PARIS – Tennis throws up surprises from time to time, but one could say it has just reached a whole new level with Roland Garros delivering the story of a player whose coach abandoned him without warning in the middle of a Grand Slam tournament.
‘He just got on a flight and left. And he sent me a message this long,’ explained Spain’s Alejandro Davidovich-Fokina on Wednesday, as he gestured with his hands to illustrate the rather lengthy WhatsApp message he received from Argentine Mariano Puerta, his now former coach.
Davidovich-Fokina lost in the second round of the French Open to the Argentine Thiago Tirante, but it was another Argentine, Puerta, who left him ‘groggy’.
“He told me he was feeling unwell, that he was going back to the hotel. And he simply took a flight to Miami. He’s an adult and can make his own decisions. I don’t know if I’m going to reply to that message. But as a person, he let the whole team down.”
The Spaniard already has a new coach, his compatriot José Manuel Clavet, and Puerta did not respond to CLAY’s enquiries to get his side of the story.
Davidovich-Fokina, a player with a great deal of talent but also a temperamental streak, insisted he has no idea what happened. He denied any arguments or tension with the Argentine since he took him on as coach in January this year and mentioned that Puerta had even blocked his wife on WhatsApp.
The 26-year-old Spaniard, ranked 23rd in the ATP world rankings, made headlines in 2025 by reaching four finals and losing all four despite having several match points.
On Wednesday, he expressed regret at having hired Puerta. ‘I thought he was a good person, but after this I discovered he had done the same thing a couple of times before. It was my fault for hiring him.’
Puerta is well known in Paris. Defeated by Rafael Nadal in the 2005 Roland Garros final, he tested positive for doping twice. The second ban, following the doping incident in that final, was for eight years, later reduced to two.
Despite repeated questions about whether there had been tension or any issues between the two in the preceding months, Davidovich-Fokina, the first tennis player to be abandoned without warning by his coach in the middle of a Grand Slam tournament, denied that anything of the sort had happened: ‘Nothing happened.’
