If I’m understanding correctly, a coach can’t give advice to his players during a match? Is this unique to tennis? I’ve never heard of something like this. Given that I watch mostly coached sports (basketball, baseball, etc.) with coaches yelling from the sidelines, this seems odd and nonsensical to me. Why can’t coaches coach during a match?
Coaches are allowed to come down to their players inbetween change overs in some tennis tournaments.
And my best guess at actually answering the OP is that there is very little downtime in a tennis match other than change overs for a coach to help their player out. Especially when silence during points is expected and somewhat mandatory.
I thought there were various regulations depending upon the specific tournament, aren’t there?
Additionally, specifically and rather off topic, with reference to Sharapova and Anastasia Myskina, there have been rumors before that Russian players don’t like the fact that Sharapova calls herself a Russian.
Right. This is true in some women’s tournaments. Yelling out to a player during the match or making signals happens all the time, particularly in the women’s game, but is against the rules. And it’s true that Yuri Sharapov is probably the worst current offender.
Tennis is an individual sport, and the people who drew it up had the silly idea that the players themselves should be able to figure out how to win their own matches. The Women’s Tennis Association allows coaching in all tournaments except the four grand slam events (the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and U.S. Open). The specifics are listed here.
I think the coaching sucks, and so do a lot of other fans.
Do they ban coaching all the time? Of course they don’t so why does it matter if they coach during an event? Golfers have caddies who help them with advice during a round.
In golf, a player can only get advice from his caddie during a match. His coach (or coaches) are not allowed to do so, nor is he allowed to accept any advice from anyone in the gallery! (“It broke two inches to the left when the fellow two groups ahead of you putted from there”)
He’s not even allowed to ask a fellow golfer what club he used/will use on his last/next shot. (He **is **allowed to sneak a peek at his fellow golfer’s bag to determine what club he just used - go figure.)
It depends on your viewpoint. Mine is very different and Marley has said basically what I would have.
To me the idea that that a player in an individual sport could get some help from another person with elements of the game he/she is playing during a game seems weird as hell.
You wouldn’t agree with a coach physically helping a player (a sprinter’s coach giving them a push, a boxer’s coach blocking some punches for him).
Most people seem to accept that sports have a mental or strategy element. So why the heck would the coach be allowed to mentally help the player during the game?
I can understand it in team sports where the coach is pretty much part of the team as much as the guys who go on the field, but not in an individual game.
Sport is just sport and the rules are made up rules and they can be whatever the sport decides they are going to be, so if coaching during the game is allowed then it is, and if it isn’t it isn’t, but I hardly think that failing to allow outside assistance at all in an individual sport is a strange idea.