\/p>\n

Roughly 10 months of living out of suitcases and hotel rooms; the monotony of daily practice and physical training; the sometimes touchy process of re-examining the defeats that can pile up. That\u2019s a pretty good recipe for friction, even with the most perfect coach and the most unemotional player, let alone the possible landmines of the fraught father-son dynamic.<\/p>\n

And of course, all of this usually unfolds during the player\u2019s late adolescence and early adulthood, a period of life in which growing boys generally don\u2019t want Dad joysticking them. They don\u2019t want to be told what to eat, when they should go to sleep, and how they should have done something that they messed up.<\/p>\n

When Alexander Zverev, Ben Shelton, Casper Ruud and Tsitsipas have matches, there will be several crucial moments that will all play out the same way \u2014 in one sense.<\/p>\n

They will look up at their support team in their box. They will meet their coach\u2019s eyes and they will know exactly what they are saying to each other, even though no actual words will need to be exchanged.<\/p>\n

Why would they? The message will be coming from a person who has known them longer than just about anybody else, who can speak to them with nods, tilts of the head, or a widening of the eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome players, if they have their parents as coaches, there\u2019s a lot of arguing,\u201d world No. 3 Zverev, whose father, Alexander, and elder brother, Mischa, coach him, said in a news conference after he beat Brandon Nakashima in the fourth round in New York last year. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of, you know, not healthy stuff. I have to say that\u2019s not the case with us at all. We understand each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Things can get a bit tense, like when Zverev was on the verge of losing an early-round match at the French Open last May. His head was about to explode. All he could think about was reaming out his team, including his father, for giving him a bad game plan. \u201cIt\u2019s always the team\u2019s fault,\u201d he said later after he had come back to win the match, even when the main players on that team are his father and brother.<\/p>\n

So why do it this way?<\/p>\n

Over the course of a decade, Apostolos Tsitsipas came to believe that only he could give his eldest son what he needed to succeed at the highest level. \u201cI can feel his mindset,\u201d he said in March last year. \u201cI can feel when his mindset starts changing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Apostolos Tsitsipas is completely convinced of the unique perspective that he feels he brings to Stefanos (Cameron Spencer \/ Getty Images)<\/dt>\n\n\n

He insisted that this kind of understanding can only come from being there during meals and at bedtimes, day after day and year after year, explaining how he would repeat phrases he had used with Stefanos since he was a small boy, trying to get him to enjoy the moment through the comfort of remembered childhood.<\/dt>\n
In times of crisis on the court, he would tell his son to enjoy the feeling of wiping his face with his towel or sipping a cold drink during the changeover.<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n

\u201cWhen the senses are there, he\u2019s present,\u201d Apostolos said.<\/p>\n

Stefanos agreed with all this for years, even as he experimented occasionally with a second coach, such as Mark Phillippoussis.<\/p>\n

Then came the explosion in Canada.<\/p>\n

The two men talked that night.<\/p>\n

\u201cA tough thing that hurts,\u201d Stefanos said of the breakup conversation. He compared it to a spouse breaking up with a partner. But it had to happen.<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cI\u2019ve been feeling more in control of my own emotions, of how I want things to be. That\u2019s what gives me the freedom of feeling, more free, more alive. I can really pinpoint what I want and what I don\u2019t want.\u201d<\/p>\n

How uncomplicated this might have seemed had Tsitsipas then won some matches at 2024\u2019s final Grand Slam. Then it\u2019s a clear and correct decision. Instead, he lost in the first round, struggling to find the drive and desire to respond when the unseeded Thanasi Kokkinakis, the world No. 86, overpowered him.<\/p>\n

Tsitsipas still had no regrets about his coaching decision, though. He needed something a little less complex, win or lose. Until he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

When talking to sons who have hired their fathers and stuck with them, their relationships somehow seem devoid of that complexity, which ordinarily comes with the territory.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can almost sense what he\u2019s feeling,\u201d Christian Ruud, a former touring pro and father of three-time Grand Slam finalist Casper, said during an interview in 2024.<\/p>\n

Casper said he sees his dad as more peer than parent. Christian is 52 now and was 26 when Casper was born. A young father, who somehow still seems young in the eyes of his Gen-Z son. He gets the jokes between Casper and his contemporaries.<\/p>\n

When on tour, they pass much of their downtime playing golf, competing in a season-long competition with each other and one of Casper\u2019s friends. That usually includes an annual 600-mile (1,000km) drive from Cincinnati, venue for an ATP Tour event in the middle of August, up to New York City for the U.S. Open. They stop along the way at the best courses they can find.<\/p>\n

\n
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Christian and Casper Ruud had a break from their coach-player relationship when Casper was a junior (Andy Cheung \/ Getty Images)<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n

That may be the only setting in which Christian seems a little older. He plays from the white tees now. Casper and his pal play from the tips. \u201cI look at him more as a friend,\u201d Casper said of his father during an interview in New York last year. \u201cIt\u2019s not an easy balance, but we\u2019ve been able to do it really good so far.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a little different from the Zverev clan. Having his dad and brother around can make him a little less homesick, Alexander said, before joking he only needs tennis-specific doses of family time. \u201cOff the court, I just spend zero time with my father, so that\u2019s a starting point,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have enough of each other on the court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christian Ruud coached his son through his childhood, but Casper needed to be in a warmer climate, with better players than those in their native Norway. He spent the better part of three years training in Alicante, Spain, with a coach named Pedro Rico.<\/p>\n

Rico was unable to become his full-time traveling coach, so he asked his father if he would take the reins again. It wasn\u2019t an easy decision: Casper has two sisters. But Dad decided to give it a go.<\/p>\n

He can sense when his son will win a match, Christian says. He sees an aura of confidence around him. It\u2019s probably invisible to everyone else because Casper has one of the better poker faces on the tour. Christian can also sense the nuances in his son\u2019s looks of frustration. There\u2019s the look of annoyance at an opponent who is hitting the lines on every point, about which Christian can do little. Then there are the times their eyes meet when a game plan isn\u2019t working, to which Christian can respond with a signal.<\/p>\n

When matches and practice are over, the more indirect lessons begin \u2014 cards, golf, movies, sometimes followed by a serious talk about what they have just watched.<\/p>\n

At some point this will end, Casper has said. Christian has other children and a wife, Casper\u2019s mother, whom he wants to pay a little more attention to. But for now, they have this.<\/p>\n

Compared to some father-son partnerships on tour, Ben Shelton and his dad, Bryan, are just getting started \u2014 or should that be getting started again?<\/p>\n

Bryan coached his son through childhood and then in college at the University of Florida. He missed Ben\u2019s first year on the tour, while he was finishing up his work at Florida, then joined him full-time for the second half of 2023.<\/p>\n

Ben has said it\u2019s far easier now than it was when he was in college, where he was one of 12 players on Florida\u2019s team. He felt then that his father would go out of his way to show there was no favoritism, at the expense of his leg muscles.<\/p>\n

\n
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Ben Shelton practices with his father Bryan in Houston (Aaron M. Sprecher \/ Getty Images)<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n

\u201cI\u2019m running more sprints than everyone else when I do something wrong or show up late,\u201d he said then. \u201cIf I lose a match, it\u2019s a bigger deal than everyone else. He had to do that to keep the team in the right place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now his father (Ben has occasionally called him \u201cBig Dog\u201d), doesn\u2019t have to do that. Making him run extra sprints is the job of his fitness coach. Plus, if Ben wants to go out to dinner with friends on the road, Bryan is perfectly content to order room service and watch golf on his computer, or read.<\/p>\n

Again, seemingly so uncomplicated. Even more so after Ben had to spend his first eight months on tour without his father, who was also the college coach who had given him such a hard time the previous couple of years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really started to appreciate everything he was bringing to the table for me,\u201d he said. \u201cI was missing it during that time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additional reporting: Charlie Eccleshare<\/p>\n

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