British Johanna Konta has ended her ten-month partnership with Michael Joyce and the coach has already joined Eugenie Bouchard‘s team.
After her first-round exit at the US Open, the world No.45 Konta, who started the season ranked No.9, said that her partnership with Joyce would continue “as long as we feel it’s mutually beneficial”. The mutual benefit apparently lasted for only three more weeks and three short-lived appearances at tournaments (second-round exit in Tokyo and first-round exits in Wuhan and Beijing).
This is the 27-year-old Konta’s third broken partnership with a coach in three years. Last year she parted ways with Wim Fissette and in 2016 she split with Esteban Carril.
The 45-year-old Joyce, who is most famous for his seven-year coaching of Maria Sharapova, already has a new gig. As Tennis Life reports, the American is accompanying the 2014 Wimbledon runner-up Bouchard in Israel, where she’s undergoing some treatment on her foot. The 110th-ranked Canadian is finding time to enjoy the Middle East, especially the mud from the Dead Sea. Bouchard and Joyce will first test their cooperation at the BGL BNP Paribas Luxembourg Open next week.
Konta needs a head coach and certainly not a coach who will try and model her play on that of Sharapova. She should have stayed with Esteban Carril who got her back into the top ten raking when she had far more variety to her game. Konta’s current way of playing is not good enough, has no touch and no flair and is very one dimensional – constant hard hitting forehands and backhands to the baseline (which often go out since changing to Michael Joyce) just aren’t good enough to compete at the top of the game – and she’s boring to watch when she’s unable to get returns of serve into play.