Flavio Cobolli appears to be working hard in the off-season, eager to build upon a hugely impressive recent campaign.
There, the Italian rose into the top 20 of the ATP rankings for the first time in his short career, whilst also helping guide Italy to a third-straight Davis Cup triumph.
The latter capped off a fine year of progression, but he will be far from finished there.
He and his team will know better than anyone the work that still needs to be done, and practising with Carlos Alcaraz should certainly help highlight those areas of improvement.
Flavio Cobolli shares what he learnt from practising with Carlos Alcaraz
Flavio Cobolli has been gifted that very opportunity over the last few days it seems, as the first player to spar with the Spaniard since Wednesday’s bombshell news.
Then, it was revealed that Alcaraz and Juan Carlos Ferrero had split, thus ending a coaching relationship that had spanned the player’s entire career.
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Speaking about playing with someone as talented as the six-time Grand Slam champion, Cobolli revealed to Ubitennis: “The two hours of training with Alcaraz seem like 20′, when you do them with some other player, it seems like two hours. He is obviously giving me a lot of advice, and even if he doesn’t tell me, I learn it.”
Then asked about Jannik Sinner, and how he plans to catch him as well, the 23-year-old added: “In life, you have to be a little realistic. One tries, I work every day to get to where he is, but I recognise that he is now very far from me.”
Carlos Alcaraz seems unbothered by his split from Juan Carlos Ferrero
Whilst the entire session was not filmed for the public, bits of Alcaraz’s training with Cobolli did filter through onto social media.
And, considering the news that had just dropped about the dissolution of his relationship with Ferrero, many wondered how he might react.
Well, to see him jumping onto Cobolli’s back mid-way through their practice, laughing and joking with one another, put those fears to rest.
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There will be understandable fears about what the future might hold for the 22-year-old, but with the quality at his disposal combined with his unceasing smile, it’ll be hard to keep him quiet and downtrodden for long.
He is simply too good to be sidetracked by such a common practice within the sport as parting with a coach.
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