With the announcement by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) on October 17, off-court coaching will be permitted as of the first day of 2025.
While the rule has effectively been in place since 2023 with recent trials put into effect in team events, the change means every tournament will operate under the rule going forward.
The major changes include coaches being allowed to give “brief and discreet” verbal or hand signals to their players (except during a point), a team captain of a team event to give coaching advice on court and players gaining access to approved “Player Analysis Technology.”
In its official statement, the ITF stipulated that the intended benefits of off-court coaching include reducing the burden of chair umpires in policing it, reducing subjectivity in the rule itself, supporting the development of players and making tennis fairer and more entertaining.
The last point is rather controversial, as it lessens the importance of being mentally tough, especially during crucial stages of a match which has always made tennis incredibly unique.
In fact, tennis is the only individual sport that has never allowed coaching during a match. Boxers have their trainers in between rounds and golfers have their caddies to discuss strategies with.
But in tennis, players have always been on their own in a match. This is probably why Andre Agassi famously described the sport as “solitary confinement” in his book, ‘Open.’
However, the lack of coaching in tennis has always highlighted the importance of being mentally tough. It separates the good from the great. From Rod Laver to Björn Borg to the ‘Big Three,’ the most successful players in the history of the sport have always possessed a mental fortitude on a different planet compared to other competitors. Perhaps the greatest of them all, Novak Djokovic, has been defined by his mental toughness.
Recent US Open finalist Taylor Fritz was one such player who criticised off-court coaching when it was first trialled, reinforcing the importance of being mentally tough in a tennis match.
"Tennis is as much mental as it is physical, and a big part of it is you need to figure it out on the court for yourself," Fritz told reporters after a 2022 match against Nick Kyrgios.
"I think it’s ridiculous that you can be mentally not good, analytically not good at working through things and coming up with strategies, and you can have someone tell you what to do – I hate it."
Of course, Serena Williams was infamously handed a code violation for receiving instructions from coach Patrick Mouratoglou during her 2018 US Open final defeat against Naomi Osaka, sparking a now infamous outburst against the chair umpire.
Stefanos Tsitsipas was another player suspected of off-court coaching from his father, which caused viral sensation, Daniil Medvedev, to call the umpire a "small cat" during their 2022 Australian Open semi-final.
Aside from a player’s coach or team captain issuing advice to a player or team, the other headline change is that players will have access to approved "Player Analysis Technology" (PAT) during periods when coaching is allowed.
According to the ITF, PAT "includes any equipment that collects, stores, transmits, analyses or communicates information on player performance, and may be a stand-alone device or incorporated within existing equipment."
So, what would this all mean? Players can choose from a range of approved PAT products to analyse their performance during a match.
Three-time Slam winner and Olympic champion Jennifer Capriati likes the idea of players having access to their performance metrics.
"I think players should be able to have a stat pad to see the analytics in real-time. A player should be able to figure this out instinctually, but sometimes what you think you are doing is not what’s actually happening. You need to see the data. Then use that to execute,” wrote the 1992 Barcelona gold medallist.
With off-court coaching having already been trialled for almost two full years, it’s hard to say what difference it has made or will make to the professional tour once it’s officially implemented in 2025.
One example where off-court coaching probably helped a player to win is Andrey Rublev's turnaround in the Madrid Open final. The Russian walked over to his coaching box before a crucial return game late in the second set, with Felix Auger-Aliassime leading by a set and serving to take them into a tiebreak.
Rublev's team clued him into the fact that “on the Ad (side) when he’s in trouble, he goes more down the T.” A few points later, when facing a set point and serving on the Ad side, Auger-Aliassime did exactly that. Rublev was there, and thanks to that bit of advice, he was able to rally in the third set and win the title earlier this year.
So far, there haven’t been any major coaching code violations since the rule trial, which indicates that umpires are letting everything go for now. Whether this trend will continue next year when the rule change becomes official, remains to be seen.
As for whether off-court coaching has evened up the playing field, again, it’s hard to say. Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz dominated the tour, sharing the four Grand Slams between them this year, and both are the definition of mental toughness.
Meanwhile, Stefanos Tsistipas, who fired his father from his coaching team in August, has had a somewhat lacklustre year by his lofty standards, missing the Nitto ATP Finals for the first time since 2019.
What is even more interesting, where there will almost certainly be an imbalance, is ITF players that don’t have the financial resources to bring coaches to all of their tournaments, creating a potential advantage towards those with the ability to hire and pay for a full-time coach.
This problem may be alleviated by the fact that most lower-ranked players outside the top 100 or even 200 without the financial resources to pay for a coaching team are most likely playing tournaments against players in similar financial positions.
Still, it’s a potential imbalance that goes against the ITF’s mandate of "making tennis fairer."
When looking at the rich history of the sport, while the game has seen dramatic changes in that time, the rules of tennis have remained largely unchanged for 100 years, with only four major changes in that time:
Tiebreaks (1970s)
Hawk-Eye electronic line-calling (2006)
Shot clock (2018)
Off-court coaching (2025)
While the first three felt like a natural evolution of the game in shortening matches (tiebreaks), reducing human errors in line-calling (Hawk-Eye) and stopping players from taking too long in between points (shot clock), off-court coaching has easily been the most contentious.
As for whether the rule will eventually be embraced by everyone, only time will tell. What is clear, however, is that off-court coaching is here to stay.
Beyond that, there could be scope for further rule changes around other issues like medical timeouts, equipment regulations or even in-game moments like lets, ball tosses and the scoring system itself.
Having said that, the few rule changes that have been made throughout the course of tennis history would indicate that further rule changes won’t just happen overnight, especially without a lengthy trial.
And as for whether off-court coaching will have a positive impact on the tour, it’s difficult to say and even more challenging to measure, given it’s not an exact science, player, coach and even umpire feedback will be crucial in evaluating what impact off-court coaching will have in 2025.
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