I remember how Rainer Schuettler played his first Grand Slam final in Australia against Andre Agassi. It was my mistakes that he didn’t have a chance to win it because I was not prepared for this final. I didn’t give him the right advice because I was not doing my homework properly.

I should have seen more video analyse. I was looking too much at the things that everybody looks to about technique, strokes, forehand and backhand. I should have looked at whole matches, not looking at three minutes in a sequence.

Later on, in Toronto Rainer and Andre played each other again and that match had the same start with Andre being up 6–2 3–1. This time around I had prepared Rainer better, because I now understood that Agassi was crazy good in the start of matches and you need to be patient and wait for his level to drop.

So before the match in Toronto I said to Rainer:

“There is no reason to panic if you get beat bad in the first set and you get behind in the second, because there will be a moment in the match where Agassi drops his level and you will get your opportunity to get back in the match.”

I’m not saying that he would have won against Andre in the final of Australian Open, but he was not well prepared and that was my mistake.

(Inspired by the podcast episode #74: “Managing a Top 100 Player” w. Dirk Hordorff on The Adam Blicher Show — Dissecting High Performance in Tennis)

Want to listen to the full episode: http://shorturl.at/jktA8