{"id":1476,"date":"2013-12-27T14:20:03","date_gmt":"2013-12-27T19:20:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=1476"},"modified":"2013-12-27T14:20:03","modified_gmt":"2013-12-27T19:20:03","slug":"the-2014-coach-smackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/27\/the-2014-coach-smackdown\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2014 Coach Smackdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On the heels of the announcement that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=BorisBecker\">Boris Becker<\/a> will coach <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=NovakDjokovic\">Novak Djokovic<\/a>, today we learned that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=StefanEdberg\">Stefan Edberg<\/a> will be part of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=RogerFederer\">Roger Federer<\/a>&#8216;s team for the first ten weeks of the season. \u00a0There will be more men&#8217;s Grand Slam champions in Australian Open coaching boxes than in the singles draw.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve probably wrenched all possible commentary out of the head-to-head matchups of today&#8217;s slate of top players, so why not turn to their coaches instead? \u00a0Steve Tignor got us started:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Big 3 coaches&#39; head to heads: Edberg &gt; Lendl 14-13; Lendl &gt; Becker 11-10; Becker &gt; Edberg 25-10. Last one&#39;s a surprise to me.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Steve Tignor (@SteveTignor) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SteveTignor\/status\/416610934904205312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 27, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I put together a list of <a href=\"http:\/\/tennisabstract.com\/reports\/h2hMatrixCoaches.html\">15 coaches and advisors<\/a>, including Becker, Edberg, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=IvanLendl\">Ivan Lendl<\/a>, along with such names as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=JuanCarlosFerrero\">Juan Carlos Ferrero<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=GoranIvanisevic\">Goran Ivanisevic<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=MichaelChang\">Michael Chang<\/a>. \u00a0Many of them never played each other, since not all of their careers overlapped, but many of them did.<\/p>\n<p>Becker, Edberg, and Lendl figure most prominently in these matchups, while Chang, Ivanisevic, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=SergiBruguera\">Sergi Bruguera<\/a> also played plenty of matches against their fellow coaches.<\/p>\n<p>Novak&#8217;s new coach barely edges out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=AndyMurray\">Andy Murray<\/a>&#8216;s coach as the king of his generation of advisors. \u00a0His 66-38 record against these 14 colleagues is slightly better than Lendl&#8217;s 47-28. \u00a0In eight of ten head-to-heads, Becker came out even or better.\u00a0But one of those, as Tignor pointed out, is the matchup against Lendl, which the Czech leads 11-10. \u00a0If coaches can possibly accomplish such a thing, this pair might make Djokovic-Murray matches a little more interesting.<\/p>\n<p>The other unfavorable head-to-head of Becker&#8217;s is my favorite quirky stat of the lot. \u00a0Twice in April 1993, when Becker was ranked fourth in the world, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=FrancoDavin\">Franco Davin<\/a> defeated him. \u00a0That&#8217;s a little better record for Davin than <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=JuanMartinDelPotro\">Juan Martin del Potro<\/a>&#8216;s 3-11 record against Djokovic.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/tennisabstract.com\/reports\/h2hMatrixCoaches.html\">Here&#8217;s the whole set of head-to-heads.<\/a>\u00a0 Don&#8217;t worry&#8211;in a few days the regular season will be back in full swing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the heels of the announcement that Boris Becker will coach Novak Djokovic, today we learned that Stefan Edberg will be part of Roger Federer&#8216;s team for the first ten weeks of the season. \u00a0There will be more men&#8217;s Grand Slam champions in Australian Open coaching boxes than in the singles draw. We&#8217;ve probably wrenched &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/27\/the-2014-coach-smackdown\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The 2014 Coach Smackdown<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coaches","category-head-to-heads"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}