Emerging tennis prospect Thanasi Kokkinakis has ended a 12-year association with his coach Todd Langman in favour of a new collaboration with Ben Mathias, the Queenslander behind the impressive recent rise of Newcombe medallist Sam Groth.
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One of just three teenagers ranked among the top 100 in an increasingly mature-aged men's game, 19-year-old Kokkinakis started working with Langman at the age of seven, adding the former Wimbledon semi-finalist Jason Stoltenberg to his team in a part-time advisory role for 2015.
With Stoltenberg recently appointed as Australia's Davis Cup coach, Kokkinakis has ended the extended professional relationship between the world No.80 and the suburban coach who first invited the seven-year-old clad in basketball boots onto the court. The reality was that, more than a decade later, Langman had perhaps taken Kokkinakis as far as he could.
"I guess it just ran its course, and Thanasi just feels like he needs a new voice, so we just decided probably a week or a week and a half ago to just go our separate ways," Langman told Fairfax Media.
"I still want him to win slams, but I just won't be there, so it was disappointing, but I wish him all the best. He's got a bright future and he's moving on to a great coach, so I'm sure they'll do well.
"I think to do what we did was actually pretty incredible, to keep it going as long as we did, and obviously I was a younger guy and we've sort of grown up together and as he progressed as a tennis player I sort of progressed as a coach as well. I didn't see it coming.
"Obviously this year we had Jason Stoltenberg come on board sort of as a mentor coach for me, and Jason's Davis Cup role is taking up a little bit more time for him. You don't want too many voices involved, and I think that was sort of where it was heading, so rather than have too many they just felt like a fresh voice was something that they wanted to try."
Langman helped his fellow South Australian to two junior grand slam singles finals, and most recently a 13-19 record this year at Tour level as Kokkinakis almost halved his ranking, to join Croatian Borna Coric (No.44) and South Korean Hyeon Chung (51) and the youngest trio in double figures on the ATP's rankings list.
Touted as a future superstar, the level-headed Kokkinakis also played his first live Davis Cup matches, famously recovering from the brink of defeat against Czech Lukas Rosol in the opening round when called up in place of the injured Nick Kyrgios. He is Australia's fourth-ranked man behind Bernard Tomic, Kyrgios and Groth, his new doubles parter.
Kokkinakis had flagged In an interview with Fairfax Media last week that Langman may be travelling with him less next season, and that he hoped Stoltenberg and new Davis Cup captain Lleyton Hewitt would both play major roles in his development. Stoltenberg said yesterday he and Hewitt would both travel for around 15 weeks next year working with Australia's established and emerging players.
