Flavio Cobolli on his father and coach Stefano: "Together we can do great things".
Flavio Cobolli made great strides last year. Ranked 30th in the world at his best last year, the Italian player...
Under the guidance of his father Stefano, who is also his coach, the 22-year-old reached his first ATP Tour final in Washington last August, but lost to Sebastian Korda. In recent hours, Cobolli has spoken of his relationship with his father.
"My father was a good player, but he retired when he was young, so he had a slightly lower ranking than me.
Now he's a fantastic coach and we have a great relationship. When I was young, we wanted tennis and our relationship to be separate.
I played a lot of soccer and we often talked about it, but we never talked about tennis. He wanted me to improve on my own, and then he told me that when I was ready, he'd help me.
We started a few years ago and since then we've worked together a lot and last year was very good.
Now we want to do more. It's difficult when your father is also your coach. As I said, when I was young, all we talked about was soccer.
As we've grown up and worked together, we've developed a great relationship, and now I listen to him more than ever.
I think we can do great things together. He's a great person and I love working with him," he elaborated for Tennis World Italia.
