Who Is Aslan Karatsev’s Coach In 2023?

Last Updated on June 1, 2023

Aslan Karatsev, born on September 4th, 1993 in Vladikavkaz, Russia, is a notable figure in tennis. He made history by becoming the first player to reach a Grand Slam semifinal on his debut in the Open Era, accomplishing this at age 27. His success serves as a source of inspiration for players outside the ATP’s top 200, reinforcing that it’s never too late to reach new heights in the sport. With Russian-Israeli heritage, Karatsev had an outstanding season in 2021.

Karatsev’s father, Kazbek, was a former football player, and his mother, Svetlana, is a doctor. Karatsev’s maternal grandfather is Jewish, and thus he is fluent in both Russian and Hebrew. His family moved to Israel when he was just three years old, and he lived there for the next nine years. After winning the Israeli Youth Championship at the age of 12, Karatsev returned to Russia with his father to focus on his tennis training. Following two years in Moscow, he relocated to Taganrog to train at Alexander Kuprin’s Tennis Academy.

Under the guidance of former Russian tennis player Dmitry Tursunov, Karatsev moved to Halle, Germany to hone his skills. He lived there for two years before moving to Barcelona to practice at Bruguera Tennis Academy. Unfortunately, a knee injury set him back, costing him six months of recovery and two years to regain his confidence and form. Despite this setback, Karatsev’s junior career saw him rise to world No.47 and he was named the best junior of 2011 for the “Russian Cup” tennis nomination. He eventually clinched the title of Russia’s champion. Karatsev holds great admiration for tennis legend Roger Federer.

Who Is Aslan Karatsev’s Current Coach?

Yahor Yatsyuk

Karatsev began working with the Minsk native in 2019. With him he reached the semifinals of the Australian Open-2021 and took titles in Dubai and Moscow. They broke up at the end of the 2021 season and reunited a year later.

Yahor Yatsyuk is 30-years-old Belarusian former tennis player who had unimpressive playing career. He only has one ITF championship to his name, which he won in doubles at 2012 Moscow Open. His best singles ranking was No.1106 and No.682 in doubles. In the period from 2013 to 2015 he was sparring partner of Nikoloz Basilashvili.

Yahor had great success coaching Karatsev for three years, especially during season 2021. Then, Aslan won his maiden ATP title at Qatar Open in doubles and his first ATP singles title at Dubai Championships. Later that year came the second ATP title at Kremlin Cup, and with Russian National Team he won the Davis Cup.

“He was unprofessional, late to training sometimes. Once he brought four racquets to training and three of them were broken. He was kind of behaving like Mario Balotelli. He needed a tough approach, to be very honest; I said if he doesn’t change he may as well finish with tennis. I used harsh words, I used tough words but in the end he had trust in me. He understood and listened. Many players wouldn’t listen, they’d just change coach, but he did. He improved and now we see the result” said Yatsyuk about his experience with Karatsev.

In an interview, Karatsev reflected on the past, saying, “It wasn’t an easy season, I made some bad decisions.” He refrained from getting into the specifics but implied these were related to choices about where to compete and with whom to work. He admitted, “We worked well with Yahor, we stopped the process not very intelligently. And there were moments when I played too many tournaments, not selectively.”

On the subject of parting ways with Yatsyuk, Karatsev said, “Different points of view, different things.” He expressed positivity about their reunion, saying, “But most importantly, we are back, we made contact. Everything is good. The main thing is that we are ready to work.”

When asked about Yatsyuk’s temporary stint with Roman Safiullin, Karatsev diplomatically responded, “I’m not going to say anything, I’m not the person to comment on that. They had a relationship – a player and a coach. I don’t want to get involved and comment on anything.”

He confirmed that the decision to reunite was mutual, and added, “Yes, it was their decision. We also talked, there was a long talk. We worked out the mistakes.” Karatsev conveyed optimism about their future cooperation, demonstrating a readiness to learn from the past and move forward.

Also Read:

• Aslan Karatsev Net Worth

Former Aslan Karatsev’s coaches

Alexander Kuprin

Since his junior days in the tennis world, Aslan was coached by Alexander Kuprin, at his Academy in Taganrog. He had played a key role in transferring Karatsev into adult tennis. They worked together until end of season 2015 and in the period together Aslan won Futures and Challenger tournaments.

“Karatsev has huge potential and is quite capable of winning five games in a row. But the difficulty lies in the fact that his interest is not easy to keep, and therefore he loses concentration.” said Kuprin about his mentee back then.

After season 2015, big collapse followed due to knee injury and regaining confidence, also losing sponsor and didn’t having personal coach, which at the end of 2017 dropped him to No.747 in the World.

The turning point in his career came in 2018, when he started training in Minsk with the Belarusian coach Yahor Yatsyuk.

Gabriel Truillo-Sole

After three years collaboration with Yatsyuk, they parted ways before the end of season 2021. 

Starting from season 2022, Aslan trained with Gabriel Truillo-Soler.

Gabriel Truillo-Soler was born on 30^th September 1979 in Barcelona, Spain. He is former tennis player whose best ranking was World No.209. After retirement he started coaching and from the beginning of the 2022 season he was training Aslan. For couple of months working together, Karatsev managed to win his third ATP title at Sydney International, but shortly after they parted ways.

For three months after that, Aslan was trained by Jan de Witt.

Jan de Witt

Jan de Witt was born in Celle, Germany and is tennis coach since 1998. He coached players like Gilles Simon, Gael Monfils, Nikoloz Basilashvili Viktor Troicki and Andy Murray. While coaching Viktor in 2010, he played for the Serbian Davis Cup team that captured the title.

At the beginning of mentoring Aslan he said “His great strength is the combination of his immense physical abilities and the firepower he has. It’s my job that he uses that better and puts it on the record.” They parted ways in June.

Karatsev cooperated with three different coaches during the year 2022. The longest cooperation was with Boris Sobkin. They worked together tentatively until early November 2022.

Boris Sobkin

Boris Sobkin was born on 18^th August 1949 in Moscow, Russia. He is a professor, doctor of science, and honored tennis coach of the Russian Federation, also a member of the Russian Tennis Hall of Fame. He started coaching in 1982 and was mentor of players like Evgeny Donskoy, Laslo Djere, Mikhail Youzhny and many more. Under his guidance for nearly two decades, Youzhny reached the quarter-finals at each of the four Grand Slam tournaments and won 10 ATP Tour doubles titles and reached a career-high ranking of World No. 8 in the ATP Rankings in 2008.

About his connection with Karatsev he said – “We’ll see what comes out of it, if it works or not.”

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Aslan Karatsev’s achievements with different coaches

We have collected in the table the data about the trophies won by Aslan Karatsev under the guidance of various coaches.