WIMBLEDON, England – Caty McNally was one of the few female contestants at Wimbledon with a female coach: Her mother, Lynn Nabors McNally.
Mum doesn’t tour full-time with Caty – someone she’s worked with for six years, Kevin O’Neill, does – but they use a two-coach setup at the biggest events, including Grand Slams.
McNally, a 21-year-old from the Greater Cincinnati suburb of Madeira, was the runner-up in women’s doubles at the US Open each of the last two years, once with Coco Gauff and once with Taylor Townsend. She wishes female coaches weren’t so rare at the professional level. There are only 13 women ranked in the Top 200 with a female coach; four of those coaches are the player’s mother.
It would be nice, says McNally, if there were more women around. She looks at her male colleagues – every man who was in the singles field at All England Club being coached by a man – and thinking: “Why can’t it be like that for us?”
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“There’s a different vibe because of it. A different environment. On the men’s side, the coaches are always in the locker room with the players, just hanging out. On the women’s side, you don’t see that; it’s just the players in the locker room,” McNally said last week after a session at the All England Club’s training pitches at Aorangi Park with his mother and O’Neill.
“It might let the guys be more loose: The coaches are right there to help take things off their shoulders. On the women’s side, after a loss, a lot of the girls say, ‘I don’t want to talk to anybody. I want to be by myself.’ ‘ You don’t see any female coaches hanging around the locker room,” said McNally, who missed the French Open with a torn right hamstring and wore athletic tape on the back of his leg during first-round exits in singles and doubles at Wimbledon. “I wonder , how it would be if there were more female coaches. Maybe the players and coaches would hang out and have group dinners more.”
McNally, a successful junior who is now No. 67 in singles and No. 26 in doubles in the WTA rankings, was one of just six of the 128 women in the singles class at Wimbledon with a female coach. The WTA hopes to increase the number of women in that role at the highest levels of tennis, in part through a Coach inclusion program it is in its first full year.
“It’s embarrassing how few of us there are, to be honest with you,” Nabors McNally said as she sat next to her daughter on a wooden bench near the practice fields. “It’s going to take a lot more time and effort to see the numbers where they should be.”
Nabors McNally, a teaching professional after being a professional player in the 1980s and 1990s, and her daughter have been a tennis tandem for almost all of Caty’s life. She started at age 2 hitting a balloon over the couch at home with her older brother, John, who went on to earn All-Big Ten honors at Ohio State.
The next step was to hit balls in the driveway. Then there would be all-in-the-family matchups on Sunday night: Caty and Mom vs. John and Dad.
“I’d say, ‘Just reach out, honey.’ And suddenly she did,” Nabors McNally recalled. “And then we had rallies. And then we played points.”
From the time Caty was 7 or 8, she spent 12 or more hours a day at The Club at Harper’s Point in Cincinnati, where Mom has taught seven days a week for years.
“I liked being around the sport,” Caty said. “I liked being around her.”
Katherine Sebov, a Canadian player who lost in qualifying for Wimbledon, has also always been coached by her mother. Sebov took up the sport after watching his parents play tennis and decided to join — unsolicited.
“I crashed 100% with the party,” Sebov said. “Then they stopped playing and it was all me.”
Both McNally and Nabors McNally say they are able to navigate the two spheres of their relationship: mother-child and coach-player.
“It’s a very fine line, and you just have to find it. … As I’ve matured, I’ve just realized that I shouldn’t take certain things so seriously and (think), ‘Maybe she meant it one way, but it came across another,'” said McNally. “It’s like any 21-year-old who sometimes doesn’t always want to be around their mother.”
Mom’s attitude? “We’ve had a lot of conversations about Caty being the CEO of her company. But you can’t have a bigger person in your support system than family.”
One rule they abide by: no tennis talk when they’re at home.
As a teenager at the junior level in 2018, McNally was runner-up in singles to Gauff at the French Open—after eliminating current WTA No. 1 Iga Swiatek in the semifinals—and won doubles titles with Gauff at the French Open and US Open.
Her goal these days?
“I want to win Slams in (singles and doubles). And also mixed. And also be No. 1 in the world,” Caty said with a smile. “Might as well dream big.”
Mother agrees.
“When Caty grabs the kite line,” said McNally Nabors, “I hope she can hold on for a long time.”
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Howard Fendrich has been the AP’s tennis writer since 2002. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/HowardFendrich