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If we know anything about professional sports, it’s that coaches are hired to be fired.

And nothing lasts forever.

The other thing we know is that it’s almost always said to be “by mutual agreement”, but rarely ever is.

But the difference in tennis these days, compared to even a decade ago, is that these changes aren’t made at season’s end, with a new coach hired for the pre-season to give the player and coach an opportunity to bond and get to know each other.

These days, it happens all season long. At any time.

At this US Open, it’s already happened twice. And the two cases couldn’t be more different.

Just before the start of the tournament, WTA No. 4 Elena Rybakina announced that she and longtime coach Stefano Vukov were no longer working together, after five years.

And on Friday, Craig Boynton and Hubert Hurkacz both announced on their social media that their five-year association also is done.

A mutual parting, of course. But when the coach says he’s “looking forward to the new opportunities”, it means that he doen’t have another job.

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The dynamics between these two relationships – both lengthy by tennis standards these days – couldn’t be more different.

Solid, calm partnership

For Hurkacz and Boynton, 60 – an experienced, well-respected coach who has also worked with Jim Courier, Mardy Fish, John Isner and Steve Johnson, Jack Sock and Donald Young as a USTA national coach – there wasn’t much visible that you would think would lead to a split.

Hurkacz has had a scattered summer since Wimbledon, where he injured his knee and had to have surgery. He missed the Olympics, and looked pretty good in Montreal in his first tournament back.

But he’s at No. 7, just a few weeks after reaching a career high No. 6 just before Montreal. He’s a mature player who isn’t going to get exponentially better in his career. And the two seemed like a solid, low-maintenance partnership from the outside.

The 27-year-old lost in three sets to Jordan Thompson in the second round on Thursday.

And the next day, the announcement came.

Rybakina and Vukov: a lot of drama

With Rybakina and Vukov, who has coached her since he took over for Andrei Chesnokov in Feb. 2019, it’s been more of a roller coaster.

To say the least.

Vukov, 37, never broke the top 1000 as a player and hasn’t coached anyone of note other than Rybakina. Who has always said that without him she wouldn’t be there she is today – one of the best players in the world.

But a number of women who are around on site and have watched the way he operates – from the players’ box, or on the practice court – including your Open Court correspondent – have been critical of his treatment of her.

All of which was defended on Rybakina’s social media, notably after the 2023 Australian Open.

This year has been a trial. The shy smile that you’d see from the 25-year-old Russian-turned-Kazakh had all but disappeared. Press conferences have been a litany of short answers followed by baleful looks over to her agents after each as if to say, “Can you stop this now?” Or worse.

And her health seems to have deteriorated alarmingly, with multiple withdrawals and walkovers attributed to “viruses” or “illnesses”.

Many people have been genuinely concerned. And it certainly doesn’t seem to be without cause.

Acute bronchitis knocks Rybakina out of Olympic event

Rybakina announced she had acute bronchitis, and as a result had to give up on playing the Olympics.

When she returned in Cincinnati two weeks ago, Vukov wasn’t with her.

She crashed out to Leylah Fernandez in a match that featured 20 aces – and 17 double faults.

A few days before the US Open, Rybakina announced the two had parted ways and thanked him for his “work on court”, although she offered up no additional details.

Rybakina won her first-round match against Australian qualifier Destanee Aiava, 6-1, 7-6 (1).

That’s a great draw. And before she was to play another great second-round draw in qualifier Jessika Ponchet, she announced she was withdrawing due “to her injuries”. Unspecified.

It was her eighth withdrawal or walkover of the season.

There are plenty of rumours swirling right now about Rybakina, and Vukov, and how it ended. Some are way out there; some might have some basis to them.

The biggest takeaway is that there appears to have been … drama.

One that may or may not be factual is the notion that Vukov’s removal from the coaches’ page on the WTA Tour site indicates some sort of ban, although we weren’t able to get confirmation about whether or not there WAS a ban.

Which is par for the course. There have been coaching bans in recent history that never made the light of day, even though we know they happened. The WTA has rarely, especially in recent years, been willing to confirm them. They are about as untransparent as they come on … just about everything, preferring to drop word salad and bland, opaque gobbledygook on most issues.

The way it was explained to Open Court by the WTA, the coaches listed on that page either are members of the WTA Coaches’ Program (whether they’re currently working with a WTA player or not), or they’re working with a top-20 player and opted to have a profile page made.

Vukov was the latter, but he was not the former. And as such, once the announcement was made that he was no longer coaching Rybakina, his page was removed.

As … pokey as the WTA can be with information on its website in general, the coaching information is usually very up to date.

In the end, only the two people involved really know. So it would be irresponsible to speculate.

The main thing is that now that the Vukov era is over, hopefully Rybakina can find her health and her form and get some positivity around her with her next coaching decision.

Again, though, these are tricky decisions to make mid-season. There aren’t many high-quality coaches who also are sterling human beings hovering around the WTA Tour orbit on a good day.

And in the middle of the season, those coaches usually are already gainfully employed.

Mid-season coach firings almost the norm

These two players are hardly the first to end things with their coaches in the middle of the season.

There are as many reasons as there are players. But generally speaking there is no patience to think long-term; if the results don’t come immediately, the cord gets cut.

Before these two, the last high-profile coach sacking was … two weeks ago, when Stefanos Tsitsipas relieved father Apostolos of his coaching duties (not for the first time) two weeks ahead of the US Open.

Maria Sakkari stayed with former coach Tom Hill for many years – even when opinionators opined that she had plateaued with him, given his limited experience at the top level before he began working with her.

Finally, they parted ways in Feb. 2024 and she hired the experienced David Witt. They began well, and she raved about him.

Sakkari made the Indian Wells final and backed it up with a solid run to the Miami quarterfinals. And then she made the Charleston semifinals.

Just two months later, he was gone. It doesn’t appear Sakkari has found a full-time coach replacement yet.

After Wimbledon, Elina Svitolina parted ways with Raemon Sluiter, the coach she hired when she retirned from maternity lave in the spring of 2023. It was hugely successful by any measure. And then he was gone.

After her surprise win at the US Open in 2001, Emma Raducanu parted ways with Andrew Richardson. And she has gone through … a number of coaching changes since then.

Two weeks after she won the 2019 Australian Open, Naomi Osaka fired coach Sascha Bajin. Bajin had been named the WTA coach of the year in 2018.

In April, 2023, the struggling Dominic Thiem parted ways with coach Nicolas Massu. After the 2024 Australian Open, Benjamin Ebrahimzadeh also went for the high jump.

Holger Rune has hired and fired Boris Becker, Patrick Mouratoglou (a few times), and there might be a few more before he’s done.

Karolina Pliskova went from Bajin, to Bajin again, to Zeljko Krajan with Conchita Martinez, Rennae Stubbs, Tomas Krupa, David Kotyza, Daniel Vallverdu and Jiri Vanek on that list.

Those are just a few examples.

It is a very tough business to be a top-level tennis coach.

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