Empathy is key. If a coach doesn’t emphasize with a player, he is not going to coach. There will be no connection with the player. The ideal coach for me has to care but also have a very strong voice because in some situations the humble and quiet voice is not going to work. There will be moments where the player is going to push you to the edge. The coach needs to understand that the person who needs to perform is the person on the court.

If you don’t have empathy and the player is not respecting you when you really ask them for the extra mile you will not be successful. Sometimes you have to have a louder voice. The best coaches are the ones who can raise their voice depending on the needs. There are people who have a very low voice and with some players they will not make a difference. Other have a very strong voice and they will also have players that they will not make a difference for. The best ones are the ones who are able to manage that voice and to convince the player in different situations.

In order to connect with a player a coach needs to emphasize with the player, and you have to be a role model first. As a player it’s tough to respect if the coach doesn’t respect you. It’s tough for the player to be disciplined if they see that the coach is not disciplined and put in the effort during practice. The same goes for commitment, you cannot ask for commitment if you don’t show it yourself.

It’s going to be a process for the player to joining the public and the inner voice and the inner voice is what comes out in the difficult moments when your opponent brings you to the edge. It’s a big part of how you are going to behave in that moment, it’s how crazy you are going to get, how blocked your mind is going to be. The moment that you go crazy you are not going to use your tools. If you don’t use your tools you don’t compete. If you don’t compete you don’t perform, which is the job of the player.

So, the most important is that you, as a tennis coach, manage to be there with the player to make him be there all the time with the best effort possible. Then winning and losing is not key, because normally if you work properly and normally in the long run, you’re going to be able to perform well and compete well. If you compete well you have tools, and if you have tools you are going to win a lot of matches because you are going to be ready for the key points.

If you look at statics for the world number ones for the past 10 years, they have on average only won 55 % of the points that they have played. That means that the number 1 player in the world is losing 45 percent of the points that they are playing. Therefore, they have to be able to accept the loss of those points in order to be ready for the points that is deciding the outcome of the match. The best players localize the important points extremely well. That’s why when the best players have finished a match, they can remember that match perfectly. They apply their best patterns on the key points. There is a small difference in the amount of points won, but there is a big difference in how those points are played.