Talk About Tennis 2.0

Novak has left the PTPA

JTContinental wrote: ↑Sun Jan 04, 2026 10:41 pm Novak has left the PTPA

Uh,didn't he help found it?

I thought he was IT. Him and Pospisil.

Kafelnikov's mouth never shuts,so once in a while, the right things come out of it.

I forgot all about the PTPA until I saw Novak's post

What law enforcement body would have jurisdiction over something like this? None come to mind for me.

You can see where they filed at the bottom here: https://ptpaplayers.com/legal-actions-filed/

Mostly anti-trust complaints.

I'm sure the Southern District of New York will get right on it, not much else happening there.

Of all the sports in which you should not have a bad back, this one is tops.

skatingfan wrote: ↑Sat Jan 24, 2026 3:30 am

One of the replies:

jovanmilic97 OP
•18h ago
It's all the combo in this too:

Ostarine – building mass & recovery

LGD-4033 – muscle strength

GW501516 – endurance & metabolism (cancerous too)

I guess if you are going to cheat, man, CHEAT! Don't go for some wimpy aspirins.

Women’s tennis tour to investigate misconduct allegations against Peyton Stearns’ coach
Matthew Futterman and Charlie Eccleshare
Jan. 26, 2026 7:51 pm EST

MELBOURNE, Australia — Two former WTA players, including the 18-time Grand Slam doubles champion Pam Shriver, last week made official complaints about Rafael Font de Mora, the new coach of 24-year-old American Peyton Stearns, to the WTA Tour’s director of safeguarding.

The WTA is investigating those complaints, which concern Font de Mora’s alleged misconduct and inappropriate relationships with players during his previous time coaching on the tour, the former players told The Athletic.

Font de Mora returned to the tour to start this season, after an absence of several years.

The other former player who filed a complaint, and all the other sources in this story, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, and to protect relationships in tennis. They said that they reported Font de Mora now after learning that he was back on the tour, out of concern for Stearns’ well-being, as well as that of other players.

Font de Mora has denied any wrongdoing. Stearns, who lost to Amanda Anisimova Saturday in the third round of the Australian Open, spoke highly of Font de Mora earlier in the week.

Shriver’s complaint relates to Font de Mora’s relationship with a player he coached in the 1990s and early 2000s in Arizona starting when she was 13.

The player, Meghann Shaughnessy, separated herself from her family to move into Font de Mora’s house, along with other tennis players, when she was 14 and he was 25. When she was 19, they became engaged. Shriver’s career ended just as Shaughnessy’s was beginning. Shriver’s coach, Don Candy, who died in 2020, was 50 and Shriver was 17 when their relationship moved beyond coaching. Shriver has said she now understands that the relationship, which lasted five years, was sexually and emotionally abusive.

She observed Font de Mora and Shaughnessy’s relationship in her capacity as a television broadcaster after she retired.

Shriver remains active in the sport, most recently as a broadcaster and coach. While in Melbourne for this year’s event, she said she passed Font de Mora in one of the tournament hotels, and then informed the WTA about his history.

Font de Mora has said that his relationship with Shaughnessy was platonic until she turned 18, but according to reports at the time, Shaughnessy’s parents twice tried to remove her from his coaching. Concerns that the relationship was “inappropriate” also influenced a USTA decision not to award Shaughnessy funding, according to a source close to the organization. Font de Mora and Shaughnessy never married, and they ended their relationship in 2005.

Shaughnessy has not alleged any wrongdoing by Font de Mora and declined to be interviewed for this story beyond confirming that she and Font de Mora never married.

Shriver’s complaint submitted to the WTA Tour does not add new information to what was already known about Shaughnessy and Font de Mora’s relationship.

The second complaint, from the player who requested anonymity, concerns Font de Mora’s conduct as her coach. The player worked with Font de Mora early in her career.

She said he exhibited aggressive, physically and verbally abusive behavior toward her, including swearing in her face and hitting balls aggressively in her direction. Her account was broadly corroborated to The Athletic by a third player who also worked with Font de Mora.

In addition to reporting official complaints to the WTA Tour, Shriver also filed a complaint with the U.S. Center for SafeSport, which oversees athlete safety. SafeSport did not respond to a request for comment, and generally does not comment on complaints.

Friday, Font de Mora responded to questions about the complaints via email, in which he copied civil attorney Karen Moskowitz.

“Your questions are statements that are not true,” he wrote. “I coordinate my training and sprints with professional trainers and biomechanist(s) and I am a very positive coach.”

Font de Mora also said that contacting Stearns and Kathryn Whartenby, Stearns’ trainer, would give “an exact idea” of his methods. He provided their contact details.

The Athletic has asked Whartenby for comment, and will update this story if she responds. Font de Mora also advised contacting Stearns’ mother to see how happy she was with his training methods. She did not respond when contacted via text message.

During an interview Thursday, after Stearns’ second-round win over Petra Marčinko, Font de Mora, 57, had said he could not discuss the complaints to the WTA Tour because he had not been told about them.

He said he has known Stearns since she was around 10, and has advised and occasionally coached her since then. He will now travel with her full-time on the WTA Tour, after a training block ahead of the 2026 season.

In a news conference after her win Thursday, Stearns said that she met Font de Mora when she was 12 and began hitting intermittently at his academy in Glendale, Ariz.

Before that news conference, Stearns’ representative, Enric Molina, communicated through tour representatives that Stearns did not wish to be asked specific questions about Font de Mora’s behavior and past relationships with players.

Asked during it whether she was familiar with his history on the WTA Tour, Stearns, the 2022 NCAA champion and world No. 68, said: “Yeah, I mean, it’s been around, but, I think right now, just not really going to dive into that, no comment.”

She said Font de Mora had pushed her to focus on herself more during her time working with him.

“One thing he’s been big on is, you know, what can you control?” she said of Font de Mora’s coaching.

“You know, I can’t control the wind today, so what are you going to do? What can you control about it? You can control your attitude, you can control your emotions, you can control how intense your feet are, you know, get to the ball because it’s windy.

“That’s been huge because it’s not about the results,” she said.

The complaints are being handled by Lindsay Brandon, the WTA’s director of safeguarding, according to two sources briefed on the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.

For years, the tour largely stayed out of player-coach relationships, but it has recently taken a more proactive approach to complaints. Penalties for complaints upheld by the WTA Tour can include coaching education programs, revocation of tournament credentials, and bans from tournament sites and facilities.

In 2025, the WTA banned Stefano Vukov, the coach of 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina, for one year after finding that he engaged in “abuse of authority and abusive conduct” toward her. Vukov, who denied wrongdoing, appealed the ban. It was lifted last summer after arbitration.

The WTA does not disclose complaints it receives, nor how many are upheld. At the time of writing, the U.S. Center for SafeSport’s Disciplinary Database lists 102 individuals in tennis subject to sanctions. Their sanctions range from restrictions on contact to permanent ineligibility to coach.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the WTA said: “Reports and investigations into alleged violations of the WTA Code of Conduct and Safeguarding Code are confidential and not subject to public disclosure.

“When the WTA receives such a report, it takes the matter seriously and follows its established rules and procedures in accordance with the WTA Safeguarding Code.”

The player who worked with Font de Mora early in her career said that he verbally and physically abused her, including swearing in her face and hitting balls aggressively in her direction.

She also said that Font de Mora proposed a contract that would have had him take significantly more than the 10 percent of prize money, and 20 percent of sponsorships, that is typical in player-coach contracts. The player declined the contract after being advised that this wasn’t proportionate. These experiences led her to stop working with Font de Mora.

She also described Font de Mora engaging in similar abusive conduct toward other players.

A third player, who has not made a complaint but was being coached by Font de Mora at the same time, corroborated her description of abuse.

She also said that Font de Mora exercised coercive control over her, limiting her contact with family members. He would keep players on his side by swinging from being verbally abusive to being supportive or overly generous after a session. The player who made the complaint recalled this pattern as well.

The third player, who was in her mid-teens at the time, described sessions in which players were worked until they were on the verge of physical collapse. She said that no other coach made her play as long or as underfueled, and that Font de Mora’s training was more extreme than any other coach’s. The player who made the complaint described similar experiences. She said she was kept on court for far longer than with other coaches before or since. They were also made to do punitive sprints for missed shots, both players said, including in extreme weather conditions, the player who made the complaint said.

The third player also said Font de Mora would make frequent comments about her weight. The coach controlled her diet, she said, and she developed an eating disorder while working with him.

She said the subsequent decision to stop working with Font de Mora was in part made by her parents, who the player said were deliberately sidelined by the coach so he could have more control. The Athletic has contacted the player’s parents and will update this story if they respond.

“He does have good drills and is a competent coach,” the player said.

“But the path he left behind in terms of destruction of people’s lives is pretty significant,” she said, in reference to her experiences and those of other players who told her that their careers suffered badly after working with Font de Mora.

A different coach, who the player who made the complaint to the WTA worked with later in her career, recalled her being “shellshocked” by her experience with Font de Mora shortly after she stopped working with him, though he did not recall specific details of Font de Mora’s conduct.

By early 2022, Font de Mora was coaching Kylie McKenzie, a once-promising junior who was allegedly sexually assaulted by another coach at the USTA Training Center in Orlando in 2018. The coach, Anibal Aranda, was not prosecuted, but the USTA fired him.

McKenzie sued the USTA for failing to protect her. In May 2024, a civil jury awarded McKenzie $9 million in compensatory and punitive damages, to be paid by the USTA. The organization has appealed the ruling.

After McKenzie stopped training with the USTA, she returned home to Arizona and began training in Glendale, at Font de Mora’s academy, ITUSA.

In the winter of 2022, Font de Mora sent McKenzie a document, entitled “Kylie Options — Trying to find solutions to continuous attitude issues.”

In the document, which The Athletic has reviewed, Font de Mora outlined four options for continuing their coaching partnership, three of which involved payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The fourth involved a legal dispute about owed earnings, which Font de Mora wrote could include “potential breach of non-disclosure settlement with the USTA” if the matter went to court.

It is not clear, on the face of that letter, what Font de Mora meant. But in response, McKenzie retained an attorney, Bob Allard. Allard interpreted Font de Mora’s reference to “potential breach of non-disclosure settlement with the USTA” as a threat to bring litigation that would result in public disclosure of the details of McKenzie’s alleged sexual assault at the USTA Center, which at the time were confidential.

In February of 2022, Allard sent Font de Mora a cease and desist letter, terminating Font de Mora’s professional relationship with McKenzie, “especially due to a recent extortion and/or blackmail attempt that was recently made.”

There was no further contact between Font de Mora and McKenzie, who did not allege the kind of abusive conduct claimed by other players.

During Stearns’ match Thursday, with the American and Marcinko battling through a tight second set, Font de Mora had words of encouragement and criticism after nearly every point.

Sometimes it was instructive. “Body forehands,” he advised her before some of her serves.

“That’s so good,” he told her after she won points; “You love this,” he reminded her when she lost them.

“You have to be aggressive … Compete with her … Come on … Compete,” he said.

Stearns remains in the doubles competition in Melbourne. She and Hailey Baptiste are scheduled to play No. 4 seeds Zhang Shuai and Elise Mertens in the third round Tuesday.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/699982 ... t-de-mora/

"Concerns that the relationship was “inappropriate” also influenced a USTA decision not to award Shaughnessy funding, according to a source close to the organization."

I'm sure there is more complexity there, but it's wild that that the USTA knew of his abuse and instead of an investigation or a suspension for him chose to damage her career.