Go figure. What is it about players and coaches and the musical chairs they play? The chopping and changing that goes on can make it next to impossible to keep track of who is with whom. It almost resembles a bad American daytime soap opera. I hasten to add I don’t watch them, but coach hopping has got to be similar.
The latest news is that Naomi Osaka and Sascha Bajin have split up. Tweets put out by each one told the story, well the result anyway. Miss Osaka first took the tennis community by surprise. NaomiOsaka大坂なおみVerified account @Naomi_Osaka_ Hey everyone, I will no longer be working together with Sascha. I thank him for his work and wish him all the best in the future.
He has been with Serena Williams, Vika Azarenka and Caroline Wozniacki and followed with his Tweet that thanked her for the time they had but that Tweet seems to have been removed.
When Miss Osaka and Mr. Bajin teamed up which was about December 2017, she was ranked outside the top 70. Since then she won her first big title, last year’s BNP Paribas Open. Then came the US Open and that sensational finish when she beat Miss Williams, then she backed it up with her win over Petra Kvitova in the terrific Australian Open final.
As we know that last victory gave her the world No.1 ranking and she became the first Asian player to reach the very top of tennis.
Why would you change a winning game? I thought just don’t do that.
The 21-year-old was the first woman since Serena Williams in 2014 to win back-to-back majors and the youngest since Martina Hingis in 1998.
If the results were not coming between Miss Osaka and Mr. Bajin, who was named WTA Coach of the Year in 2018, then one could understand why they would split, but this is different.
There was an irresponsible point made highlighting the split between Simona Halep and Darren Cahill after Miss Halep had won her maiden major. Sure, they parted company but it was not till later on, but the real background was not made clear. Simona and Darren remain the very best of friends and Darren has even helped her in an unofficial role, the reason they parted was simply because Mr. Cahill wanted to spend more time at home with his children who are still in school. It was made out that they had differences and that is not true.
The Osaka-Bajin split comes across as even stranger when you consider this quote from her just last September at the US Open: “He tries to make every day really fun and exciting. For someone like me, that sort of thinks sometimes things are boring, that’s good for me. I fight myself a lot, so he’s sort of been, like, the peacemaker.”
If I can put this out there, maybe it came down to compensation? Because he helped take her to the zenith so quickly, maybe, just maybe, he wanted to renegotiate his contract/arrangement and the response was “no”.
