Carlos Alcaraz Goes His Own Way

After a career year, ATP No. 1 Alcaraz ends his longtime partnership with coach Juan Carlos Ferrero.

The biggest headline of this offseason dropped Wednesday morning: Carlos Alcaraz, the newly reascendent ATP No. 1 and champion of this year’s French Open and U.S. Open, has parted ways with his longtime coach Juan Carlos Ferrero.

Alcaraz, 22, had worked with Ferrero, 45, for more than seven years, basing himself at the Ferrero Tennis Academy in Villena, about an hour and a half from Alcaraz’s hometown. Ferrero had been at the helm for all the biggest wins of Alcaraz’s career, including his six major singles titles, and won his second ATP Coach of the Year award less than a week ago.

But as I wrote about on Bounces earlier this year, there was one big illustration of clear tension between the new-school player and his old-school coach which made it clear that not everything was as harmonious as it should have been on a team that was so successful. Alcaraz and Ferrero had made it to the mountaintop together, and seemed poised to keep climbing to even further heights, but the paths each wanted to take diverged too far apart, ultimately.

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