PRESSURE: PRIVILEGE OR BURDEN?

football coaching. He's guided three number one ranked players to Grand Slam titles, Laten Hewitt, Andre Agassi and currently Simona Hallem. He's also worked with many other top players. His advice is constantly sought out by players and coaches all over the world. Plus he's one of the best analysts in TV sports. This conversation was mostly before the US Open. Then we caught our bread circle back a couple of days after the Grand Slam quest of Novak Djokovic and

the Electric Women's final with Emirata and Leela Fernandez. That's at the end of the episode. So this is a treat for tennis fans and Darren's ideas are as valuable in everyday life, in your workplace, or if you want to coach your kids. Today, I've got Darren Killer Kjo. So, Darren, how would you describe the effects of pressure on the mind of an athlete? We start with the easy one.

See if that easy? Oh yeah? Really, Look, it's all encompassing, really, because there are so many different factors that go into pressure, And I think the main one is the pressure that you put on yourself with the expectation. And every kid has a dream of achieving something pretty special in sport, and you dream about that NonStop till you get to a certain point where that dream might even be possible, might even be capable for the point zero zero zero

one of those youngsters growing up. So it's the expectations you put on yourself. It's the pressure you feel from the people around you. It could be from your parents, it could be from new coaches, it could be from outward sources. And I can frame it in a little story that I have with Simona and her struggles to break through and become the number one player in the world and to win her first ever major. She lost a couple of crushing finals, both at the French Open,

one to Sharaff Ober and one to Ostar Panco. And I remember that pressure after losing to Ostar Panco, the pressure of failing in the big moment and it really getting to her and the way she reacted after losing that two thousand and seventeen Roland Garris's final, and we were sitting in a locker room afterwards and we just

shut the door. It's just her and I were just sitting on the floor and she was in tears, and I just remember her putting her head on my shoulders and just letting it all out for about thirty minutes. And I didn't really, you know, what to say. Normally I'm okay with finding the words, and I didn't have any words to give her, and all I could think about was the suffering that she was going through. And in the sport, you know, two people go out there.

One person comes off and winning, one person comes off a loser, and you do everything you can to prepare the athlete in the right way and to give them the best chance of possibly winning. The following year, we get to the French Open final again and right before the final, a really powerful Romanian person and a good friend of Simona is certainly somewhat part of the team. Came up to me and said, we're ready, We're going to win this. And I said to him, yeah, I

think so. You know, Simona is ready. She's playing great tennis and she's she's fired up and playing a person that she's been a couple of times before. And Sloane Stevens and yeah, I think she's feeling great. He goes, no, no, no, we need this. You mind about Simona. The country needs this. Twenty million people need this. This is really important for Romania that she wins this match. And I'm thinking to myself, shot a lot. You know, this is a big moment,

but it hit highly. I got goose bumps. It hits home that, Okay, this is important for us and really important for Simona, but there are bigger things that play here, and and you know she's she's got to find a way to get through this. And so if I am feeling the pressure, then you know what is she feeling in those size five shoes that she wears and going

out there and trying to get this done. So she has remarkable strength to be able to deal with that pressure that she puts on herself, which is enormous anyway, and then to deal with that outward pressure that she felt from a loving country that wanted her to get over mine and win her first major incredible mental strength. And some people can deal with it, some people can't. Some people rise up to the challenge and play their

very best tennis. Some people cower and freeze in the moment, and it's just a natural and it's sort of what separates the great from the good. It's a beautiful story with a happy ending, as she did get that trophy in Paris and make the twenty million people happy, and obviously a tree of a life line dream and has

gone on to do that as well. Everybody has their ways of putting themselves in the zone, and that could be from the training, it could be from belief, it could be from my My big thing when I played was I always used to think of myself as a bit of a racehorse and putting the blinkers on. And so whilst tennis is played between the lines, because it's only two people out there and you had this massive,

big stadium. If you paid too much attention to everything that was going on around the stadium, my mind would drift and wanders, So before every single point, I always used to think of myself as being this racehorse, and I had the blinkers on and everything would just focus into the person on the other side of the court. So all the peripheral stuff sort of faded away, and that really helped me, especially in the big moments, and I was just concentrating on what was in front of me.

The thing about coaching is everybody is different. Everybody has different strengths and weaknesses, and to be a really effective coach, you've got to work out what they are, and then you have to build the strengths in what the players have to It's not all about focusing on the weaknesses

being a coach. It's more about building the strengths. We'll get into the art of tennis coaching, which you do as well as anyone has ever done, including coaching some very strong personalities and two other world number ones besides Simona. But the interesting thing that's so compelling about tennis staring for me is is that that mental battle and the struggle within oneself, you see it played out. It can

be beautiful when it's overcome. It can be hard to watch sometimes when a player is fighting themselves, it seems that they're fighting their team in the box as well as the opponent all of those things, because the tennis courk can look like a very lonely place. So besides the macro pressure of having to win a title for your country or fulfill a lifelong dream, it's the pressure in that moment. You have to get your body to cooperate.

You have to hit a beautiful serve, you hit a beautiful backhand in that moment, and then try to push that tension out of the body, because that's that's the enemy of execution, right or or or Can it be a positive? We tend to think of pressure as a negative. For most of the time, it's a positive. Can you keep talking about the fact that it's exactly the place

you want to be. There's no other place in the world you wish to be than to be taking that last touchdown pass, or to be kicking that last goal, or to be stepping on the line and serving at match point for a big tournament. It's exactly where you want to be. So to be scared of that moment is is kind of it's not natural because that's the moment you've been dreaming, dreaming about for all your career, and and that's when the great players embraced that moment

say give me the ball. This this is what I want. Give me the ball because I have a chance here to achieve something really special. It takes training the Chris as you know, you know, you just you didn't walk into this job what you do at the moment and be as good as you are by just coming to you. You've got to work on it, and you've got to work on it all the time. Even when you're away

from the studio doing what you do. I'm sure you're prepping and you're looking at other people that do this, and you're trying to get things that other people do well. You're trying to improve your craft. Sport is that, sport is seven. Sport is always working on ways to find little areas that you can keep on improving and keep evolving as an athlete. So you know, it's incredibly important to learn from your losses and your failures and to try to come back and be a little bit stronger

next time around. It's not always going to be perfect for you. You build resilience from those failures and as long as you keep on pushing and keep on trying, and keep on persevering, you're going to give yourself the best chance possible. You stated in a different way where Billy Jane King has made famous, which is the pressure is a privilege, and folks can nod their heads and

understand what that means. To win enough to be in that moment where you're serving for a title, to work as hard as you've had to work to get there, and playing the big match and have the eyes of the world on you, Yes, that's a privilege, but I think a lot of players would say that privilege feels a lot like a burden. You can try to use code words and techniques that sports psychologists provide you, but

when you're trying to step up and do it. We've seen the great Serena Williams have to deal with tremendous pressure and look uncomfortable in doing so, especially later in your career. We've seen Novak Djokovic trying to achieve great things even fedter in the doll You can see the expression of pressure intention on them and have to come through it again. That's what makes the sports so beautiful, But at times in those moments it looks like a

privilege I'd rather not have. It looks like something that that they're really struggling with. That it kind of makes the journey worthwhile, right because those greatest moments sometimes you hit a few bumps along the way and the destination is more beautiful if it's a bit of a rocky road to get there. And we're not perfect. Everybody makes mista akes and everybody has bumps along the way, and it's it's part of life and part of the journey as an athlete, as long as you keep embracing it,

keep putting yourself in those positions. And the one thing that I would always say is and if you can put the coaching head on, you can go out and have a chat to your athlete right before those big moments. How did you get into this position? Why are you here? What are the excess and those? And you know, Brad and I we always go back to the excess and those because they are so important. Is that how did you lead six, four or five match point? What were

you doing to get here? What were the tactics that we're working, what were your strengths? Where were you serving the big moments? How are you winning your points, and if you go back to the excess and os in the big moments, it takes kind of the emotion out of it as well. And I think simplifying is really important in those moments. And if you can just get through the code of the player's head that Okay, I'm the better player today. I got this position because I've

been serving to a particular point. I've been using my fuehand effectively instead of going inside in the inside out is working much better for me. That's what I'm going to do in the big moments. I'm going to play to my strengths and if my strengths don't work, at least I gave it my best shot. Yeah, you spend time in selling that in a player so they can do it themselves in the momentum. Other sports have coaching

within the competition. You're one of the few, though, as as coach of a very high level women's player, actually more than one to step out there and w t a tournaments where coaching is allowed on a change over if they asked for it, and then try to deliver that message in the heat of the moment in sixty seconds while reading the situation and figuring out are a lot of words necessary? Are a few words necessary? How do I how do I turn this around in a

few seconds? Here? Is it a tactical conversation? Is it an emotional conversation? Is it a bit of a pep up talk? It could be anything, to be quite honest, but less is best in those moments, in the heat of the moment, if you can keep your words pretty short, give one or two things that the players and grab onto, because if you give a whole bunch of words in sixty seconds, most of it gets lost. So I've found with the on court coaching on the w t A Tour that less is best. Be to the point and

give your players something they can really grab onto. I do believe that we are heading towards some coaching and the Men's Tour. I don't believe we'll ever have coaching in the Grand Slams. I think the Grand Slams, not all the Grand Slams, but I think a couple of them are really against it. So you need all four Grand Slams to be on the same page to bring in something like that. But I do believe on the a TP Tour and the w t A tour coaching is a good thing because we're there to make the

athletes better. We're there to make the competitions better. I think it does bring a little bit of insight into the living room of people watching as well, any ways that we can help the athletes be a better version of themselves. I think it's a good thing. It's been such a huge topic in sports, coping with pressure and

trying to overcome that. Um and tennis name Osaka has talked about feeling pressure, expectations, battling things within herself, and some things conspiring to take the joy and the enjoyment out of what can be a very joyful job, and just day to day seems, you know, like a struggle where it's not the pressure to hit a shot in the moment, it's just living living that lifestyle and then trying to dig out of that and turn up and do the job. At times, this can seem like a

very complicated sport. You've lived a sport with me for a number of years now, you understand you've probably heard me complain a little bit and talk about stories on tour, and you know, talk about the stories of my players as well. It's a complicated life, right, You would think it would be a little more simply simplified because of

the fact you're only coaching one person. If you're the coach of a team, you're looking after a roster of players, and you've also got a bunch of assistant coaches as well that are taking on some of that responsibility. You probably don't dive in to the lives of those players seven like we do as tennis coaches, but we take on more a much bigger role than just coaching tennis balls and coaching how tennis balls are hit. It's really

a psychologist role. It's a friendship role. Not only spending time at the course, but you sent spending time away from the courts with that player. You're dealing with all sorts of stuff when it comes to that player as well. So it's I love it, you know, It's all I know. You mentioned earlier that I grew up in a azyr rules family and my dad being a player and a coach, and and watching him go away about his coaching craft

back as a youngster back in Adelaide, Australia. I think I learned a lot from him, and I didn't really know it at the time, but kind of his style has been my style through the course of my coaching career as well. And one of the big things that he was always great at was selling belief and letting his players I feel like they were actually a little

better than what they were. And he was great at the culture side of things as well, putting the team together, having some real of things in place that the players would gather around each other, especially when times got tough,

and rise up and help each other. And the culture is a huge, huge thing in team bonding and team coaching, but it's a massive thing on the tennis court as well, because if you have good culture, if you have a good feeling amongst the team that you have, it just helps the player go out onto the court and not

feel like they're alone because they are alone. It's it's one of the few sports where you go onto the court and you basically have a conversation with yourself, and of that conversation you're having with us with yourself is a bad one, and it's like, oh my god, how can I miss that? Oh you're so bad. You are the worst place, you know, that's just what we do. It's really hard for us to hit a good forehand down the line and say good on your mate, that's awesome,

that was a great shot. Tennis players just don't do that. So it's you need a good team around you, you need to build a good culture, and you need to sell that belief. And I think that's what my dad is really good at. Yeah, he's got a great reputation doing that. That might be the ultimate team sport eighteen aside on the field at one time, thirty six players out there. I'm glad I never had to announce that.

I mean, twenty two is enough on the field at one time in American football, But but thirty six guys out there. How do you think pressure is different in a team sports environment versus an individual sport, and including the ultimate individual sport. Aren't team sports a bunch of

individuals anyway running around? Whilst you might work as a team, it comes down to those moments where it becomes an individual thing, doesn't even in college football it's the quarterback throwing the touchdown pass, or it's the receiver taking the mark or to catch or whatever you guys call it. You know, it's sport these days gets broken down so much that it's very much individual and about individual performances and and how you perform under pressure. So I don't

think there's a huge difference between that. I don't see a massive difference between a tennis player's for pformance and Tom Brady's performance, because it's the way we look at it these days, and the way we do the analytics and we break everything down with the tape and the way that we dissect it as commentators and analysts. So yeah, I think the same pressure applies whether you're playing in the team or whether you're an individual. I don't really

think it's much of a difference. This part of the conversation was during the Tokyo Olympics, and our talk turned to the difficult decisions that gymnastics legends Simone Biles had to make with the whole world watching. Through his experience as coaching Simona Hallet, Darren says it's important to listen and learn and be grateful for Simon Bial's honesty. How strong is she though? Just an amazing person, an amazing athlete.

And I've been around this long enough now, I've been working with Simona Howlett for the last six or seven years.

For me, she is the strongest mentally the strongest, one of the most capable people that I've met in my life, and an amazing person, an amazing athlete, and I may as in competitor, and as I said before, being by her side and watching the pressure that she's been under throughout the course of her career and her being able to deal with it in fine ways to to get through those times of toughness when when it was really breaking her down. Yeah, I get what Simone is going through.

I've seen it from a different athlete. I've been around it long enough to know that we all have to have patience with that. We have to take our time, and we have to ask questions and learn from these these moments because things like Simone is communicating to us at the moment. We can all learn from it and we can all get better from them, and the next generation coming through will be more aware of when they are having these struggles. Okay, it's not just me, you know,

I'm not the weird one. This has happened to athletes before, and they'll be able to deal with it much more efficiently. So my heart goes out to Simone. I hope that she gets through it. They caught the twist is is that right what she's going through. I saw some video that she released yes today about doing some training in Tokyo. One of the places opened up a gym for her where she's jumping into a pit trying to get her her jumps right and she's landing on the back of

all things. So can you imagine if she was actually to perform and lose her way getting the twisties in competition and actually really hurt herself. So yeah, I hope she gets through it. Apparently a lot of the gymnasts do go through this and they do get out of it. So heart goes out to Simone and thanks for being so honest and we can all learn from this as well. In the culture now, there seems to be a pretty disappointing lack of empathy and compassion among people that have

no understanding what an athlete is going through. I mean, it's complicated because titles are one championship, society, legacy is built on how you do handle pressure in the moment, and man, it could be pretty hard. Should be in tennis that the label of choking in the moment. I mean, every player has done it, no matter how great they are.

We're talking about Roger, Ratha, Novak, Serena. They all had those moments where they fell short of what they wanted to do because the moment they couldn't meet that moment.

But man, is it difficult and harsh these days to be to be judged for that when you've done so many other great things and yet people want to remember and focus on, you know, two minutes of frailty I had andre As actually talked about the a f L. Andrea acually did me a wonderful favor where he got on with the leaders of the Port Adelaide Football Club on a zoom call just like this, and it was

having a chat to the leaders of the club. So there was about ten of the players and one of the questions to Andrea was would you walk back some of your mistakes that you made throughout the course of your career. It was like he was a little bit offended by it goes, why would I do that? You know, Yeah, of course I've made plenty of mistakes, but all of those mistakes I've made have made me the person that I am today, and I would never walk back any

of those because I've learned from them. Now I've become a better person from them, and I've become a better athlete from them, and I'm sitting here today. He didn't say this, but he was sitting there today, and he's one majors and he's won an Olympic gold medal, it's won the career Slam, of the career Golden Slam. Everything that could be achieved in tennis, he achieved it. And he only achieved it because there was some big hurdles along the way that he had to overcome and he

had to become better because of that. To no, he would not go back and start his life again knowing the mistakes he made. Those mistakes were really important for him in his growth as a person in an athlete, and I thought that was really good. As usual, our minds are together. It was gonna, wrote Andrea very soon, because you coached Hi when he became the oldest number one male player in the world at that time, and not many people believed in him that he was gonna

be able to get back to that moment. But Andrea was such a beautifully and still as a beautifully complex person, and he's got many facets. He the complexity is one of the things that makes him the person who he is, made him the player who he is, but also made it a challenge, I imagine to coach him at times because you know, andre As he talked about in his

book and has other times. Um, you know, he could lose focus, he could lose his priorities where it suddenly became not that important to win this match or this title, And that's that's the beauty of him. He's not like too many people that have ever played any sports, so coaching him must have been fascinating at the At the same time, he's a complicated genius. He could make the difficult really simple. He could just break it down incredibly fast.

You know, he would think about things for a long time and you come back with a solution that was, oh yeah, and that makes perfect sense. But he wasn't great with the simple. You could make the simple really

really complicated, way too complicated. And I think that's why both Brad and I had some great times with him, is that Brad and I are pretty much on the same wavelength, is that we like to keep things simple, and we like to keep things clear, and our communication is pretty clear as well, So we were we were a good mix for him because at times he could over complicate things and we could come in and go no, no, no, no, no, this is how it is and okay, and he would

move everything into different compartments and just concentrate on the task at hand. So it was a bit of a ying and yang with the coach and the player and getting and it's where it's really important also to get the right type of coach with the right type of personality. With the player. It's not about how they play sometimes it's about the mindset. And so that's where it was quite successful with both Brandon myself. I've said this many times before. He made me a much better tennis coach

than I made him a tennis player. And there's no question about it, because you have to be on your game seven when you work with someone like Andre Darren. How would you make it a stinction between belief and confidence. Belief is deep, it can come from years and decades. Confidence. I think most players and most sports would say you can come and go. But it is remarkable as an outsider to watch it from sometimes from bright caast booth or courtside. Confidence just go like that. It can evaporate

with one mess and seemingly turn a match around. I mean, the mind is a very interesting thing, and as a coach you sit there in a box kind of helpless, But that just helps shed some light on on just the idea of confidence kind of coming and going in an instant. Yes, I've got the my five attributes that I believe that champions possess. You can talk about speed and height and power, and you know, there's a whole bunch of attributes that you're not gifted, and some players

have them, some players don't. But the five attributes that I believe that all champions have work ethic And you talk about belief, you can't have belief without great work ethic. And the champions they put the working. They don't all work to the same level because some people are a little bit different in the way they go about it, but you've got to be able to put the work in, and if you don't put the work in, you have

no chance. At this level. They all have unbelievable purpose, and it's about finding the why about what makes an athlete tick and coaching for the why, and that will make a massive difference in building that purpose for the player. Because when I came along, Andre was thirty two years of age. He accomplished amazing things throughout his career. You said it before. Most people thought that he was maybe

on the way down. But his purpose was to build an opportunity and a life and education for kids that couldn't afford it in his hometown of Las Vegas. That's what he was playing for. He wasn't playing for himself, and he had already accomplished everything you needed to accomplish his tennis play. He was playing for the kids of

Las Vegas. So that was his purpose. And once you know the purpose, then you can build a program and a schedule around that to keep him inspired to go out there and continue to do what he does great. The belief you spoke about all the great champions in the world, they just have it, and they have it through built up resilience as well. That's going on the path that we spoke about. The it's never a straight line, it's never a normal straight road with no bumps along

the way. Everybody suffers through those bumps. And you can go through the the lives of every great champion and every great sport and there will be amazing stories attached to those those lives. So you've got to build up that resilience and embrace it as something good and something that's needed to get there. And the last thing that I believe, especially in tennis, that all the great champions have,

they have a great team around them. They don't just have a coach coming in every year or two and keep looking for the magic bullet to now, I'm going to get into a new coach because this is not working for me. I I'm not sure why I'm not winning tennis matches. It's time to change things. They have a strong team around them that they can build up that belief and that culture that we spoke about before.

And if you look at Federer, he's had several Luthy and he's had a couple of other coaches coming in as well, but he's had his fitness trainer for all his career. Several Luthy has been all his career. You look at Djokovic, he's had Mary Invider basically there his

entire career. If you look at Serena Williams, Patrick Marauderglu has been there for the last seven or eight years, and before that it was her dad that's been there for her and saying for Venus as well, you go through all the best players in the world, they've got strong, consistent teams around them, and I believe that's really important

for a continued success. Obviously, this change is player by player, situation, but situation, but in general, how would you describe the art of tennis coaching in terms of technical strokes, tactical the excess and ose, and just the mental side being being a cheerleader, a hardass, or a friend or whatever whatever you have button you have to push. So I think tennis is a little bit different because you're one on one and you don't have a roster of players

changed coming through your team. So I think the window of making real change and being really effective is about three or four years in tennis. Once you get to that moment, you become it becomes more of a managerial role in tenner. The important thing after that is for the coach to evolve. And we talk a lot about tennis coaching in that because you're one on one, because the jobs are quite protective, coaches are a bit reluctant

to reach out for help. So if I'm having trouble with Simona and having trouble to improve her, serve the first thing I would do is and I've done this before, is to reach out to someone who probably knows to serve a little better than me and say, hey, listen, can you come in and take a look at simonas serves see if there's anything I'm missing Because I'm trying to get a next to three or four miles per hour. That's really important, and I think that happens a lot

in tennis. So you have to evolve, You have to reach out, you have to get other people to come in. Otherwise you only have a certain amount of information in your bank, and once you unload all that information, where do you go to from there? And that's why sometimes the limit is about three or four years as a tennis coach. So evolving as a tennis coach is incredibly

important early. I think a lot of it is technical and technical, but if you're not addressing the emotional quality and we talk a lot about the i Q and tennis UM, if you're not addressing the emotional quote from day one, you are really neglecting your job because it's amazingly important and you've got to be on that right from the start, and as you go through the course of the next couple of years the technical and the

technical certainly changes depending on the situation. One major difference in tennis is that the coach works for the player, his or her incomes society about what the player does and what the player decides to pay them, and that varies widely. And you are the head of perhaps a team, but the team all orbits around the player and the player's win. There's so much turnover in tennis coaching. How is that dynamic when any any tennis coach can get fired at any moment, after any result if the player

changes their mind. Now, I see a lot of coaches around the world that coaches they coach teams complain about the length of a coach's contract two or three years and the instability of it and uncertain futures. And I think, oh my god, to be unbelievable to have a two or three year contract, wouldn't it? Because my and I'm one of the lucky ones, because I've been able to work with three amazing people when late and cured, Andre

Agassi and Simona Howett. I can tell you with Andre that I had a handshake, handshake agreement with Andre for five years and that was it. So we could have stopped at any moment in time um and I always looked at it that whatever time I get to spend with somebody like him, regardless of how long it was, I was going to walk away as a better person in a better coach for it as I moved on

to my next role. I did mention that to Simona a number of years ago about the arrangement that I had with Andre, and the first thing she said, I want that too, So I actually have a handshake agreement

with her as well. And you know, we've had a much rockier road than what I had with Andre because of many reasons, and they've been well documented, but it's been about the journey that her and I have had to build up that relationship, to have that trust between her and I, to build that resilience we talk about so often, and we've come out of the other side of it great friends and better for it, and hopefully she's a better athlete and a better tennis player for it,

and I certainly believe I'm a better coach for it, because to go through those moments, it's an eye opening experience. And one of the things I do is I have a couple of people that I talked to back in Australia a lot about what I'm going through and how to handle situations, so I can get different views about what is right and what is wrong. There's no there's no real right and wrong, because it's really just you're an uncharted territory with a lot of the stuff that

we go through. It's about trying to work out what is the best situation and the best way to handle it. And I've been wrong a number of times. At the US Open when she lost to sharif Over, I think it was about two thousand and seventeen, Simona was trying to get the number one ranking in the world. It was just after the Ostapenko lost at the French Open

as well. That period between the French Open and the US Open, I made the mistake of trying to lead by being too strong and and standing up and making sure that all right, every day we're going to get onto the court and we're going to keep pushing, and you're really close and I believe in you, and I was trying to be this much a guy. I guess that Okay, you know, forget the French Open. It never happened. We were so close, let's go and get this done.

But I wasn't connected to what she was going through, and I wasn't feeling the pain that she was. I knew the pain she was suffering, but I was trying not to show her that I was feeling the same same pain. And I was for sure, and that's all she needed to see was that I was suffering as well, because to her, I was this guy that didn't really care that she was going through this this moment or this pain. It wasn't true, but that was impression that

I was giving her. And so after the US Open happened, when she lost that match to sharif Over, her trainer basically told me that, hey, you've been a dick. You know. All she wants is for you to give her a hug and tell her that you love her, and and that was much better than any coach and you can give her at the moment. He was right right. So I did that, and I went to locker room and told her that I loved her and really proud of everything she's done and couldn't be more proud of what

she's been going through. And I gave her a hug and she said she's I've been waiting for this hug for three months, and then two weeks later she go out and beat Sharif over six two or six too. So the hug was the best coaching thing I've done in about two years. So you learn from those moments um but you only learn from those moments through trial and error. That's a great story. The achievement even more beautiful and even sweeter because of the rocky road that

led up to it. That's a handshake deal that that was stood what you called shark therapy and the ultimeter, so it has to be. It's become a pretty sturdy and very nice to watch handshake deal. This generation is a little bit different. The coaches do care because they are of my generation. Most of us are married, or we have families, or we have kids, and to be a tennis coach means you've got to be on the

road thirty five forty weeks the year. So I'm lucky again that I'm coaching players at the level that I can get paid pretty well. Most don't. Most of doing this because they love it. It's it's a tough life because you are away from the family for thirty five forty weeks a year. Most of making an amount of money where you can't afford to bring the family with you. I can if I choose to. So I have luxuries that a lot of coaches don't. But I do feel for a lot of coaches out there. And we talk

about coaches salaries in other sports. You know, if a coach is making the hundred ground a year in tennis, they're doing pretty well. It's not the money that most people think that they make. If you make better, much better than that, but most don't. So I have a lot of a lot of empathy for a lot of the coaches out there and what they're going through and what they're suffering through. And they are damn good coaches.

All the coaches put in a ton of work and they're all trying to get better, and and the relationship between a lot of the coaches on on the road is really close. Actually, we all try to help each other. That's true coaching at the highest level of various sports. The money, the ego strokes, the acclaim just not there. In tennis. You better be in it for the love of it because you're not going to get those inequal measures to the coaches and the in the team sports,

that's for sure. Uh. One of the last things theren here you said that a coach's job is to coach himself out of a job and otherwords, make the players self sufficient enough they don't need to listen to this guy any longer. Do you believe that? Yeah? Absolutely, Yeah, it's more important. What was more important when we didn't have on court coaching. On court coaching ups a little bit because you can you can change the course or the direction of a match if it's not going in

the right way. And that's where it empowers the coaches a little bit more and it helps us improve our craft and to give us a little more responsibility. If you don't have that, you've got to teach your player to problem solve all the time. And you wish to do that anyway. Now that's the role and the responsibility

of a coach. But you'll get to a point. That's why I think the window of a tennis coach is about three or four years, because you get to a point where the player pretty much knows what you're going to say before you come down and say it, because they've heard it before. Right. It's tennis is about being brilliant at the basics, doing it over and over and

over again. So if you're spending all this time on the court with one player, working through practice sessions, working through practice matches, going through the tapes of matches they play, you're picking out the parts of the matches where the players either doing great and you're reinforcing the positives, or the players not doing so great and you're trying to

help them through that to throw different scenarios. Hey, you should have played the foehand down the line instead of going cross court, because you can't come cross court when you approach the net because it opens up too much angle. So you know, if your players just called you out onto the court and they pit two fourhand cross courts and come to the net, they know what you're about to say. Stop hitting the cross court forehand when you're coming to the net, take that ball down the line.

So it'll get to a point where when they know what you're going to say is when you probably coach yourself out of a job and it might be time for a different voice and in a different way of doing things, in a different way of training, in a different way of approaching matches. And that's where I think the three or four window was about right. Three or

four year windows about right. You see coaches seem to age about five years within one match as they're suffering the flare box over the I don't know how you stay so so youthful, so young look and so energized there, And you shouldn't. You should be You should be like a hundred and ten year old after all the big matches and all they complicated personalities and the ups and downs the players you've coached in your career, You keeping it together to well, my friend, for for all that

that's the first lie that you've spoken today. Chris Valley, Darren says, the players that stress you the most as a coach are the ones that care the most about improving, and that that's a beautiful thing. After taking a day or two to recover in decompress after the intensity of the US Open, Darren and Nice circle back to talk about the captivating women's final and Novak Djokovic's bid to become the first man in fifty two years to complete

the calendar Grand Slam. Well, Darren, you had an amazing courtside position, just a few steps behind the court, very near where the players chairs are as Djokovic tried to clear the last hurdle of need to get a Grand Slam. What an amazing perspective and what could you see from that vantage point about his mental state, the wear and tear, the pressure that was on him for that match. Yeah, Chris,

I think it was a number of things. I think it really started from the pre match interviews, so on one of the a the analyst that are in that tunnel on Arthur Ours Stadium and do a couple of questions to each of the players walking out for those

big matches. And honestly, from all the years that Novak's played on Arthur Ours Stadium, that was the first time when he walked towards me that you can actually hear the stadium reverberate through the through the tunnel, and that was the first time you could hear the whole stadium chanting Novak and he felt that it was like the tunnel was shaking, and I actually think that shocked him a little bit. As the tournament went along, he could feel that he was gathering more momentum and more support

from the crowd. Things were coming becoming a little bit easier as far as embraced the crowd embracing him, but he was struggling with his game. But when he walked up for that pretty much interview, yeah, he was a little bit taken back, and I think I asked a simple question, you know, it's been an incredible year, and it's been a incredible career so far, but how much have you been looking forward to tonight on this stadium

against this opponent? And yeah, he just took a couple of seconds and said, you know, this is what it's all about, and his cheeks kind of went a little bit red. And it was an amazing feeling. And had he won it and won the Grand Slam, it would have culminated in the greatest year that I've ever seen. And then I had the best seat in the house, sitting two rows back. It was about ten ft away from him and watching both Medvedev and Djokovic go about it.

The first game of the match, I think was huge and you can always reflect a little bit easier after the match has finished. But he had his first service game and ended up losing his first service game, and that set him on the back foot straight away, and I think deep down he knew the tank was not full.

He had to manage his physical levels all the way through that particular match, and there were periods in that match when he emptied the bucket to see if he could either get it back on level pegging or get that early breaker serve in the second set, and once

he wasn't able to do that. A little bit reminiscent to the semifinal match against Zverev in Tokyo, he made a huge push late in the second set to get that breaker serve back, knowing that his energy levels were low, and once that didn't happen, it kind of fell apart pretty quickly after that. But just an amazing year. Incredible that he was able to do what he was able

to do. I know that Federer has been one match away and had a twenty seven and one year before as well, But there is a difference between going one, two, three and everything culminating into the US Open with the pressure, with the expectation, with the eyes upon him. There's a build up of pressure and Serena felt it a few

years ago and certainly no Vac felt it in the end. Yeah, you can't just push a button and find energy, and whether it's the wear and tear from the tough path to get to that final constantly falling behind a set down or that the pressure of the moment. I guess we'll never know, because even though he's been one of the great pressure players in the history of and maybe

any sport. Uh, it was a lot for him. Did you did you sense early on that there was a weight on him, there was something other than the physical component,

that that maybe he just couldn't find his gaming. We've seen him turn matches around so often here You've you've been in that same courtside position when all of a sudden the antenna goes up, he finds some energy and he pivots quickly, and we sort of waited for that to happen, and he just never could seemingly find the energy or overcome what was going on inside his head and his body. So the biggest telltale song for me is whether or not he's got balance on a lot

of these ground strokes. And we'll see him sort of get the wobbly boots sometimes with his feet and his body as he makes a couple of mistakes. But he did that constantly. He spends so much time and talks so much about the mental preparation. I think does more in that department than almost any athlete, and I think he does it because he knows he has to. He's

kind of a he says. I think he said to you that there's a volcano kind of inside his brain sometimes, and and and a storm, and I think that or Tornado actually said a tornado inside his head. And I think that because he's not naturally a calm person. He struggles with temper, he struggles with volatility, he's he's practiced these techniques that are often very successful, but we have under the pressure of this scene that come out. We haven't talked a lot about Tokyo, but he did lose

his cool completely. They're smashing frames through a racket into the crowd um. Thankfully no one was in there. And then obviously had his moments where he just couldn't get himself calm and used those techniques at the US Open final as well, and that that I think was was a little bit surprising to see because he's done everything he can to be ready for those moments and it just didn't seem like he could get himself in the

right mental state. I think it shows that he was pretty frazzled by the end of the US Open campaign

and at Rolling Garriss, he did it. He had that amazing match against Rafa, that full set match in the Semis, and then he was a couple of sets down against Sits a pass and if you remember when he was two sets to one down and Stephanels took that toilet break, he sat there for about four or five minutes the change of ends, just looking staring into the crowd and he had a little bit of a rice smile on his face, but he had a laser like focus as well.

And if you were watching that, you were thinking, oh, my goodness, this is just going to be paying for Stephanis to close this match out, because we've seen this so many times before. And you're absolutely right, Chris, we didn't see that in the final the US Open. I'm sure he tried. I'm sure he tried to get that focus and build that energy level back up to a point where he can make an all out of sault.

But when your body is not cooperating, your mind doesn't cooperate the way you wanted to as well, and it just got to that point. And also on the other side of the court, you've got a guy that's playing inspired tennis as well. It was a mixture of what Novak had left in the tank and how good the other guy on the other side of the court was playing as well. Yeah, he showed no fragility, no frailty to know back, and I think that's what made Jokovic realized that it was going to be too tough of

a client back. He didn't have it in it because never dropped his level to give him that hope or that belief. And I think the last thing on this match ironic you began with the description of the crowd noise. He's never got a welcome like that in any big match in his life. He's never gotten the love and support that I think he's craved and talked about craving the same way that feder and the doll have gotten

that support in those big moments. And it's ironic that he finally gets it for a match throughout and he's not able to use it the way he hoped to. Wasn't able to gain inspiration or energy from it. In fact, he's been more successful in the past kind of drawing energy from the crowd that is not supporting him. And so that's what was too bad. You could see that sobbing at the end of the match, really before the match was over with one game to go. It was

quite powerful. Yeah, yeah, it's what really Will said. It's kind of that me against the world philosophy, isn't it That when the crowd starts to pull for the underdog or get on him about a couple of things, that he just looks in and goes, you know what, I'm going to show you. I'm going to close this guy out and I'm going to have no mercy. And that's where his greatness comes from. So maybe it was a bit of a shock for him, But in the end, I think you look back on this year and be

incredibly proud of what he's been able to achieve. And if he has craved that moment, that moment, that standing ovation that he got, that welcome from the crowd and Arthur Stadium, that will stay with him forever as one of the great moments, even though he did lose that match. So last start on the US Open, in contrast to the heaviness and the historic weight of the men's final, there was a lateness to the all teenager unseated women's final,

with emiratic kind of over Layla Fernandez. They played with such joy and abandon and we've talked in this episode about pressure and what it does to the mind. It seemed that those two, maybe because they didn't know what they didn't know, just went out there in that final there and just and showed the joy and showed the freedom and the lightness that is so rare in a big occasion, especially for those that haven't been there before.

Youth enthusiasm, fearlessness, that the ability to problem solve at such an young age was amazing. I think Fernandez did that time and time again throughout the tournament. Her run to the final was a little bit tougher, but it takes nothing away from what Emma did in the final, because I thought Fernandez had it in her to win

that match. And again Rattakan, who just found another level every time she had to step up under pressure, she found a great shot, She didn't wait for the ball to be given to her, and she deserved every inch of that victory. And there's a lot to look forward to the next five years on the w t A Tour. So hopefully the tour they embraced this, they market it, and they pushed these youngsters and all these names that

are doing such great things to the forefront. And the great thing for us being in the media is we recognize now a lot more names on the w t A Tour and it's a much much deeper than it was ten years ago. And that's a great thing. And hopefully on the A TP Tour we can get the same. Yeah, it was an incredible energize us open for for so many reasons. One of the best. Darren care Hill also one of the best a man. Grateful to Darren for

his wisdom and his friendship. Now, the next episode in this podcast series is a toast to tequila, another topic that I'm very passionate about. My guest is the founder and CEO of my favorite brand of tequila, Costa Riconis, Berta Gonzalez the Avis. She is truly a pioneer. This is a great conversation about the entrepreneurial spirit, the inspiration, the challenges and rewards of that as told through tequila. I think you'll enjoy it. Keep an eye up for it.

As always, I'm grateful to my co executive producer Jennifer Dempster and A Jason Whitehill for his editing Skills. Invite you to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast, and I'll talk to you soon.