The ATP Coach of the Year award for 2023 went to Jannik Sinner’s coaching pair of Darren Cahill and Simone Vagnozzi. In 2023, Sinner, who is 22-years-old, clinched his maiden ATP Masters 1000 title in Toronto, reaching the championship match at the Nitto ATP Finals and also became the first Italian man to end a season in the top-five of the ATP rankings.
Sinner finished the year holding a 64-15 record and also got to his maiden major semi-final at Wimbledon. He got four tour-level trophies and received the ATP Fans’ Favourite Award.
Cahill and Vagnozzi were nominated alongside Craig Boynton (Hubert Hurkacz), 2022 winner Juan Carlos Ferrero (Carlos Alcaraz), Goran Ivanisevic (Novak Djokovic) and Bryan Shelton (Ben Shelton). Fellow coaches voted on the nominees and winner in this category of the ATP Awards for this year.
But Djokovic expressed discontent with the decision and asked what more could his coach and former Croatian player Ivanisevic do to win the accolade. “Congratulations to Darren and Simone for a great season with Jannik,” he wrote.
“Goran, I guess we need to win 4/4 slams for you to maybe (just maybe) to be considered coach of the year, Winning year end #1,3 GS and WTF and making history of this sport is not enough, my dear coach,” he added.
As well as winning three Grand Slams this year, Djokovic also got eight of 12 ATP titles which he entered and lifted a seventh career ATP Finals trophy, drawing level with the most-ever wins alongside Roger Federer.
Meanwhile, even former player Greg Rusedski echoed similar sentiments. Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, he wrote, “Strange one match away from the calendar slam. 24 majors and counting. Darren Cahill has done a great job with Sinner, but only one man deserves coach of the year and that is Goran. Harder to stay at the top than to get there ,especially at 36 years young.”
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