'No More Private Jets': How Ferrero Switched From Zverev To Alcaraz
ATP
Carlos Alcaraz and Juan Carlos Ferrero are a team that not many can imagine splitting as everything works perfectly for them.
The Spanish coach started working with Alcaraz already when he was 16 years old and he has been accompanying him throughout his ATP journey until now. Ferrero and Alcaraz are a great team doing great things together not many know how they teamed up in the first place.
Ferrero, a former number one, has known his agent for a long time and he played a crucial role in their coming together. The Spanish coach revealed that in the talk with Tennis Majors when he said:
It was a big decision to take. I talked to my wife and my family. His family is a tennis family because his father was a pro, it helped me to get it. One thing that helped is that he lived one hour from my home.
And his manager, Albert Molina, is a guy I know for a long time. I have a very good relationship with him. To build a project from the beginning was something important for me. The family said OK.
Molina actually came to Ferrero first and proposed it. Molina was unsure whether Ferrero would accept because his previous coaching gig with Zverev was very different of what this would be, far less glamorous but Ferrero was okay with it because he saw the potential.
I had a proposal from the manager. He came, and asked if the project could work for me because it was the opposite of what I lived with Zverev in the past. It wasn’t anymore a life of private jets and high standard hotels. You could see that Carlos played really good but you knew you had to build up everything, build a team, prepare a family, etc. The most important, from that point was that we built an amazing team around him.
For Ferrero, the main selling point was that Alcaraz was really prepared for the grind. Juan Carlos became world number one by working really hard and as he explained, it's the only way he knows how to function.
Albert knows I am a very strict person. Hard work is the only way that I know. He thought that Carlos needed something like this, someone to put order in his path. He knew Carlos had an incredible talent but that they needed to build something to make him grow as a person and of course as a player.
