World No 1 Jannik Sinner’s coaches bizarrely snubbed for 2024 ATP Coach of the Year award
Both Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz’s coaches have bafflingly been left off the list of nominations for the 2024 ATP Coach of the Year award.
According to the ATP, “the ATP Coach of the Year award goes to the ATP coach who helped guide his players to a higher level of performance during the year. It is nominated and voted by fellow ATP coaches.”
Most would agree that Sinner has taken his game to a higher level during the 2024 season and he is expected to be named ATP Player of the Year as he started the year at No 4 in the ATP Rankings, but finished as the year-end No 1.
The Italian won his maiden Grand Slam, the Australian Open, and followed it up with the US Open while he also went undefeated at the ATP Finals. He won eight tournaments in total and enjoyed a win-loss record of 73-6.
Darren Cahill and Simone Vagnozzi were the pair behind his success, but they have been overlooked for the ATP Coach of the Year award.
The Australian and Italian, of course, surprisingly won the award last year when it was Novak Djokovic’s coach Goran Ivanisevic who was snubbed.
Ivanisevic was nominated after he steered Djokovic to the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and ATP Finals trophy, but the award went to Cahill and Vagnozzi after Sinner won four titles and finished runner-up at the ATP Finals.
And it is not just Sinner’s mentors who have missed out as Alcaraz’s coach Juan Carlos Ferrero is also absent from the list.
Alcaraz won the French Open and Wimbledon and finished the year at No 3 although some will point out that the Spaniard’s level has dropped off this year when compared to the previous two campaigns.
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Instead, the nominations for the 2024 ATP Coach of the Year went to Xavier Malisse (Alexei Popyrin), Emmanuel Planque (Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard), Michael Russell (Taylor Fritz), Brad Stine (Tommy Paul) and James Trotman (Jack Draper).
Popyrin started the year at No 40 in the rankings, but finished at No 24. He also won his maiden ATP Masters 1000 title at the Canadian Open and claimed wins over Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev this year.
Mpetshi Perricard is one of the rising stars of the game as he was outside the top 200 at the beginning of 2024, but now sits at No 31 having won his maiden title at the Lyon Open in May and his second at the Swiss Indoors Basel in October.
Fritz finished at a career-high No 4 this year and reached his maiden Grand Slam final at the US Open – finishing runner-up to Sinner – while he also lost to the Italian in the ATP Finals.
Paul sits at a career-high No 12 with the American winning three titles this year while Draper rose from 61 to No 15 on the back of winning his first titles at the Stuttgart Open and Vienna Open.
