The young British coaches blazing unlikely trails on the WTA Tour | Tumaini Carayol

Five years ago, Andrew Bettles’s dreams were only about himself. He was around the 1,000th best tennis player in the world and searching for more as he took a cheap flight to a series of tournaments in Sri Lanka. He arrived to desolate tennis courts with no fencing, clumps of earth masquerading as clay and the realisation that those dreams were far away.

“You take your big travel bag with you to the courts because you can’t leave it in the hotel as you only paid for the night. You go down a break early and you’re looking to see if your bag’s alright and no one is in it,” he says with a laugh. “It just wasn’t right. I felt like I needed to stop.”

When players at the lowest rungs of the game step away from their playing careers it is usually time to enter the real world. Instead, the 27-year-old from Somerset is now the head coach of the world No 5, Elina Svitolina. 

Bettles has since been joined at the big tournaments by Thomas Hill, a 25-year-old from Birmingham who coaches the world No 20, Maria Sakkari of Greece. Their youth is conspicuous in an industry where top players trade from the same small pool of accomplished, older coaches in search of success.

“It’s a small world and people just choose who to work with within that world,” says Bettles. “I think there’s a lot of really good coaches who just haven’t had the opportunity because you can’t just apply for the job. That agent might know someone and the agent hires the same people they know.”

Breaching the confines of the tennis world means taking advantage of every last opportunity. After graduating from Boise State University and finishing his playing career, Bettles received a surprise call from Nigel Sears. He was coaching Ana Ivanovic and she needed a hitting partner for the 2015 US Open. Everything moved quickly from there.

“By the third week, I was suddenly on my own with her in Beijing. I was doing on-court coaching out of nowhere. I had no experience. I think it just came from what I saw from the side of the court. I really enjoyed the buzz of trying to get someone better and working in that team environment. From there, I was like: ‘Wow. I want to do this’. I tried to learn as much as I could.”

The steadiness of Bettles’s rise since the 2015 US Open has been remarkable. Ivanovic retired in 2016 so he was became assistant coach to Svitolina, who he played juniors with, in 2017. By the end of their first year together, the Ukranian had risen from No 14 to No 3. One year later, he became her head coach.

Maria Sakkari and coach Thomas Hill talk to the media during a training session.



Maria Sakkari and coach Thomas Hill talk to the media during a training session. Photograph: Rob Prange/Shutterstock

As Bettles and Svitolina thrived, Hill finished his own nomadic journey during his playing career, passing through the intense Bollettieri Academy in Bradenton, Florida, then Argentina, Britain, Spain and Pepperdine University in California. After graduation, Hill was drinking in a bar and preparing for life after tennis when he received an unexpected call from Maria Sharapova’s agent, Max Eisenbud, who he had never met. Sharapova wanted a hitting partner in Bradenton immediately.

“It was: ‘I don’t know what to do with myself, I don’t know what profession to do’ decision,” Hill says. “I was gaining weight big time and it was more just: ‘I can get some exercise.’ Anyone with a brain would go and hit [with Sharapova] because it was such an incredible experience. Even just to have it as a story to tell your mates at the pub.”

As Hill began to train with others at the academy, one of his lower-ranked players was Danielle Collins. She first asked him to travel with her and then later, despite a marketing job and law school on the horizon, he agreed to be her coach. He had no prior coaching experience, yet he helped her rise from 206th to 41st.  “It was tough,” he says. “A lot of people didn’t know who I was, they didn’t know who she was. They were, to be honest, quite disrespectful about her. I’d ask for practices and it would be ‘no’. It’s tough because they look at it as: ‘Who’s this kid who thinks he can coach?’” 

His partnership with Collins taught him many things, including how abruptly these relationships can end as she terminated their partnership after eight excellent months. He thought his journey was over at 23, but people were watching. As soon as he was free, the offers came in. Sakkari was ranked 49th when he became her assistant coach in June 2018 and now he is her head coach.

“The one thing I’ve learnt with Maria [Sakkari] is that it could end at any moment,” Hill says. “I hope it doesn’t. But just to keep pushing each other to keep being the best that she can be and me the best coach that I can be. That seems to be the best way to approach it. The moment you become a bit complacent, that’s when you’ll probably get fired.”

Neither Bettles nor Hill thought they would ever be here, yet here they are. They both say that although they do not have the experience of a multiple slam champion, perhaps their youth allows them to form a closer bond with their players on and off the court, to understand how they feel and to easily build vital trust. The goal now is to be part of it all until they too are old.

source: theguardian.com