The end of Alcaraz?

Yesterday, in news that shocked the tennis world, Carlos Alcaraz split from his long-time coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero (Juanki). The way I found out was very annoying. I was flying from England to St Vincent via Barbados, and I was somewhere over the Atlantic. I had paid for WiFi and had fallen asleep. When I woke up, I saw a message from a friend about the news, but the WiFi had stopped working and wasn't fixed for what felt like an hour or so, which was a bit nerve-racking. 😅

I'm now in St Vincent with Internet, and I've been practising my Spanish with the veritable rumour mill that's been running since yesterday. I want to use this post here to record what's known, what's rumoured, what I think, and what I expect. It'll be interesting to come back to this next year or later to see how things changed.

The background

Unless you're not me, or you're a very changed me, or you're reading this way in the future and Alcaraz's career has not gone the way I hope, you already know that Carlos Alcaraz is the current world #1 and the main reason I watch tennis today. You can read more about that in this earlier post I wrote.

Alcaraz has been with his coach, Juanki, for his entire professoinal career. He's seen as a big key to Alcaraz's success, and they also seem to have what seems to be a warm father-son relationship. They've both said as much, and every time Alcaraz wins a big tournament we see great pictures that are consistent with that. Both Alcaraz's and Juanki's Instagram posts announcing the split give a good sample of this.

The news

The news was announced by both on Instgram posts, which I linked above. They're both in Spanish, but Tennis365 helpfully translated them both to English. Here's Alcaraz's and here's Juanki's. All other news yesterday was based on those statements. Here's the ATP's basic story on it, for example.

The statements give the clear impression that the break came from Alcaraz's side. One big part of that is this bit at the end of Juanki's statement:

I wish I could have continued. I am convinced that good memories and good people always find a way to cross paths again.

The rumours

I'll just recount the main two bits of rumours:

• It happened suddenly and unplanned in the last two days during negotiations about Juanki's contract for next year (Jose Moron on Twitter in Spanish).
• This is more Alcaraz's father's doing than Alcaraz himself. Alcaraz Sr and Juanki had been at it for a while. (Clay Magazine via Jose Morgado on Twitter).

My Reaction

This upset me more than I expected. 😅 Maybe more on that later. (Not.)

My initial reaction is captured in some WhatsApp messages I sent to the friend who first messaged me aobut it while the plane's WiFi was down:

I think the power dynamic in a tennis coaching relationship is always weird. The player is the employer, but the coach is generally older and more knowledgeable. I thought that the father-son like relationship that Juanki and Alcaraz had would fix some issue with that, and maybe it did, but maybe it also created more issues. One guess is that it might breed over familiarity and encourage Juanki to say things to Alcaraz (maybe about him playing too many exhibitions or caring too much about other random sportspeople) that he wouldn't otherwise say. Or maybe, with juanki being his coach since he was a child, there's too much paternalism.

Or maybe Alcaraz is being an idiot. Maybe he's frustrated at the toss-up with Sinner and he thinks he needs to mix things up.

Though at this stage – just before AO [the Australian Open] – is bad, no? And have they announced a replacement yet?

Though he does have that second coach who's there when Juanki isn't. (Maybe that's part of it: Juanki doesn't always want to travel cuz of his family in Spain.)

But suffice to say, my odds of him winning the AO have just plummeted

I still l think his chances of winning the Australian Open next month are much lower than they were before the split, and I'd be surprised if he did well by Roland Garros (in May-June). I'm also somewhat in despair at the prospect of a 2026 season completely dominated by Sinner and his dry (to my eyes) tennis, or, longer term, of Alcaraz never winning another grand slam and Sinner going on to win 30+ with his dry, efficient, tennis. 😖

In terms of actual predictions, I think this will be the beginning of a rocky period for Alcaraz. If the rumours about it being his actual father vs his tennis father are true, then this will be like a family breakup, and tennis players (like all other people) tend not to do well with those kinds of distractions. This also would mean that he can't just re-hire Juanki since that'd likely alienate his father and maybe also his older brother (who's on his team). On top of that, all of Alcaraz's current team, other than his older brother, are from Juanki's academy. Even if contractually they continue with Alcaraz there must be a negative human element to it all, and so he might have to change his entire team, which would be very disrputive.

Put those together and my overall expectation is that he'll have a rough 2026. If that happens, hopefully he'll be spurred by consistently losing to Sinner, or consistently not making it to him in tournaments because he's losing to others, to sort things out, maybe by bringing back Juanki. And by 2027 he'll be back in baby 🐐 race with Sinner.