Elena Rybakina made waves in the tennis world in the early hours of the new year when she announced Thursday Down Under (Wednesday rest of the world) that her polarizing former coach, Stefano Vukov, would be joining her team for 2025.
The 2022 Wimbledon champion made the announcement in a post on her Instagram Story, saying she was “excited” to have Vukov join her team for the upcoming tennis season, which is already almost a week old. He confirmed a report from Russian tennis media personality Sofya Tartakova from two days earlier, in which she wrote that Vukov would travel to Melbourne on January 4 to support Rybakina at the Australian Open.
Rybakina and Vukov split last summer before the US Open after a five-year working relationship, which bore fruit including her first Grand Slam singles title, another runner-up finish at the Open Australia 2023 and a career world ranking. No. 3. But the Croatian's intense training style, where he could often be heard shouting incessantly at Rybakina from his place in the stands, had already drawn criticism from fans and other coaches, including Hall of Famer Pam . Shriver, who is currently part of the team around Olympic silver medalist Donna Vekic.
-Rybakina had previously vehemently defended Vukov against such criticism, including in a lengthy social media post after her run at the Melbourne final two years ago, where her behavior first went viral, but she was reluctant to discuss the split in detail during the final months of last season. At the year-end WTA Finals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, she announced that 2001 Wimbledon champion Goran Ivanisevic, Novak Djokovic's former coach, would work with her in the future.
