By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Friday, October 28, 2022
Caroline Garcia has parted ways with coach Bertrand Perret, the man who helped guide the Frenchwoman to a career renaissance in 2022.
The decision comes as a surprise to many, given just how formidable this particular coach-player pairing was in 2022. But Perret has his reasons...
“In recent weeks there have been problems. They ended up spoiling the atmosphere and I preferred to stop. I do this job for fun and there was less,” Perret said, according to Bertrand Lagacherie of L’équipe.
News broke on Thursday when an Instagram post by Perret referred to the split.
“After the Guadalajara tournament, I decided to stop collaboration with Caroline,” he wrote. “We spent beautiful and amazing moments together… an incredible year!”
Perret was not exaggerating when he spoke of an incredible season. The Frenchman helped Garcia reconnect with her lost aggression and had a close-up view as Garcia caught fire and rode a titanic hot streak through the summer. The talented Lyonnaise started the year at 74 in the rankings, but ten months later she is in a totally different place.
Garcia will appear at next week’s WTA Finals as the World No.6.
The Frenchwoman won titles at Bad Homburg, Warsaw and Cincinnati, and reached the US Open semifinals.
She did so by playing aggressive, all-out attacking tennis on the front foot – changes that Perret, a former coach of Ons Jabeur, Peng Shuai and Tatjana Maria, helped her embrace and implement.
It’s rough timing for Garcia, but Perret says that it was better to cut ties immediately.
“I would have liked to go to the Masters, yes,” Perret told L’équipe. “But I'm not a man of pretense and when it's over, it's over. There was no point in prolonging it artificially. I preferred to cut rather than tear.”