At the beginning of a bright new season in January, during a post-match press conference in Melbourne, Simona Halep was charged with assessing all the essential coaching decisions she had made over the years on the way to becoming a champion.“I was lucky because I found the right people almost all the time,” she said, shrugging. “It was not that difficult, let’s say. I just went with my feeling, with what I felt, so what I felt, I did. I think I took the best decisions for my career.”
Halep discussed the subject of coaching with more confidence than any other player interviewed, yet within weeks her team had splintered. In February, five months after a surprise split from her longtime coach Darren Cahill, Halep announced the dissolution of her partnership with the Romanians Daniel Dobre and Adrian Marcu. She said she would play on without a coach for her personal growth and to “see how much I can do on my own”.
