Darren Cahill (37:46)
One of the great things about him is he wants to try new things. And I don't think you see that too much with a young player that's already around the top 10. So we came in, he was coached by Ricardo Piarti, who did an amazing job job for, for years and years and got him inside the top 10. And when Simone Beniotti and myself started, Simone started a little bit before me and then I came along sort of. This time three years ago, I think he was ranked about 14 or 15 in the world. We knew how good he already was. But against the best players in the world, he got exposed because he played a similar type of shot, similar type of ball all the time. And what would happen is he'd be fine, he'd start matches fine, but as the match would progress, he'd actually play his opponent into form. They would get used to his ball and then there was no variation. So one of the things we sat down with is that, okay, you can stay where you Are you can continue to get a little bit better and doing what you're doing and you're probably going to end up, you know, around that 8 to 6 to 12 mark for the next 10 years. And God bless you. If you want to do that, that's great, great. But if you want to be a great player, if you want to give yourself a chance of winning majors, then we need to add things to your game and this. And so we went through it. We went through a change to his backhand, his back end changed. Simone shortened his back and he used to take the back end quite high and used to be a figure eight loop. He pulled it straight down now and it's a very efficient straight through line, through the line of the ball shot. We said it was a three step plan with his serve because his serve was very side on and there was no shoulder rotation in his serve at all. So we started with the feet apart action with the shoulders and then we moved it to the Step Up. The reason why we went to the Step up right before Wimbledon one year is he took that bad loss. He thought it was a bad loss. It was. Daniel Altmyer played incredibly well and beat him in five sets at Roland Garrison the second round. But he was pretty disappointed with the way he served and the way he played. And he asked, he said, where are these improvements going to come from? And then we sat down, we spoke about, okay, the next thing that we need to do is progress your serve. And we both believe you're better with a step up serve, serve. We were going to do this at the end of the year. This is going to be the next progression with your serve. He goes, no, I want to do it now. So within a day we went to the courts in Rowan Garris. He goes, all right, what do I need to do? We copied John Isner a little bit at the start. Not a bad serve to copy. And then he formulated his own feeling in action from what he thought was best. But as soon as he went to the step up serve, we could see that there was improvements to be made and he felt much more comfortable doing it. Changed his court position. He zigzags a lot better now. Instead of playing more laterally on the tennis court across the baseline, he's in and out of the baseline much more efficiently. A little bit like Rafa does when he's playing on hard courts and, and trying to take time away from his opponents. Using the drop shot a lot more effectively, coming in more, he's more comfortable on the volley Using a slice backhand occasionally. He doesn't use the slice back in all that match. I've got to say, one of the. The players that I tapped on the shoulder, he lost a Novak a couple of years ago at Wimbledon in five sets. Won the first two sets right back. Exactly. Novak came back and ran away with the mat a little bit. What I just said. Novak got used to his ball, got used to the shape, got used to the pace, and then just locked in like Novak does and doesn't miss, and won the last three sets reasonably easily. And I saw Novak, and he's always great with this. He's always been incredible when you tap him on the shoulder and. And I said, hey, listen, I'm just. I just started with Yannick. Don't tell me anything you don't want to tell me, but can I ask what you were feeling out there? And he was incredible. He basically said, hey, listen, good luck with working with him. Yeah, hits the ball great, but there's no variation, so, you know, there's no shape on his shot, there's no height over the net, doesn't come to the net. He's not trying to bring me in. I know that he returns well, but he's not attacking my serve on the return of service. So he went through his whole game and broke it down. And. And it wasn't like it was revelations to what we didn't know about Yannick and what we were trying to change in his game. But when you take that conversation and sit down with a young man like Yannick Sinner and say, hey, listen, I just spoke to Novak, and this is what he thinks. That leaves a big impression on a young player. So for Yannick, it's right, give it to me. Let's start doing these changes. And again, I give Simone a lot of credit because Simone went through a piece by piece, and together he's been willing to make a lot of changes to his game. And that's where you see the evolution of his game now. Going from a guy that had all sorts of trouble playing Medvedev, and he still struggles to play Daniel Medvedev, but he's found a way to. To use his finishing skills to find different ways to win points. He doesn't rely on just thumping forehands and backhands now to win points. He can still do that, that. But you've got to find different ways to win tennis points to put some confusion on the other side of the court, because if your opponent is not confused about what's going on, they're probably going to beat you. And you got to try to find ways to put some doubt in your opponent's mind. And I think he does that a lot better.