Ferrero and Shelton Shock The Tennis World || Peak Alcaraz Is Back!

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

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Mark Petchey (0:30)

Tennis fans, The BIG T will be on tour and in the heart of the tennis action for the next couple of weeks. Today we're recording for you in Paris. Next week, Brad Gilbert and Andrea Petkovic will be at the WTA Finals for Indian Wells with daily episodes. Subscribe to the pod so you can ride shotgun with us. Get us on Apple, Spotify or free for Prime members on Amazon podcasts. Watch on YouTube or the Tennis Channel app. Our newsletter will help you keep up with all of it. And let's get into this episode with my special co-host, Chris Eubanks.

Bonjour de Paris.

Yes, it does sound a little bit like a nightclub, but I promise you here at La Defense Arena, it is actually being turned into a tennis club this week. Chris Eubanks and myself, Mark Petchey, are bringing you this episode of The BIG T podcast right from the heart of the action this week. Ça va, Chris?

Chris Eubanks (1:35)

Ça va bien. I've been working on my French a little bit.

Mark Petchey (1:38)

You have un petit peu.

We got a lot to talk about this week, Chris, but we are going to talk about the one thing that hit the headlines in such a big way. Your good friend, Ben Shelton, Juan Carlos Ferrero, of course, former coach to Carlos Alcaraz, former World No. Everybody was wondering where Juan Carlos was going to land. Ben Shelton's name was not part of any conversation that I had had.

Chris Eubanks (2:07)

Yeah, and it completely caught me off guard as well.

I'm sitting here kind of in this bit of a limbo period of wondering, who is he going to go with? Hodar seemed like the most logical choice, young Spaniard. He's had success, obviously, with another young Spaniard.

That's kind of where I think all of my energy went towards. And then yesterday, you start to see the reports and I go, thought about it for a minute and I go, this is actually a perfect match. This makes all the sense in the world. For Ferrero, he's clearly done a lot of good with players who are phenomenal athletes, players who possess a lot of firepower and players who are incredible competitors. That's all Ben Shelton. And I think that this matchup is going to be so nice because it gives Ferrero a different type of horse in the race. It gives him a different type of athlete that he can kind of help to mold and guide alongside his already team and his father, Brian, to just add a little bit of a few extra percentage points to kind of get Ben over the hump. You look at Ben's career so far as turning a pro, he's gotten better and better every single year. And that's no small statement from 2023 to 2024, 2024 to 2025 What he's been able to do this year has been incredible, winning another Masters 1000, making the final of the US Open. He's had consistent results at the biggest tournaments. And now he's going to have somebody on his bag who has the experience, not just as a player, but also as a coach and someone who loves to work hard has been. And I think Ferrero is going to blend in perfectly with their kind of team dynamic. I think it was a great hire. Didn't see it coming, but I'm excited to see what they do on the court.

Juan Carlos Ferrero (3:37)

I saw the stuff online. I thought it was true, too. I thought he was going with one of these young Spanish guys. But I just reached out to my agent one day and I was like, hey, can you just at least hit the guy up and see if he's available or if he already locked something in?

He ended up being available and we had some talks on the phone. That was that. But for me, I'm really looking forward to it. I think that he's a great guy. We get along well and hopefully we can have a big year next year.

Mark Petchey (4:04)

I think that's the one thing that people are going to be very interested in. There's actually a few parts of this, obviously, that are interesting in terms of, you know, he's a very different type of player to Carlos. I mean, the one thing that you have to say about the sort of match up with Juan Carlos and Carlos was the fact that Carlos is a very attacking tennis player. Ben is also a very attacking player. Carlos obviously has incredible defense. That will be something that you would imagine that Juan Carlos is going to try and bring to the table. He's already worked Juan Carlos with another coach, Samuel Lopez, who obviously works with Carlos. So he's worked in this kind of tandem situation. It is a slightly different dynamic because Ben obviously has worked with his dad, Brian, who also, by the way, is a phenomenal coach who has done things in tennis that nobody else has done. They clearly have an incredible repertoire and they have managed to build a dynamic that is incredibly positive with a father-son kind of relationship. So that's going to be something that's going to be fascinating to watch how those two develop. Because I feel in the past, it was very easy to see Juan Carlos as the head coach of Carlos Alcaraz.