"Tough to watch" - Andy Roddick and insider dissect Elena Rybakina's "weird situation" involving banned coach Stefano Vukov

Elena Rybakina’s decision to reunite with her coach Stefano Vukov has raised eyebrows in the tennis fraternity. The WTA provisionally suspended Vukov last week and is investigating what could be a potential breach of its code of conduct.

Rybakina, the Wimbledon champion in 2022, had parted ways with Vukov ahead of the US Open last year and appointed Goran Ivanisevic as her new coach.

However, she surprisingly announced last week that the 37-year-old was going to rejoin her team and a report in The Athletic subsequently stated that the WTA had the Croatian coach under provisional suspension.

Rybakina, however, told a press conference earlier this week that Vukov had not mistreated her during their time together.

On the latest episode of “Served with Andy Roddick” on Spotify, Roddick was speaking to sports journalist Jon Wertheim about the issue, and the latter recalled how Jelena Dokic had gone through a similar situation, which she detailed in her documentary titled Unbreakable.

“You'll remember that she had this obnoxious father who was physically abusive. And everybody… it was 20 years ago, I remember everyone would sort of whisper about it and it was sort of one of these open secrets. And there was an incident at the US Open. She, out of fear, would publicly defend him. There was a lot of thinking within the WTA, ‘What can we do here where the player herself is supporting her father?’" said Wertheim (36:20 onwards).

He added that the situation gets complex because the coaches are independently appointed by the players, and "It's not like the WTA is employing Vukov and can say 'you're fired'".

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Insider questions WTA's role in the Elena Rybakina situation

Wertheim further questioned what role the WTA could play in such a situation where the player defends his/her coach for wrongdoing.

“One of the things that's tough to watch is that it was sort of unclear who had the authority to do anything when the player herself was supporting her father. And the same themes sort of ring here when Elena Rybakina is holding press conferences and saying, ‘I don't know what this is all about. This is somebody I've made a conscious decision to include him on my team. He's never been disrespectful to me or mistreated me.' What can a tour, well-intentioned as it may be, what can a tour do? And I think that that's kind of where we are right now.”

Elena Rybakina with coach Stefano Vukov at the 2023 Wimbledon. - Source: Getty

Roddick weighed in on the topic by expressing his confusion about why Elena Rybakina ended her association with Vukov in the first place if things were okay all along.

“It was seemingly not surprising that they broke up. I thought it was pretty shocking that even four or five months later, it's not three years later where the results are bad and maybe I had a good thing on court. This is four or five months later. Why even break up if it was all great? There are a lot of questions that simply we won't know the answers to.”

Roddick added that Ivanisevic must be in a tough spot, considering reports suggested that he was kept in the dark about Vukov's return to the coaching set-up.

Elena Rybakina, the World No. 6, was last in action at the United Cup where she lost to Iga Swiatek and will have considerable interest surrounding her game when she takes the court at the Australian Open next week.