After splitting from top athlete Novak Djokovic, coach Goran Ivanisevic said he “needed a U-turn” and decided to train with 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina, even though he had never imagined himself coaching on the WTA Tour.
In the past, Ivanisevic, who also won Wimbledon in 2001 as a player, has only coached male athletes including Tomas Berdych, Marin Cilic, and Milos Raonic. Moreover, the Croatian coach assisted Djokovic in winning nine of his 24 Grand Slam titles. He was now appointed to guide Rybakina, currently ranked fifth in the world, for the 2025 campaign.
With this shift, Ivanisevic admitted: “I know that many people found it odd and that people were surprised by our collaboration, but not me – I needed a U-turn after Novak… I won everything with Novak, so I am extremely looking forward to this new challenge. Honestly, during my time on the ATP Tour, I never pictured myself on the women’s tour, but I don’t see myself in men’s tennis at the moment.”
For the upcoming 2025 season, Elena Rybakina has named Goran Ivanisevic as her new coach. Ivanisevic was a Wimbledon champion himself. He won the title in 2001 as a qualifier, beating Patrick Rafter in five sets in the final.
Ivanisevic also coached Novak Djokovic for six years, helping him win 12 of his 24 major championships. Ivanisevic was also the coach who helped Marin Cilic win the US Open in 2014.
About her partnership with Ivanisevic, Rybakina stated: “I’m really looking forward to starting… It’s something new for me. I’ve been with one coach for a long time. I want to learn. I’m really happy and we will see what we can do together.”
World No. 5 Rybakina has not competed since withdrawing from the US Open in August before her match against Jessika Ponchet in the second round due to a lower back ailment. She is now ready to be in the season-ending WTA World Tour Finals in Saudi Arabia.
In her first round, Rybakina will battle against two-time Grand Slam finalist Jasmine Paolini. She was defeated by Paolini in the French Open quarter-finals this year.
Goran Ivanisevic, the former coach of top player Novak Djokovic, has teamed up with Elena Rybakina and he thinks the Kazakhstani athlete has every chance to ‘win more Slams.’
Having exclusively worked for ATP Tour players, including the 24-time Grand Slam champion Djokovic for five years, the coach has backed his new student to add more majors to her collection titles.
Ivanisevic admitted: “Game-wise, she has got a big serve, tall, strong hitter who plays aggressively. She won Wimbledon just like me.”
He added: “I feel I can teach her something. I mean, she is already No. 5 in the world, but I think she can win more Slams, that’s for sure.”
Rybakina is currently ranked No. 5 in the world and has already won a Wimbledon title in 2022. However, her performance at Grand Slam events needed improvement and she has only advanced to one final, which was the Australian Open in 2023. She also lost in the Wimbledon semi-finals earlier this year.
The coach further said: “She can achieve better results. It’s going to be interesting. I know that many people found it odd and that people were surprised by our collaboration, but not me – I needed a U-turn after Novak…. I won everything with Novak, so I am extremely looking forward to this new challenge.
“Honestly, during my time on the ATP Tour, I never pictured myself on the women’s tour, but I don’t see myself in men’s tennis at the moment,” he said.
Novak Djokovic admitted that he was thrilled by the possibility of two former world number one players working together, even though his choice to partner with recently retired opponent Andy Murray was definitely unexpected.
At the Australian Open next year, Murray agreed to coach the 24-time Grand Slam champion after joining Djokovic’s team.
Djokovic said: “I was going through a process of thinking about next season in the last couple of months, and trying to figure out what I need at this stage of my career… I stopped with my coach Goran Ivanisevic, that I was very successful with for many years, in March. So I took about six months to really think about if I (actually) need a coach, and if yes, who that’s going to be and the profile of the coach.”
Strict requirements for a new coach
According to Djokovic, he and his team evaluated a number of applicants for the new coach position, but the standards remained high.
Djokovic shared: “We were going through different names and I realised the perfect coach for me at this point would be someone that has been through the experiences that I’m going through, possibly a multiple Grand Slam winner, former number one.”
He added: “I was thinking about different people and then Andy Murray discussion appeared on the table with me and my team. (I decided) to give him a call and see how it goes… It caught him a little bit off guard as well because he wasn’t expecting it, so we connected really fast and he accepted after a few days.”
“I couldn’t be more excited about it. This collaboration is a surprise to me as well, to everyone… But it’s exciting for tennis. He’s been one of my greatest rivals. We’re the same age. We’ve played in all the biggest stadiums in our sport. So I can’t wait to get out on the court and prepare for next season,” Djokovic declared.
Next season, Djokovic will aim for a record-extending 11th Australian Open title under the guidance of the three-time Grand Slam champion and two-time Wimbledon winner Murray.
After the performance of world no.1 Iga Swiatek at the Wimbledon and the US Open, Barbara Schett, an expert from Eurosport and former tennis player, admitted that the athlete should have a complete overhaul and has said that she “needs a different pair of eyes”.
The expert stated that Swiatek has the right to concentrate on honing her capabilities away from her favored surface, which is clay. She said: “Iga Swiatek might be No. 1 in the world, but she still wants to develop her game outside of clay, [for example] on grass and hard…. She is looking for something different; an outside look, because at this level every percentage counts.”
She added: “I am not surprised she is searching for somebody from abroad and not from Poland. She needs a different pair of eyes and different stimulations. I was really disappointed with the way she played at Wimbledon and at the US Open, where she was so one-dimensional and could not adjust tactically… She was going for it but not really seeking solutions. She definitely can develop her game even more and learn when to pull back and when to go for it.”
Recently, Swiatek parted ways with her coach Tomasz Wiktorowski. In their three years of working with each other, the athlete won four Grand Slam titles and rose to the top of the global rankings.
Even though she was the top seed at both the US Open and Wimbledon, her playing soured towards the end of the year, and she exited both events. She also only got bronze at the 2024 Paris Olympics after losing in the semi-finals against Zheng Qinwen.
After three seasons of working together, top player Iga Swiatek and coach Tomasz Wiktorowski parted ways. The athlete is currently in search of a new coach.
In a social media post, the athlete said: “After three years of the greatest achievements in my career, together with my coach Tomasz Wiktorowski we decided to part ways. I want to start with a big thank you and appreciating our work together.”
She added: “His experience, analytical and strategic attitude and enormous knowledge about tennis helped us to achieve things I’ve never dreamed of only a few months after we started working together.”
In 2022, Wiktorowski became the coach for Swiatek, after she had already achieved one Grand Slam victory in her career. He helped her attain four more Grand Slam titles, including three consecutive French Opens.
With his guidance, Swiatek became the first Polish player to reach the top rank in the world in April 2022, and she has spent 123 weeks as number one.
Looking for a new coach
Swiatek admitted that it would take a few weeks to begin working with her new potential coaches, and she had talked to some of them already.
Earlier, she withdrew from the China Open due to personal reasons.
