Garbiñe Muguruza battled through an extremely tense three-set match with American Christina McHale on Friday at the Miami Open, and while she closed the door on McHale after saving a match point in the second-set tiebreaker and rallying from a set down in the decider, an on-court coaching episode with coach Sam Sumyk opened the door for the WTA’s on-court coaching rule to come under fire from a prominent commentator and coach.
Here’s the incident:
This was aired live during today’s broadcast of the match and it left Lindsay Davenport, who was commentating along with Brett Haber for Tennis Channel, aghast. Davenport is also the current coach of Madison Keys, who won in straight sets later in the day, so she has some skin in the game.
First thing Davenport noticed was Sumyk’s muffling of the mic when things got tense in with Muguruza. It’s not supposed to happen but it frequently does.
“I am so glad to know—we saw it last night, where a coach came out and he didn’t have the mic on,” Davenport. “Sam again, not using it. I’m happy that I know that now, that we don’t have to use it.”
But Davenport quickly moved on to the crux of the matter: Are fans really gleaning anything vital from these televised interludes, and is it worth it to air the players’ private, tortured moments just to satisfy the need for entertainment?
“Interesting that she was almost in tears, trying to apologize,” Davenport said. “The whole thing was uncomfortable. I don’t know, I think they have to rethink this. This coaching stuff, with the mics, it does not reflect well on the players the majority of the time. It’s not going out there and talking X’s and O’s all the time and maybe the WTA needs to think about shielding some of these players from visits like that.”
Muguruza and Sumyk are notorious for their conflicts during their on-court coaching sessions, yet clearly Muguruza feels that it’s worth it to risk another viral video moment in order to have Sumyk come out to the court and help her get through a difficult moment.
Sure it’s entertaining to watch meltdowns, we’re drawn to this stuff as fans because it does give us a very direct line to personality, something that moves us as much as forehands and backhands—likely more—but is that the best way for women’s tennis to sell itself?
“In theory it sounds great,” Davenport said. “Go out there and help them with tactics. But we’ve seen over the last few year that it is not always about that. These are personal moments now that we have no business being a part of. It’s turning into a bit of a circus now. There are no clear rules, there are so many matches where the mic is not being used. Then we get pieces of players not handling it well.”
Would tennis be better-served with no on-court coaching at all? Or would the sessions be better with no microphone so the player and coach could talk freely without the rest of the world listening in? Both would probably be better than what we have right now, but how to keep the masses entertained?
Muguruza advances to face China’s Zhang Shuai in the third round. Madison Keys, coached by Davenport, rolled past Viktorija in straight sets.