Hubert Hurkacz names Ivan Lendl and Nicolas Massu coaches

Ivan Lendl (Charlie Cowins, Wikimedia Commons)

For the second straight day a Polish tennis player has made tennis headlines. One day after Iga Swiatek was suspended one month for taking the drug trimetazidine, the top Polish men’s tennis player, Hubert Hurkacz of Wroclaw, has named two former high profile tennis players as his new head coaches. They are eight-time singles champion Ivan Lendl of Ostrava, Czech Republic and 2004 Olympic gold medalist Nicolas Massu of Vina del Mar, Chile.

Hurkacz is currently ranked 16th in the world. He has been ranked as high as sixth, a seeding he had this past summer. Hurkacz’s prior coach since 2019 was Craig Boynton of Massillon, Ohio. Hurkacz split with Boynton in August.

Hurkacz’s best grand slam result was reaching the semifinals of Wimbledon in 2021. The tournaments Hurkacz have won are the 2019 Winston-Salem Open, the 2021 Delray Beach Open, the 2021 Miami Open, the 2021 Moselle Open, the 2022 Halle Open, the 2023 Open 13 in Marseille, France, the 2023 Shanghai Open, and the 2024 Estoril Open in Portugal.

Lendl has previously coached Andy Murray of Great Britain and Alexander Zverev of Germany. While coaching Murray, the British tennis star won the United States Open in 2012, and Wimbledon in 2013 and 2016. Ironically, Murray was recently named the new coach for Novak Djokovic.

As a player, you could make the argument that Lendl was among the best players in the world in the mid to late 1980s/early 1990s. He won 94 career titles. His eight grand slams were the 1984, 1986 and 1987 French Open, the 1985, 1986, and 1987 United States Open, and the 1989 and 1990 Australian Open.

Massu previously coached Dominic Thiem of Austria from 2019 to 2023. Under Massu’s tutelage, Thiem won the 2020 United States Open.