Juan Carlos Ferrero’s time coaching Carlos Alcaraz is over, bringing to an end one of the most successful partnerships in recent history.
Together, they rose from relative obscurity as a talented teenager, converting that potential into tangible success. Following their split at the back end of 2025, the 22-year-old had won six Grand Slam titles alongside a plethora of other major honours.
Alcaraz remains very much on track to shatter plenty of records throughout his career, but the likelihood of him maintaining his success into 2026 seems to have diminished.
After all, many are questioning how he might function with the permanent absence of Ferrero.
Whilst everyone is pointing at Carlos Alcaraz and waiting for his response, Mark Petchey has instead sympathised with the coach.
Mark Petchey predicts how Juan Carlos Ferrero will be feeling now
Speaking on the Tennis Channel’s Big T Podcast, the 55-year-old sought to predict exactly how Ferrero will be feeling now, nearly a month on from this groundbreaking news.
Having most recently worked with Emma Raducanu, but also enjoyed spells with Andy Murray in the past too, Petchey knows exactly how the dissolution of such a special relationship will feel for a coach.
Carlos Alcaraz WILL complete the Career Grand Slam before Jannik Sinner – discuss…
He theorised: “I’ll tell you the one thing that I’ve always felt, and I’ve worked with a few players. It hurts. That’s the one thing at the end of it that really stings.
“You literally are 24/7 thinking about a player. If somebody asks you to work with them, it is the greatest honour and privilege that you get given to try and help them become the best version of themselves on the tennis court and to a large degree, because you spend so much time with them, off the court as well.
“And when you go through this kind of transition, and you help them and things get better, when you get to that inflection point, whether it’s, they want to go in a different direction or there’s agents that want to take them in a different direction or whatever it is, it hurts, because there is a part of you that goes, wow, was that, what I felt, as genuine as I thought it was, and all of that effort that you kind of put in suddenly seems to just go bang, stop.
“And I bet you right now, that’s the overriding emotion for one Juan Carlos Ferrero.”
Who would you like to see become Carlos Alcaraz’s new coach?
Petchey then added: “You know, in time, he’s gonna look back and look at the success and go, you know, that’s obviously amazing, but there must be a part of him that after everything he’s done in the last ten years, for Carlos, you know, success always looks obvious in the rearview mirror, but it wasn’t obvious.
“He would have gone above and beyond. He’s got three kids, he’s got a family, sacrificed that time, and then he gets given two days, from what we’re led to believe, to make a decision of what he probably feels is a surrogate son. And that’s painful.”
What Juan Carlos Ferrero said about his split from Carlos Alcaraz
Following this landmark decision, the coach remains the only one of the two parties to have broken their silence and tried to explain the reasons behind their split.
Ferrero admitted he hasn’t spoken to Alcaraz since their split, but did reveal the contractual issues that led to the dissolution of their professional relationship.
He revealed: “Everything seemed like it was set to continue.
What do you make of Marion Bartoli’s comments? Do you think there is any chance of Alcaraz retiring before 25?
“It’s true that when the year ends, there are certain things at the contract level that have to be looked at. And as in any new contract, looking ahead to next year, there were certain things on which we did not agree…
“It may be that they could have been saved if we had sat down to talk, but in the end, we didn’t sit down, and we decided not to continue.”
