Should on court coaching be legalized in professional tennis?

Point:
On-court coaching should be legalized during matches
by Granville Swope

With the era of amateur tennis long gone and the open era here to stay, it seems an archaic rule that coaches not be allowed to coach during a professional tennis match (or junior events, for that matter.) In most other sports coaching is not only allowed but relied upon. Sports like football, baseball, basketball, gymnastics, you name it, there is a coach in every corner, on every sideline, in every dug-out. I can hear you now, "but those are team sports and tennis is an individual sport." Ok, what about boxing, track & field, figure skating, race car driving? Coaching is allowed in these individual sports, so why not in tennis?

Let's not forget that during Davis Cup tennis competition, coaching is as fundamental as the approach shot. Coaches bring a dynamic to the sport of tennis that is unparalleled in the human athletic experience. Coaches can tap physical and emotional reserves that most athletes cannot, or will not access if left alone. How many times do you see tennis players weeping after a hard fought victory or defeat. Was it a Davis Cup match? Probably. Coaching brings the emotional element to the surface and, in doing so, brings greater depth to the competition. When it is all said and done, people go to tennis matches to see great tennis. If coaching can turn a match around, capture victory from the jaws of defeat (or defeat from victory), why not?

OK, now the reality check. How many times have you seen coaches in the stands communicating with their pupils “on the sly”? A wink of an eye here, a pumped fist there. This is coaching isn't it? It happens whether or not there is a rule to prevent it.

Let the coaches coach. It will bring the best tennis to the courts. It will reveal subtleties of the sport that might otherwise go unnoticed. It will reveal counter-strategies. It will make the sport more interesting, involve more people and personalities. It will add a new fourth dimension to an otherwise three dimensional sport.

Counterpoint:
On-court coaching would only serve to taint a pure game
by Dan Jenkins

Once you allow coaching into the game, from the stands or on the court, you don't add new dimensions to an otherwise pure sport - you corrupt it. Tennis is far more entertaining when the athletes play the proverbial chess game themselves. It gives fans true insight into how a player thinks, how they independently perform under pressure and how well they adapt to changing conditions with limited outside influence. Part of the attraction that makes tennis so unique is a player’s dependence on his own brain power to right the wrong, turn the tide, make the incredible comeback or even willingly “tank”.

The very argument that tennis should join the ranks of other individual sports that "rely" on coaching is a total crutch. To mention boxing, track and field, and figure skating as synonymous examples to make this point is simply an unwitting attempt to get us to join the ranks of the benighted. I ran track and field for some time and I don't ever remember having a coach tell me to stuff my lungs back into my chest 4000 meters into the three mile. You're on your own and the coaching stops once you step to that line - as in figure skating and gymnastics too. As for boxing, let's not laugh too hard. Boxers thinking for themselves the entire bout? Even with a baby sitter in his corner Mike Tyson ended up with a mouth full of ear.... Face it, help is a prerequisite for stepping in the ring. I'm going to give pro tennis players the slight edge in the intelligence department, with the possible exception of Jeff Tarango and his Wimbledon kiddy tantrum a few years back.

Winning at tennis is unarguably defined as more than who physically plays best. What fans don't often see is the monumental mental struggle between two players trying to get inside the other’s head. Whoever clamps the vice down harder usually wins. McEnroe was (and still is) a master at it. Allowing coaching during matches would only serve to corrupt the pure minded battle going on between two players, each hoping to use the other to move up, or maintain their position, in the pro circuit food chain. Once you let a set of rested and influential eyes legally interfere with a match, you've taken the advantage away from the more intuitive, detailed oriented player and moved it to the sideline and to whichever player has the better sniper in the grass.

It also appears that the obvious has been ignored. What about those players, particularly qualifiers and lower ranked journeymen, who don't travel with coaches? I'm sure those same advocates of legalizing coaching during play would have no trouble accepting a literal 2 (coach and player) against 1 (player who can't afford a coach) set up? Yeah, I think Andre Agassi and Brad Gilbert would make a very entertaining match up against occasional qualifier Goichi Motomura. Let's face it, this scenario wouldn't simply be unjust, it would be flagrantly unfair, siding advantage to whoever had the most money for the best quality help.

There will be no ending paragraph. Instead, I leave you with a parody; a playful ridicule of a future Wimbledon final, fifth set, ninth game changeover:

Coach: Pete, you have to break him right here.
Pete: Give me a plan then.
Coach: Continue to hammer him cross court, to his backhand, then float a drop shot on the fifth or sixth shot. He can't run forward well right now. I noticed he tweaked his knee a little two games back when diving for a volley.
Pete: I didn't notice.
Coach: That's why I'm here, to win the match for ya. You don't need to think anymore.
Pete: I hadn't even thought about that.....
Coach: Now you're getting the hang of it!

Send us your thoughts on this subject.... woodytennis@yahoo.com