INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Conchita Martinez, one of the queen bees of tennis, had done just about everything there was to do in the sport.
She had won Wimbledon. She had coached Garbine Muguruza to win Wimbledon. She had won five Federation Cup titles as part of Spain’s women’s national team, going on to captain the team and then to run the entire tournament, by which time it was known as the Billie Jean King Cup. She found time to captain the men’s national team in the Davis Cup, too.
But last spring, a new type of opportunity arrived: molding a teenager with the chance to be a generational talent. Did she want to coach Mirra Andreeva, the Russian already making waves on the WTA Tour at 16?
Muguruza was in her early twenties when Martinez helped guide her to the Wimbledon title in 2017. There’s only so much a coach can do at that point. Coaching a teenager is a chance to help define their tennis for the better, perhaps forever. It’s also coaching a teenager … yikes!
Not really. A year later, Andreeva, 17, is the toast of tennis. She is the ascendant player on the WTA Tour, on a 10-match winning streak that brought her a debut WTA 1,000 title in Dubai, UAE, and took her into the top 10 of the rankings for the first time. Coco Gauff did not win one of those titles, one…
