After a few months of rest, Goran Ivanisevic is ready for a new professional adventure alongside the Kazakh tennis star Elena Rybakina. A new collaboration that should help the former 2022 Wimbledon winner to relaunch her career after the last difficult months, marked by various physical problems.
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In an interview with Tennis Majors, Novak Djokovic's former coach revealed the reasons that led him to work with the 2022 Wimbledon champion.
"There were other offers, but I think I chose the right one for me, for Elena's style of play and potential, but also for her personality. Elena is calm and I can't wait to start. I think it will be great. I don't know her personally, but my friend Zule is her fitness coach, we worked together with Tomas Berdych, and in general she is said to be a great person. Game-wise, she has a great serve, she is tall, she hits hard and plays aggressively, she won Wimbledon just like me. I feel like I can teach her something. I mean, she is already WTA No. 5, but I think she can win more Slams, that's for sure," said Ivanisevic.
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The Croatian coach then went into more detail about what he thinks he needs to work on: "First of all, we need to get to know each other better. I won't go into too much detail, but she has room for improvement in every aspect of her game. She can achieve better results. It will be interesting. I know that many people found it strange and were surprised by our collaboration, but not me: I needed a turnaround after Novak. With Novak, I won everything, so I'm looking forward to this new challenge. Honestly, during my time on the ATP Tour, I never imagined myself in women's tennis, but at the moment I don't see myself in men's tennis."
On Rybakina's ongoing physical problems, Goran added: "I'm sure there is a reason behind it. When I dive deeper into the whole process, then I will know more. But you know what they say: To hell with the coach who can't succeed on both tours!"
Ivanisevic concluded by talking about the Kazakh's rivals, analyzing: "I've always enjoyed watching the women's matches as well, I've been on the Tour for 13 years now. The top four or five players have been there for a long time, some younger ones are emerging, but the top 10 has been more or less the same for a while. I mean, tennis is tennis, men's or women's, forehand, backhand, serve. At the end of the day, I think it's the same, even though everyone tells me the WTA Tour is completely different. However, I will see my old gang, as most of the events are in the same cities for both Tours. Again, I'm happy to take on something new, to see how different it is, because it is different. I need to experience it first hand."
The Kazakh tennis player, absent from the Tour since the US Open and also fresh from the end of the collaboration with her historic coach Stefano Vukov, returned to compete at the WTA Finals, where she was eliminated in the round robin after losing to Jasmine Paolini and Qinwen Zheng and after winning with Aryna Sabalenka. Right on the media day of the tournament that is being played at the King Saud University Indoor Arena in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), Elena had announced the name of her new coach, who is not in Riyadh with her but will start following her - as mentioned at the beginning of the article - from the winter preparation in view of the 2025 season.
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"I can announce that my new coach will be Goran Ivanisevic. He is a great champion, he has a lot of experience. I can't wait to start. For me it was important to improve. We got in touch thanks to the help of the agents and we decided to start working together. I certainly wanted to work with him, and I'm sure he wanted it too since his response was positive. So it's fine like this. It's very interesting for me, something new. I worked with the same coach for a long time, now I want to learn with Goran but I'm really happy. Now we'll see what we can do together," said the Kazakh.
