Cause For Concern
Donna Vekic and her coach Pam Shriver explain their worries about the Stefano Vukov-Elena Rybakina situation
MELBOURNE, Australia — There’s always been a bit of gambling that comes into planning out a schedule of articles during a tennis tournament, as I have been reminded during these opening days of the Australian Open.
The glut of interview opportunities around a major typically come either pretournament or after first round matches. From a bountiful early harvest—which I’m very happy to say I felt like I got for Bounces on this trip to Melbourne—you’ll collect more ingredients than you could possibly serve up as fully-cooked articles before the tournament begins.
That’s when the planning and risk assessment has to come in: which players can you trust and rely on to survive a round or two so that your conversation with them can remain fresh and pertinent to the tournament in a story timed around the second or third round?
I can’t say I would have put Donna Vekic near that list of surefire bets for my first years covering her, honestly. But the 28-year-old Croatian has developed into a steady force at the majors over the last year.
When she came back for a 4-6, 6-0, 6-2 win over Harriet Dart in her second round match at the Australian Open on Wednesday night, Vekic booked her spot in the third round of a major for the fourth consecutive major; before this streak, Vekic had never strung together a streak of more than two such appearances.
I’m glad it turned out I was right to trust her to keep fresh this story, which touches on two of the major story arcs at this Australian Open: a bit on the wildfires in Southern California, and then much more on controversy surrounding the investigation into Stefano Vukov, the coach of Elena Rybakina, both of which Vekic is connected to through her coach Pam Shriver.
Though there had been speculation that a conclusion to the investigation could be imminent, the WTA confirmed to Bounces on Wednesday that there is “no update” on the status of the pending investigation since its initial statement 13 days ago.
Steadiness and Safety
When we spoke again briefly after her second round win on Wednesday night, Vekic told me she didn’t have an answer for what had caused her to develop newfound consistency at majors. But she also expressed a clear maturity about processing the three straight-set losses she suffered in warm-up events in Perth and Sydney that had started her 2025 campaign with an inauspicious 0-3 record.
“I was like, ‘OK, I'm not doing anything bad,’” Vekic said. “I'm playing good and practicing good—it's going to come eventually. But I'm happy it's coming at a Slam.”
Her runs to the Wimbledon semifinals and Olympic silver medal last summer also earned Vekic boisterous boosters; the loud bloc of Croatian supporters who stayed supporting Vekic through several rain delays and late into the night on a cold and blustery Court 14 buoyed her spirits.
“That definitely really helped me a lot today because I was nervous in the in the beginning,” Vekic said of the Croatian contingent. “It was windy. She was playing great. I didn't have the highest energy. And it was it was not easy, but they definitely pushed me, and it was really great. The Croatian support has been crazy since the Olympics.”
Vekic also knows she has another source of crucial support, albeit thousands of miles from Court 14: Pam Shriver, the Hall of Fame player and veteran ESPN broadcaster who has been a part of Vekic’s coaching team since forming a bond at a WTA tournament in San Diego in 2022.
Vekic, who was ranked 77th and started in the qualifying draw at that tournament, improbably beat two top-10 players to reach the final that week in San Diego; Shriver, who had never taken on a full-time coaching role before, has been there for her ever since, helping to guide Vekic to a new career-high ranking of 18th. This offseason, Vekic often trained on the court at Shriver’s home in Los Angeles, along with veteran WTA coach Sascha Bajin, a new addition to Vekic’s team.
“Pam is so easygoing, and it’s always great to have her around,” Vekic told Bounces in our pretournament interview.
Vekic knew by the time we spoke just before the tournament that Shriver wouldn’t be able to be around this time, however: with wildfires raging around that home where she and Vekic had trained—and much of the rest of Los Angeles County—Shriver had to cancel her work in Melbourne with both Vekic and ESPN so she could be an anchor of support and safety for various family members in the area during the crisis.
When I connected over the phone with Shriver earlier this week, she told me she was “in a lovely Marina del Rey hotel watching Shelton and Nakashima.”
During the first set of Vekic’s first round match, Shriver had been making her way back to her house in order to fireproof her property as best she could.
“I actually went up to the house to turn on the sprinklers on the roof,” she said. “So I actually missed the first set, but I was following it on the app, with hardly any cell service. But I could kind of get it up, and I saw she won the first set, and I got to watch the second back of the hotel.”
Shriver was moved, she said, when she saw Vekic’s message on the camera lens after that win.
“She's trained at my house, she knows my house,” Shriver said of Vekic. “She loves L.A., so she gets it. And I was touched.”
A Shared Concern
Vekic is also connected to the Vukov story through Shriver, who has been an outspoken advocate for greater protections of WTA players in recent years after revealing her own story in early 2022. “The short version of this story is that I had an inappropriate and damaging relationship with my much older coach, which began when I was 17 and lasted a little over five years,” Shriver wrote then.
“My main motivation is to let people know this still goes on—a lot,” Shriver continued. “I believe abusive coaching relationships are alarmingly common in sport as a whole.”
Shriver has advocated that women’s tennis should be prioritizing the issue of inappropriate coach-player relationships ever since. Vekic, herself a longtime member of the WTA Player Council, has been supportive of her coach’s cause.
“It’s great to see someone raising awareness for that,” Vekic told Bounces of Shriver’s work. “It’s unfortunately something that we have a lot of in our sport, and it’s sad. Hopefully, going forward, there can be a lot more attention to it, and just a better environment for everyone.”
When Shriver spoke out bluntly earlier this month about her dismay over Rybakina and Vukov reuniting—“It’s time for our entire sport to finally stand up to known abuse and cult-like manipulations of players,” Shriver tweeted. “This is a very sad situation and my prayers are with ER”—Vekic was conspicuous as the only active WTA player to endorse Shriver’s concern, which she did by retweeting the remark.
In the rest of this post at Bounces, which is only for paid subscribers, you will be able to read Vekic’s further comments on the ongoing situation.
“I feel bad for her, that she has to go through that. And really, she’s a great player. So hopefully she can find her joy, on court and off the court.”
-Donna Vekic on Elena Rybakina
The greater part of what’s ahead in this post is from the remarkable conversation I had with Shriver this week—taking the time to speak with me by phone as she continues to manage a natural disaster back home—explaining why she had such strong words about the Rybakina situation, and the greater urgency she wants from the sport of tennis as a whole to prioritize protecting players.
“The most common denominator of stories from the current game that came to me was concerns about [Rybakina’s] situation. It came from many different directions. Many, many, many.”
-Pam Shriver
And then, as there are each day during this tournament, this piece ends with my picks for a handful of the best matches to watch on Day 5 at the Australian Open.
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