As world No7 Elena Rybakina battled to keep her hopes of securing her first title of 2025 in her semi-final clash with teenage sensation Mirra Andreeva alive, it was not members of her own family that watched her in the Dubai heat from the stands.
Instead, fans on social media noted that the former Wimbledon champions was being watched by another patriarch – the father of her former coach, Stefano Vukov. Vukov, 37, was not in the stadium, nor will he be after receiving a near-unprecedented one-year ban from the WTA after being found to have violated their code of conduct in a move which sent seismic tremours through the tennis world.
Vukov had been handed a preliminary suspension in January, shortly after returning to Rybakina’s camp – and just six months after the partnership abruptly ended in New York. As unsettling as the suspension had been, few would have believed it would be so swiftly upheld, particularly as Rybakina continued to deny she had ever been mistreated by the Croatian. Vukov has also denied the allegations.
But as swiftly as the ban had been put in place, a bombshell report by The Athletic replete with details about the ‘mentally abusive behaviour’ Rybakina has reportedly been subjected to by her coach hit like a second wave.
The report revealed that Vukov had been allegedly accused of ‘mentally abusing’ Rybakina, as well as making her cry, calling her unpleasant names, and harassing her in New York, ahead of last year’s US Open, shortly after he had been dismissed as her coach.
Elena Rybakina has seen her coaching relationship with Stefano Vukov come under immense scrutiny in 2025
The Croatian was provisionally suspended from coaching activities by the WTA in January before the ban was upheld in February
The 25-year-old has repeatedly stressed that Vukov has never mistreated her in their five-year partnership
Vukov and Rybakina are also reportedly in a romantic relationship with one another, with the pair thought to have shared a hotel room in Melbourne during the 2025 Australian Open. But their relationship, WTA chief executive Portia Archer reportedly wrote in a letter to Vukov informing him of the tour’s decision, was a ‘toxic’ one.
The WTA’s investigation, while not prompted by Rybakina herself, was informed by information supplied by her family, friends, and other figures currently in and around the WTA, including coaches. Altogether, they form an upsetting patchwork of an thornily entangled partnership.
Vukov and Rybakina first started working together in early 2019, with the Croatian taking over from her former coach Andrei Chesnokov to travel with her on the tour. Vukov had a burgeoning WTA pedigree, having working with players including Renata Zarazua, Sachia Vickery, and Anhelina Kalinina – with Zarazua stressing this month that she had a respectful relationship with her former coach.
The impact Vukov had on Rybakina’s game was impactful and swift: within a year, Rybakina had climbed into the top 30 and had two titles to her name. The sport’s shutdown amid the Covid-19 pandemic came at a particularly inauspicious time for the partnership, with Rybakina having reached four finals in the five tournaments she played before the tour ground to a halt.
Rybakina’s steady rise continued after the pause and with the passing seasons, the Kazakh player became an increasingly reliable presence in late stages of major tournaments. Spurred on, it seems, by Vukov’s complementary dynamic, fire to her ice. Rybakina’s coach conducted practice sessions in constant dialogue with his player, replete with criticisms and corrections.
‘(She expects) energy (from me), definitely,’ Vukov said in 2023. ‘She is very stoic and calm, keeps the emotions inside. Even today, Elena told me that she needs the energy from me.’
But their apparent study in contrasts paid dividends in 2022, with Rybakina triumphed at Wimbledon, calmly dismembering a jittery Ons Jabeur with her trademark immaculate service game. Pinnacle reached, Vukov made a decision which raised more than a few eyebrows in and around the circuit, getting Rybakina’s name tattooed on his arm with a reminder of her victory.
Rybakina laughed the decision off as a bet from 2020 – that she had forgotten until Vukov turned up bearing her permanent mark. While Aryna Sabalenka joked that she was keen on securing that kind of devotion from her coaching team at this year’s Australian Open, a more common view suggests that the gesture was a stiflingly melodramatic one.
A man believed to be Vukov’s father (right) watched Rybakina with her current coach Davide Sanguinetti (left) in Dubai
The player’s greatest triumph came at Wimbledon in 2022 when Rybakina beat Ons Jabeur
Vukov’s longstanding partnership with Rybakina is seen by player and coach as based on their opposite communication styles
Vukov got a tattoo of the win shortly after – which surprised Rybakina when she first saw it
To journalist Ben Rothenberg, it was ‘tricky and messy and uncomfortable’, ‘not normal’ to ‘put your boss’ name on your arm’. Rothenberg made the comments in the wake of the 2023 Australian Open, over six months after Vukov revealed his new ink, and in the midst of increasingly noisy speculation over the suitability of their partnership.
The previous year, coaching restrictions from the player boxes had been relaxed, allowing for more interaction between a player and their box during the match itself. For Vukov, this meant more opportunities to tweak, to shape, to adapt Rybakina’s game. Or to many, to criticise.
Vukov caught particular flak for his aggressive coaching during her time Down Under, with a frustrated Rybakina telling him to shut up during a match in Adelaide, and vocal criticism in her semi-final and final match-ups in Melbourne catching the attention of a number of experienced figures.
Pam Shriver – the coach of world No20 Donna Vekic and herself subject to abuse early in her playing career by her coach Don Candy – shared on social media that she hoped Rybakina would find someone who ‘speaks and treats her with respect at all times’.
Former Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli had also reached her limit, sharing on Match Points podcast that she had hit her limit of what she was willing to watch of Vukov’s treatment of Rybakina.
‘The way Rybakina’s coach is talking to Rybakina on the court is just not something I can accept. I just can’t take that any more,’ Bartoli said. ‘To see someone going hard at her in such a negative way – and I’ve seen that in the past myself, much more at events when I was with Jelena Ostapenko when she was playing those events as well, in some practice courts when there is no cameras – he is behaving in some ways I can’t accept.’
But Rybakina was quick to defend her coach, describing his comments from the stands as in line with his ‘passion’ and that only a coach who knew her as well as Vukov did would know what works.
‘I may be quiet on court and in general, but inside me is a competitive athlete who wants to achieve great things – and Stefano has helped me greatly in this way,’ Rybakina’s statement read. So please disregard any fake news to the contrary.’
The 37-year-old was criticised for his castigating coaching from the stands at the 2023 Australian Open
Former player and coach Pam Shriver was among those to note that Vukov’s behaviour in Melbourne had crossed the line
Rybakina had reportedly become an increasingly separate figure on the tour over the last year
Struggling with a slew of physical illnesses and insomnia Rybakina was forced to bow out of the US Open after the first round
But however much Vukov may have helped Rybakina in the past, the next year and half was a tumultous one, with Rybakina struggling with injury and illness – including battling Covid twice – which forced her withdrawal from a slew of tournaments. The first half of 2024 was particularly difficult, as the player explained after her quarter-final exit at the French Open to Jasmine Paolini.
Health issues, she explained, ran the gamut from allergies, gastrointestinal illnesses, lingering back complaints, and insomnia. Rybakina, already a more subdued figure, looked withdrawn and wan. After Wimbledon, the Kazkhstan Tennis Federation released a formal explanation after she withdrew from the Paris Olympics, citing bronchitis. Then, she was unsure when she would return to action.
Sleep issues persisted when she featured at the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati, reportedly causing such a problem with her game that during defeat to Leylah Fernandez in the second round, she had a hard time following the score, and had to be told where she should serve from.
But then: a shock. Rybakina took to Instagram to share a short message updating her followers that Vukov had left her set-up, formalising a dismissal that behind the scenes, the coach was reportedly having a hard time digesting.
Vukov is believed to have turned up against Rybakina’s wishes at her hotel in a bid to see her and convince her to change her mind and, as the Athletic later revealed, left her over one hundred calls and a stack of text messages as he attempted to cajole her into rehiring him. Despite an early exit from the tournament – another early retirement due to injury – Rybakina held firm and took a step back.
But with her return to competitive play at the WTA Finals came another optimistic note to end the year on. Rybakina hired Goran Ivanisevic, another ex-Wimbledon champion and the coach any big-serving talent like her would kill to work with. Newly available after calling time on his decorated spell with Novak Djokovic, the hiring of Ivanisevic seemed a sign to all that 2025 would be different.
Instead, their time together was wispy and brief. Vukov appeared back in the fold at a World Tennis League event – a non-WTA tournament – in December, watching from the stands, and ahead of the Australian Open, in a message eerily similar to the one that had bid him farewell, Rybakina announced that he was back. The shock felt by her fanbase was only akin to that felt by Ivanisevic. Not consulted and unwilling to be drawn into the increasingly murky state of affairs between former-slash-current coach and his alleged romantic partner, the ‘trial period’ between Ivanisevic and Rybakina came to an untimely end.
The situation is a deeply ambiguous one. Rybakina has been full-throated in her defence of Vukov since the ban was announced, and frustrated that she appears to have been cast as the victim. The WTA have taken a strong stance in their banning of Vukov without complaint from the player, and on a circuit where players are not formally employed by their tour, the decision does not have easy precedents.
Vukov made his way back into Rybakina’s circle in December at non-WTA event World Tennis League 2024
Over the summer, Rybakina’s mother (right) allegedly sent Vukov an email asking him not to make her daughter cry
The player is now working with Sanguinetti – a Vukov appointment – while Vukov’s role has mutated into something akin to her representative
Rybakina’s isolation is palpable. Already a more separate figure, as noted in the report, after years of working closely with Vukov, last week she spoke of her sadness that none of her peers had supported her over the ban.
‘No one offered any support,’ Rybakina said after her first-round defeat of Moyuka Uchijima in Dubai, before adding that she ‘honestly (doesn’t) need (it)’ and that she does not have ‘very, very close friends on tour’.
From Rybakina’s perspective, it’s understandable that she might feel that way, but fellow WTA players are likely finding the situation a jarring one. Former world No1 doubles player Rennae Stubbs shared on her podcast this week that she had spoken to a number of coaches and fitness trainers working with current players that have seen Vukov’s manner and behaviour with Rybakina and ‘felt the need to tell the WTA how he’s acting and reacting to her’ because ‘that’s not a work environment anyone wants to be in’.
World No3 Coco Gauff said this week that while she knew Rybakina ‘doesn’t like the decision, I know WTA also has the right to protect her’, citing past examples of former players including Shriver and Jelena Dokic – if not by name – who had spoken out years after their careers had ended about the toll abuse had taken on their professional lives and wellbeing.
Former world No1 Iga Swiatek was equally sympathetic to the decision, saying: ‘Every PT, every coach, they need to kind of accept the Code of Conduct when they want to be on WTA, so for sure I hope WTA is doing everything to make it a safe environment.
‘I know there was a top player in Abu Dhabi (two weeks ago) that saw him there and went up to her and said “what the f***”. Players do care,’ Stubbs added on Thursday. But perhaps not in the way Rybakina would wish them to.
For now, the lines are drawn and neither side is set to back down. Rybakina’s WTA-approved coach, Davide Sanguinetti, was appointed by Vukov who, as per the Tennis Podcast, is thought to be acting as her agent – something which the WTA sanctions allow for, even if he is banned from her matches, practice sessions, and staying with her in player hotels.
But future challenges loom. Tennis Australia followed the WTA’s lead and upheld his ban from the Australian Open, but Grand Slam tournaments do not fall under the tour’s jurisdiction, but the ITF’s instead. And that means Wimbledon. Whether Vukov will be allowed to sit in the stands at the site of his partnership with Rybakina’s greatest triumph remains to be seen.
