Stefanos Tsitsipas appears to fire dig at Goran Ivanisevic after coach dug him out on TV | Tennis | Sport

Stefanos Tsitsipas has seemingly taken shots at his former coach, Goran Ivanisevic, following their rocky split last summer. The former world No. 3 hired the 2001 Wimbledon champion last summer, but their partnership lasted just a few weeks before they called it quits. While working together, Tsitsipas retired injured in the first round of Wimbledon, and Ivanisevic publicly called him out on TV.

“He wants, but he doesn’t do anything. All ‘I want, I want’, but I don’t see that progress. I was shocked, I have never seen a more unprepared player in my life. With this knee, I am three times more fit than him. This is really bad,” Ivanisevic, who previously worked with Novak Djokovic, told Sport Klub at Wimbledon last year.

Unsurprisingly, Tsitsipas and Ivanisevic parted ways shortly after that. The Greek star is now working with Greek Davis Cup captain Dimitris Chatzinikolaou, and with his father, Apostolos, who has coached him on and off throughout his career. Ivanisevic, meanwhile, has just joined Arthur Fils’ team, and the world No. 34 made it to the Doha final.

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Tsitsipas, who also enlisted Mark Philippoussis for brief stints in 2023 and 2024, has now fired a dig at retired top players who go into coaching, and aren’t that good at it – a likely jibe at Ivanisevic, and potentially at Philippoussis.

The world No. 30 told The National: “I feel homey with my team. I feel like they belong exactly where they’re at. And I feel like there’s no anxiety around my team. There was a period where there was anxiety. New faces, new members were added.

“And it created a lot of confusion instead of clarity. I regret certain decisions that I jumped into and took based on performance of their own in the past and stuff like that. What I’ve learnt through it is it doesn’t mean if you’re a good tennis player, if you played good tennis in your life, you can be a good coach.

“That’s what I’ve learnt from this whole process. And sometimes you got people that are right for you that weren’t necessarily the best players in the world, weren’t necessarily Grand Slam winners, weren’t necessarily legends of the sport. So these type of people sometimes can bring the best out of you instead of people that have a certain status in the game.”

When Tsitsipas initially hired Ivanisevic last summer, he said he liked the Croatian’s stern coaching style and admitted he needed to hear the hard truths Ivanisevic delivered. But the 27-year-old has changed his tune, explaining that he preferred Chatzinikolaou’s “curious” and “respectful” approach.

“It’s not necessarily that I need to work with an ex-Grand Slam champion, that he needs to improve all those things and it doesn’t guarantee that they know how to target it in the proper way,” he added.

“Dimitris will do a much better of a work by committing, dedicating, asking. The thing that I like about Dimitris, he’s curious, and I like working with curious people. People that pretend they know it all and people that have this sort of persona that I’m in charge and I know how things work, I don’t really enjoy that. I enjoy working with curious people, people that are open-minded and people that are willing to listen, but also I am willing to listen to them in a respectful manner.”

Tsitsipas was the defending champion at this week’s ATP 500 in Dubai but suffered a first-round defeat at the hands of Ugo Humbert. As a result, he will fall outside of the top 40 for the first time since May 2018.

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