Khachanov Splits With Coach Martic After Nearly 10 Years and Turns to Chesnokov

Karen Khachanov has closed the coaching relationship that built his career. On Monday the Russian posted on Instagram that he and Vedran Martic had mutually decided to end their professional partnership after nearly 10 years of working together in total. His first match without Martic in the box comes on Tuesday in Almaty, and the replacement is already chosen: former world No. 9 Andrei Chesnokov, on trial for the rest of the season.

What is the October 23 update? (Update, October 23)

The trial week just produced a five-match-point escape. Khachanov saved four match points at 5-6 in the third set against Tomas Machac and a fifth in the tiebreak to win 6-2, 4-6, 7-6(7) in Almaty on Thursday, reaching the quarter-finals in his first week without Martic in the box. The full account of the Almaty escape is covered separately, with Friday’s quarter-final against home favourite Alexander Bublik the next test of the Chesnokov trial.

What did Khachanov say in his announcement?

That this was an ending, not a falling out. “Vedran and I have mutually decided to bring our professional partnership to an end after nearly 10 years of working together in total,” he wrote, in the statement carried in full by The Tennis Gazette. “Vedran has been my coach since the very beginning of my career. I came to Split to work with him when I was just 15 and a half years old. Throughout this entire journey, he has always supported me, and we have achieved so much together: breaking into the Top 10, winning titles, and growing tremendously along the way.” He went further than the usual thank-you post. “To me, Vedran is much more than just a coach. He is a true friend and someone very close to my heart, someone who will always feel like family. We are parting ways as player and coach, but this is not goodbye.”

What does the partnership leave behind?

Seven ATP titles and a top 10 career. The pair’s title list runs from Chengdu in 2016 through Marseille, Moscow and the Paris Masters in 2018, Zhuhai in 2023, and Doha and Almaty in 2024, and it took a teenager who moved to Croatia to train into the world No. 8 slot. Coaching changes are routine in tennis, but they usually follow a bad season or a public disagreement. This one follows a US Open semi-final run and a Shanghai last 16, which puts it in the same Almaty-week category as Stefanos Tsitsipas explaining how ending his father’s coaching role freed his game: two players in the same draw, both deciding the voice that shaped them is no longer the voice they need.

Who is Andrei Chesnokov, and what is the arrangement?

A name from a different era of Russian tennis. As reported by First&Red and carried by TennisHead, Khachanov has brought in Chesnokov, who represented the Soviet Union and Russia in the 1980s and 1990s, won seven titles including the Monte Carlo Masters in 1990 and the Canadian Open in 1991, and peaked at world No. 9. “To be honest, we were thinking about who I’d be interested in working with,” Khachanov said, in quotes translated from Russian. “Now I’ve come to Andrei because he’s a very good former player, a top-ten player. He also has a coaching background, so he knows what needs to be done and might be able to offer some advice.” The deal is explicitly provisional: “We decided to give it a try until the end of the year. He’ll go with me to the tournament in Vienna and Paris, and we’ll build on that and see how our collaboration continues, probably in the preseason for next season. So right now, you could say, it’s a trial period.”

When does the new setup get its first test?

Immediately, and at a tournament with history for him. Khachanov opens in Almaty on Tuesday against Japanese qualifier Rei Sakamoto, who beat Andrey Rublev in Shanghai, per TennisHead. Almaty is where he won his most recent title, in 2024, and he has not lifted a trophy since. The draw could take him toward home favourite Alexander Bublik in the quarter-finals and top seed Daniil Medvedev, whose own autumn has been anything but calm, in the semi-finals. Whatever happens this week will be read as a verdict on the change, fairly or not, in the same way Almaty has become a sorting week for coaching stories, from Tsitsipas’s revival to Terence Atmane using the event to step back from his Shanghai racket throw.

Why change coaches when the results were fine?

That is the part Khachanov’s statement does not answer, and he may not owe anyone the answer. What the record shows is a player at No. 25, at 30 years old, deciding that the final phase of his career needs a different input than the one that produced the first phase. The trial structure admits as much: Vienna and Paris are an audition, the preseason is the decision point, and there is no ATP Finals place at stake to complicate it, with Khachanov 24th in the live race and out of contention. The contrast inside this same season is sharp. Jannik Sinner ended his year entirely to fix a knee problem, while Khachanov is using the same autumn weeks to rebuild the team around him while he can still play.

What happens next?

Three tournaments will tell the story: Almaty this week, then Vienna and Paris with Chesnokov travelling, and a preseason call on whether the trial becomes the job. Martic, for his part, has not commented publicly, and Khachanov’s post was written to make sure he would not have to defend the decision. A partnership that started with a 15-year-old arriving in Split ends with the player ranked in the top 25, seven titles banked, and the coach described as family. The results from here belong to the next arrangement, starting with the kind of autumn week that has already reshaped several seasons in this draw.