Why the players who go deepest are often the best at starting again

Tomorrow the US Open main draw begins, and for the players walking through the gates at Flushing Meadows the obvious way to view the next two weeks is as one tournament. Seven rounds separate the eventual champion from the trophy. But the longer I spend around Grand Slam tennis, the less I think that is the best way to look at it.

I increasingly think a Grand Slam is really seven different tournaments.

Every round presents a new problem. The opponent changes, the tactical priorities change, the schedule changes and the player’s body can feel completely different from one match to the next. The court, conditions, expectations and emotional state can all shift in the space of 48 hours. What worked brilliantly on Monday might be completely irrelevant on Wednesday.

This US Open will give me an interesting perspective on that because through my work with Orreco I will be covering five different players in the main draw, across five different teams. That brings its own version of the same challenge. I have to move from one player’s world into another, understand what each coaching team needs, adapt the information and communication accordingly, and then switch gears again for the next match.

There is no single way of working that fits every player.

And there is certainly no single way of winning seven matches at a Grand Slam.

Round one is its own tournament

The first round of a Grand Slam is unusual because there has often been so much time to think about it. The draw comes out, the opponent is analysed, practices are planned and the match gradually becomes the focus of everything around the player.

Sometimes there is almost too much preparation.

The temptation is to believe that because it is a Grand Slam, your best tennis needs to appear immediately. I don’t think it does. Your job in round one is not to win the US Open. Your job is to solve the problem sitting on the other side of the net.

Sometimes that means playing brilliantly. Sometimes it means feeling uncomfortable for two hours and simply finding a way through. Both performances put you into exactly the same next round.

That distinction matters because Grand Slams do not necessarily reward the player who begins the tournament playing their absolute best tennis. Often they reward the player who stays alive long enough for their best tennis to arrive.

Then everything resets

A player might produce one of their best performances of the year in round one. They serve brilliantly, execute the plan perfectly and win comfortably. That should create confidence, but none of those points carries into the next match.

The next opponent may be a completely different problem. A return position that worked two days earlier may now give away too much court. A pattern that caused huge damage in round one might feed directly into the next opponent’s strength. The player may also feel physically different, the conditions might have changed and the match might be scheduled at a completely different time of day.

That is where teams have to be disciplined.

Take the confidence from the previous match without becoming attached to the performance. Keep what remains useful. Remove what does not. Then start again.

For me, that applies to my own work this fortnight too. Covering five players means I cannot finish analysing one match and simply carry the same thinking into the next team. One coach may want detailed pattern information. Another may want three simple tactical priorities. One player responds well to numbers, another needs those numbers translated into something extremely clear and actionable.

The underlying work can be complex, but the delivery has to fit the person receiving it.

Switching gears is part of the job.

Winning creates its own pressure

We talk constantly in sport about resilience after losing. I think there is another skill that receives far less attention: recovering from winning.

A big win creates emotion. Messages start arriving. Media attention increases. People look at the draw and suddenly someone says, “You’ve got a great opportunity now.”

Maybe they do.

But an opportunity on paper is meaningless unless the player keeps winning tennis matches.

This is where a tournament can start expanding inside a player’s head. Instead of thinking about the next opponent, they start seeing the quarterfinal. Instead of playing the point, they begin thinking about ranking points, prize money or the possibility of walking onto a bigger court.

And when attention moves into the future, behaviour can subtly change in the present. A forehand gets guided instead of struck. A second serve loses aggression. Court position moves backwards. The player begins protecting the possibility of winning rather than actually trying to win.

That is why “one match at a time” is more than a sporting cliché. It is really an attentional strategy.

The team has to keep making the world smaller.

Today’s opponent. Today’s patterns. Today’s conditions. This point.

Every player and every team needs something different

Working across different teams has probably reinforced this more than anything for me.

At a Grand Slam there is enormous information available. Matches, video, statistics, serve patterns, return positions, rally profiles and tactical tendencies. The challenge is not finding information anymore. The challenge is deciding which information actually deserves the player’s attention.

And that answer changes depending on who you are working with.

With one player, a very specific return-position detail might create an immediate advantage. With another, the most useful message might simply be to reinforce their own identity and avoid overcomplicating the opponent. Some coaches want to explore everything with you. Others already have a very strong tactical view and want data to confirm or challenge one particular idea.

That means adapting is not just about understanding five different players. It is about understanding five different environments.

What does this coach value?

How does this player process information?

How much detail is useful?

What should be communicated, and just as importantly, what should stay behind the scenes?

I can move from one match into another with an entirely different tactical problem and an entirely different coaching language. That is one of the parts of the work I enjoy most because it forces you to remain open-minded.

You cannot make the player fit your analysis.

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The analysis has to fit the player.

Seven matches means seven different problems

This is what makes a Grand Slam fascinating tactically.

You might face a huge server followed by an exceptional returner. A defender followed by somebody who takes the ball early. A left-hander. A player who gives you no rhythm. Someone who knows your game extremely well.

Each match asks a different question.

A player absolutely needs an identity. They need to know what makes their tennis dangerous and what they want their game to look like under pressure. But having an identity does not mean being tactically rigid.

The question for the team is always somewhere between two things:

What does our player do best?

and

What is this particular opponent asking us to solve?

That is the balance.

Then if you win, you may have to throw away a large part of the answer and start again.

Another tournament.

Another problem.

Another solution.

You do not need seven perfect performances

One of the biggest misconceptions about a deep Grand Slam run is that the player must produce extraordinary tennis for two straight weeks.

They don’t.

There will almost always be a day when the timing is slightly off, the body does not feel perfect or the opponent creates problems nobody expected. One match may feel incredibly straightforward and the next may become a three-hour battle.

Sometimes the most important win in a Grand Slam run is actually the least impressive one.

It is the day when the player is below their best, loses a set, becomes frustrated and somehow solves the problem anyway.

Those matches can be hugely valuable because they prove something to the athlete.

You don’t need to feel perfect to win.

You don’t need your best tennis every day.

You simply need enough answers.

The goal is not to produce seven masterpieces.

It is to produce seven solutions.

The player changes as the tournament changes

The player walking into round one is also not necessarily the same player who arrives in the second week.

By then there may have been hours of match play, treatment, recovery, practice, media commitments and emotional stress. Something might be sore. Sleep may have changed. Confidence may have grown enormously. The player may now be dealing with expectations that did not exist a week earlier.

So the team has to coach the player who exists today, not the one who arrived at the tournament.

Practice might become shorter. Recovery becomes more important. Technical work decreases. Tactical messages may become simpler.

The tournament changes, and the athlete changes with it.

The best teams notice that instead of blindly repeating what they did in round one.

The team should become more boring as the tournament becomes more exciting

There is a temptation as a player progresses to make everything feel bigger.

More meetings. More analysis. More conversation. More discussion about what the opportunity could become.

I often think the strongest environments do the opposite.

As the tournament becomes more exciting externally, the team becomes more predictable internally.

Practice. Recover. Eat. Prepare. Sleep. Repeat.

The player already knows they are in the second week of the US Open. They do not need everybody around them constantly reminding them.

What they need is an environment that still feels recognisable.

The stadium may be bigger. The opponent may be higher ranked. More people may suddenly be watching. But breakfast can still be breakfast. Warm-up can still be warm-up. The tactical conversation can still be clear and concise.

At the biggest tournaments, boring can be a competitive advantage.

Start again

By the second week of a Grand Slam, we naturally start talking about who is “close” to winning it.

But close is a dangerous concept in sport.

A semifinalist is two matches from the trophy.

They are also one match from going home.

Both things are true.

The players who handle that tension best seem able to acknowledge the opportunity without living inside it. They finish one match, recover, learn what needs to be learned and then mentally let it go.

That is why I think a Grand Slam is really seven different tournaments.

Seven opponents.

Seven tactical problems.

Seven emotional challenges.

Potentially seven different versions of the player.

And from my perspective over the next two weeks, five different players and five different teams will continually challenge me to do exactly the same thing: reset, adapt and understand the problem that is in front of me rather than assuming the solution from the last one will still apply.

Perhaps that is one of the biggest lessons of Grand Slam tennis.

It is not simply about maintaining your level for two weeks.

It is about maintaining your identity while constantly adapting to change.

Knowing what to keep.

Knowing what to change.

Knowing when to push.

Knowing when to simplify.

And having the discipline to stop playing the tournament that might happen next and completely commit to the one happening now.

You don’t win a Grand Slam by staying in the same tournament for two weeks. You win it by being willing to start a new one every time you walk back through the gates.

I’d love to hear your thoughts

What do you think is harder during a Grand Slam run: adapting to a completely different opponent every round, or mentally resetting after each win and starting again?

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The Margins That Matter

Elite performance is rarely decided by the obvious. I share lessons from inside professional sport about coaching, performance and the details that can make the difference.

This morning, US Open qualifying begins at Flushing Meadows.

There are 128 players in the women’s draw and 128 in the men’s. By Thursday evening, only 16 from each will have earned their place in the main draw.

Three wins.

On paper, it sounds incredibly simple.

From inside a player’s team, it feels anything but.

I am here in New York this week with Linda Fruhvirtova, and after spending the last few days preparing for qualifying, I have been thinking about what makes this particular part of a Grand Slam so fascinating.

Because qualifying occupies a strange space in professional tennis.

You are at the US Open.

The signs are everywhere. Arthur Ashe Stadium is towering above you. Main-draw players are practising on the courts around you. The branding, the crowds, the locker rooms and the atmosphere all tell you that you have arrived at one of the biggest tournaments in the world.

But you are not really in the US Open yet.

There are still three matches standing between you and the main draw.

And that creates one of the most interesting psychological challenges in tennis.

The hardest part is pretending it is just another match

Coaches often tell players to treat every match the same.

Prepare normally. Follow the process. Focus on the things you can control. Do not make the occasion bigger than it needs to be.

All of that is good advice.

It is also much easier to say from outside the court.

Because everybody knows what qualifying for a Grand Slam can mean.

There are ranking points, prize money and the possibility of playing on one of the biggest stages in the sport. There is the chance to put your name into a main draw alongside the best players in the world. For some players, qualification can change the financial picture of their season. For others, it can provide the result that restores belief after months of difficult tennis.

And sometimes it simply represents something the player has dreamed about since they were a child.

You cannot pretend none of that exists.

The challenge is learning how to acknowledge the importance of the opportunity without allowing the opportunity to change the way you compete.

That is a very different thing.

The hardest part of qualifying may be making the match feel normal when everybody knows it isn’t.

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Three matches can become one enormous match in your head

The format creates another trap.

Everyone knows the number.

Three.

Win three matches and you are in.

That makes it incredibly easy to start playing matches that have not happened yet.

You win the first round and immediately the mind moves to the second.

Win again and suddenly the main draw feels close enough to touch.

One more.

That is where things can become dangerous.

The closer an athlete gets to something they really want, the harder it can become to stay focused on what is actually happening.

Instead of playing the point in front of them, they begin playing for the outcome.

They start thinking about qualification.

The draw.

The ranking points.

Who they might play.

Who is watching.

What it would mean.

And those thoughts can subtly change behaviour.

A forehand that was being struck confidently starts being guided.

A second serve loses a little speed.

Court position moves backwards.

A player who had been making brave decisions starts protecting what they feel they are close to achieving.

Nothing dramatic has necessarily happened.

But the intention has changed.

This is why one of the biggest responsibilities of the team during a week like this is to keep shrinking the horizon.

Not three matches.

One match.

Not the main draw.

Today’s opponent.

Not the final set.

The next point.

It sounds like one of the oldest clichés in sport, but clichés normally survive because somewhere inside them there is truth.

The future can be incredibly exciting.

It can also be one of the biggest distractions in performance.

Pressure is not determined by the size of the stadium

When people think about pressure in tennis, they naturally imagine a Wimbledon final or a night session inside Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Tens of thousands of spectators. Television cameras. Huge prize money. The biggest players in the world.

But some of the most pressurised matches in professional tennis take place on outside courts with a fraction of that audience.

Pressure is not created only by how many people are watching.

It is created by what the result means to the person playing.

That is why qualifying can be so intense.

For a player trying to establish themselves at Grand Slam level, an outside court during qualifying can feel just as significant as a stadium match does to somebody who has spent years at the top of the game.

There can be months of work behind that one afternoon.

Flights.

Hotels.

Coaching costs.

Training blocks.

Injuries.

Early losses.

Ranking fluctuations.

Weeks where nothing seems to move forward.

Then suddenly there is an opportunity to put three matches together and walk into a Grand Slam main draw.

The crowd does not need to be enormous for the consequence to feel enormous.

That distinction matters for coaches.

We cannot judge the pressure a player feels based on how important the match appears to us.

The player decides how important the moment feels.

Our job is to help them function inside it.

The team has to become calmer as the opportunity gets bigger

One thing I have learned over the years is that when the stakes increase, the temptation for everybody around the player is to do more.

More analysis.

More conversation.

More motivation.

More tactical information.

More reassurance.

But I increasingly believe the opposite is often more useful.

As the occasion gets bigger, the environment around the player should often become simpler.

The preparation can still be detailed behind the scenes. As a performance analyst, I want to understand the opponent as thoroughly as possible. I want to know the serve patterns, return positions, rally tendencies and situations where we believe an advantage exists.

But the player does not need to carry all of that onto court.

Particularly during qualifying, when there is already enough noise in their head.

The job is to reduce the information to what matters.

What are we looking for on the return?

What patterns do we trust?

What does our tennis need to look like today?

Then let them play.

This becomes even more important as the week progresses.

If a player wins the first round, I do not think the team needs to suddenly act as though something extraordinary has happened.

Recover.

Eat.

Review the important things.

Prepare for the next opponent.

The closer the main draw gets, the more normal the environment should feel.

Because the player will already know what is at stake.

They do not need us reminding them.

Qualifying exposes far more than tennis ability

Another reason I enjoy watching qualifying is that it exposes so many parts of a player’s game beyond technique.

Of course, the tennis has to be good enough.

But across three matches you may face completely different problems.

One opponent takes time away from you.

Another gives you no pace.

One returns incredibly well.

Another serves big and keeps the points short.

The conditions may change from one day to the next. A match can be delayed. Recovery time may be shorter than expected. The body may feel different on day three than it did on day one.

You cannot arrive with one perfect plan for the whole week.

You have to adapt.

That is where qualities like resilience, emotional regulation and problem solving become so important.

Grand Slam qualifying does not simply ask whether you can play well.

It asks whether you can find a way three times.

And those are not necessarily the same thing.

You may play brilliantly in round one and struggle in round two.

You may feel nervous.

You may lose the first set.

You may have to win ugly.

You may have to accept that the level you wanted to bring onto court simply is not available that day.

The players who get through are not always the players who produce three perfect performances.

Often they are the ones who remain effective when the performance is imperfect.

That is a huge part of professional tennis.

You can be improving while feeling like everything depends on today

This is perhaps the most difficult thing about individual sport.

Development happens slowly.

Results happen immediately.

A player can have completed an excellent training block. Their movement may be improving. Their tactical understanding may be better. Their physical numbers may be moving in the right direction.

Then they lose a tennis match.

The scoreboard does not provide any context.

It simply tells you who won.

Qualifying magnifies that feeling because the consequence is so clear. Win and the opportunity continues. Lose and the tournament is over.

But as a team, I think you have to maintain perspective.

Of course the result matters. Pretending it doesn’t would be dishonest.

Professional sport is ultimately competitive.

But one result cannot be allowed to become a complete judgement on the player or the work.

That is particularly important for young players who are still building careers.

There is a danger that Grand Slam qualification becomes a test of whether they are “good enough.”

I do not see it that way.

It is an opportunity.

A very important one.

But still one opportunity in a much longer career.

If you qualify, it does not suddenly mean every problem has disappeared.

If you lose, it does not mean the work has failed.

The challenge is to care deeply about the result without allowing it to define everything.

That balance may be one of the hardest things to achieve in elite sport.

What the public sees comes later

There is something else I find fascinating about qualifying week.

Most of what the wider public associates with the US Open has not really started yet.

The packed night sessions.

The celebrity crowd.

The huge matches inside Arthur Ashe.

The trophies.

The headlines.

Qualifying exists slightly outside that world.

And yet for hundreds of players, these few days may contain some of the most important tennis they play all year.

That is why I think qualifying gives you such an honest view of professional tennis.

It strips away some of the glamour.

You see players fighting for opportunities rather than trophies.

You see coaches pacing outside courts.

You see families watching every point.

You see players ranked incredibly high in the world experiencing exactly the same doubts and emotions as anybody else trying to move their career forward.

There is something raw about it.

Nobody is guaranteed anything.

You earn the next day.

Then you try to earn another one.

What I want the player to feel

From the team side, my aim this week is not to convince the player that qualifying does not matter.

It matters enormously.

The goal is to make sure that importance creates focus rather than fear.

We prepare properly.

We understand the opponent.

We identify the patterns we believe can help.

We create a clear plan.

Then, when the match starts, we trust the player to compete.

Because ultimately, no amount of preparation can remove uncertainty from tennis.

You cannot guarantee how you will feel.

You cannot guarantee what the opponent will do.

You cannot guarantee that the match will follow the pattern you expected.

The player has to walk onto court and solve what appears.

That is why these weeks are such a great test.

Not simply of forehands, serves and movement.

But of whether a player can remain themselves when something they desperately want is sitting just on the other side of three matches.

Three matches from everything

By Thursday evening, 32 players across the men’s and women’s draws will have come through qualifying and earned their place in the US Open main draw.

For them, three wins will have opened another door.

For everyone else, there will be another flight, another tournament and another opportunity somewhere else.

That can sound brutal.

In many ways, it is.

But it is also what makes professional tennis so compelling.

There is always another test.

Another opponent.

Another chance to respond.

And this week, for hundreds of players in New York, the challenge is beautifully simple and incredibly difficult at the same time.

Do not play the main draw before you are in it.

Do not play Thursday on Monday.

Do not play the next round before you have finished this one.

Prepare.

Compete.

Adapt.

Then earn the right to do it again.

Three matches may separate a player from the US Open main draw.

But the only one that matters is the one in front of them.

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I’d love to hear your thoughts

What do you think creates more pressure for an athlete: the size of the occasion, or what the result personally represents to them?

The Margins That Matter

Elite performance is rarely decided by the obvious. I share lessons from inside professional sport about coaching, performance and the details that can make the difference.

118 flights, 55 airports, 33 airlines and the unseen skill of learning to perform wherever the Tour takes you

By the time this article lands on Monday morning, I will have just arrived in New York.

Another airport. Another hotel. Another time zone.

This time I am there to start a training camp with Linda Fruhvirtova as we prepare for US Open qualifying and the final Grand Slam of the year.

And in many ways, the timing of this article could not be more appropriate.

Before leaving for New York, I opened Flighty and looked properly at my travel statistics from the last few years. One number immediately stood out.

197,347 miles.

118 flights. 28 long haul journeys. 55 different airports. 33 airlines. More than 19 days of my life physically sitting in the air.

And now, another flight to New York gets added to the list.

There is something slightly ironic about writing an article about life on the road while packing another suitcase and heading back out on Tour, but that is probably the point.

This is the part of professional tennis that people rarely see.

People see the US Open. They see Wimbledon, Roland Garros, Melbourne, Madrid and Monte Carlo. They see the stadiums, the crowds and the incredible places professional tennis takes us.

And I never lose sight of how privileged I am to experience that.

But behind those tournaments is another version of Tour life.

It is landing in a new country and trying to work out what time your body thinks it is. It is changing hotels, beds, food, courts and climates from one week to the next. It is opening the laptop at an airport gate because the next opponent still needs analysing. It is getting into a hotel late at night and knowing that practice starts the following morning whether you slept well or not.

Sometimes it is flying halfway around the world after a great week.

Sometimes it is making exactly the same journey after a first round loss.

The flight does not feel quite as glamorous then.

For me, travelling as a performance analyst and coach has become so normal that I sometimes forget how unusual the lifestyle actually is. Spending more than 35 weeks of the year moving between tournaments means that travel is not something that happens around my job.

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Travelling is part of the job.

And I increasingly think that one of the biggest skills this lifestyle develops has very little to do with hitting a tennis ball.

It is adaptability.

Professional tennis constantly changes the environment around you while expecting the standard of performance to remain the same.

The country changes. The time zone changes. The court changes. The balls change. The weather changes. The hotel changes. The schedule changes.

The expectations do not.

That applies to the player, but it also applies to everybody around them.

When I walk onto the practice court in New York this week, Linda does not need to know whether I slept brilliantly on the flight, whether the airport was chaotic or whether my body still thinks it is six hours later in Europe.

My responsibility is to arrive ready to work.

The player has enough variables to manage without having to manage the energy of the people around them as well.

That is something Tour life teaches you very quickly.

The Tour does not ask whether you are comfortable. It asks whether you can still perform when you are not.

The Tour rarely gives you perfect conditions

Professional tennis is built around constant change.

One week you can be on clay in Europe, the next you are on a hard court thousands of miles away. The balls change. The weather changes. The altitude changes. Practice availability changes. The food changes. The language changes. Even the way individual tournaments operate can feel completely different.

Then there is the time difference.

You can spend ten hours on an aircraft, land on another continent and almost immediately begin trying to convince your body that breakfast now happens when it previously thought it should be asleep.

For the player, managing that transition is obviously critical.

But the same applies to the people around them.

If you are working as a coach or performance analyst, the player should not have to manage your jet lag as well as their own.

You still have to observe properly. You still have to communicate clearly. You still have to make good decisions and bring the right energy into the environment.

Some of the most important work can happen on the days when you personally feel least fresh.

That is part of the responsibility.

There is no normal working day

One of the things people probably do not realise about travelling with professional tennis is how difficult it is to describe a normal day.

There often isn’t one.

A day might start with an early practice session, followed by video analysis, scouting an opponent and preparing information for the player and coaching team. Then there may be a match in the evening, followed by a review, recovery and planning for what happens next.

Sometimes the next opponent is not even known until late at night.

That means the work starts again.

You can find yourself sitting in a hotel room at midnight watching matches, identifying patterns and trying to reduce hours of information into a handful of things that can genuinely help the following day.

Then there are rain delays, schedule changes, late finishes, transport problems and flights that need changing depending on whether a player wins or loses.

Practice courts get moved.

Match times change.

Plans that looked perfect twelve hours earlier suddenly become irrelevant.

You learn quickly that flexibility is not an inconvenience on Tour.

It is a professional skill.

And that does not just mean being flexible with your diary. It means being flexible with how you think.

The strongest teams I have worked around seem to accept change incredibly quickly. They do not waste much energy wishing the circumstances were different.

They deal with what is actually in front of them.

That sounds simple, but over the course of a long season it becomes hugely important.

Creating consistency inside inconsistency

I think this is one of the fascinating things about elite tennis.

Almost everything around the player changes constantly, yet the expectation of performance remains incredibly high.

Different country. Different hotel. Different court. Different opponent. Different conditions.

The environment changes, but somehow the standards have to travel with you.

That is why routines become so important, but they cannot be routines that depend on everything being perfect.

If your preparation only works when you have your preferred gym, your favourite food, the perfect practice court and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, it probably will not survive very long on Tour.

The best routines are portable.

They give you something familiar inside an unfamiliar environment.

That applies to players, but I think it applies equally to coaches and staff.

You need to know what helps you think clearly. What helps you recover. What helps you prepare. What allows you to arrive at the court ready to give something to the player rather than taking energy away from them.

The environment changes every week. Your standards cannot.

Your energy becomes part of the player’s environment

There is another side to travelling with players that I think is important.

Your own energy becomes part of their environment.

If you have had a terrible journey, slept badly or spent three hours trying to find a missing suitcase, it is very easy to arrive at the court carrying all of that frustration with you.

But the player already has enough to deal with.

They are managing their body, their confidence, the pressure of the match, ranking points, expectations and everything else that comes with professional sport.

They do not need the people around them making the environment heavier.

That does not mean pretending to be permanently happy or acting as though travel never affects you.

It means understanding that your body language, communication and emotional state matter.

Sometimes great support is tactical.

Sometimes it is technical.

Sometimes it is having an important piece of analysis.

And sometimes it is simply being the calmest person in the room when everything around the player feels chaotic.

That ability becomes especially important when everybody is tired.

There is also a personal cost

There is another side to all of this that I probably have not managed as well as I could.

Travelling for more than 35 weeks of the year makes personal consistency difficult.

Meals are often dictated by airports, hotels, tournament schedules and whatever is available after a late finish. Training becomes harder to structure. Sleep is constantly disrupted, and there is always an easy excuse to tell yourself that you will get back into a better routine when you finally get home.

Over the last four years, I have put on some weight.

It is something I have found challenging, and I think it is important to be honest about that because the demands of Tour life do not only affect the player.

For a long time, it becomes very easy to prioritise everybody else’s performance while assuming you will sort your own health out later.

But if I want to bring energy, clarity and consistency to the people I work with, I also have a responsibility to look after myself properly.

This week I had a Neko Health scan, and it felt like a really positive reset for me.

Not because one scan suddenly changes everything, but because it made me think much more seriously about the next phase of my own health.

I want to lose weight. I want to become fitter. I want to be healthier and more deliberate about the habits I build while travelling.

And importantly, I do not want to keep waiting until I am home to do it.

If you spend more than 35 weeks of the year on the road, you cannot build a healthy lifestyle that only works during the other 17.

At some point, you have to stop asking how you can maintain your normal routine while travelling and start building a routine that actually travels with you.

Because if you are always waiting to get home before you look after yourself properly, you are spending most of the year waiting.

For me, that is something I am determined to change.

Adaptability does not mean accepting everything

There is an important distinction here.

Being adaptable does not mean simply accepting that travel will make you tired, unhealthy or permanently disorganised.

That is not adaptability.

Adaptability is recognising the reality of the environment and finding better ways to operate within it.

It is understanding that the perfect routine probably does not exist, but a good enough routine can exist almost anywhere.

It might mean finding 30 minutes to train rather than waiting for the perfect gym session.

It might mean making a better choice in an airport rather than assuming the entire day is lost.

It might mean being more deliberate around sleep, recovery and food when the schedule allows it.

None of those decisions sounds particularly significant in isolation.

But over 197,347 miles, small decisions accumulate.

That is true of health.

It is also true of performance.

The glamorous version and the real version

People understandably see the glamorous side of professional tennis.

Wimbledon.

Roland Garros.

The US Open.

Monte Carlo.

Madrid.

Big stadiums, packed crowds and some of the best athletes in the world.

That side is real, and it is an incredible privilege to experience.

But so is the Tuesday morning departure after a first round defeat.

So is arriving at a hotel after midnight and needing to prepare for practice the following morning.

So is doing analysis at an airport gate because the next match does not wait for your travel plans.

So is waking up and not quite knowing what country your body thinks it is in.

And so is trying to maintain relationships, family life and your own health while spending most of the season away.

None of that is a complaint.

It is part of a job I genuinely love.

But I think understanding the reality makes the performances we see on television even more impressive.

Professional tennis is not simply about producing your best level when everything feels good.

It is about producing a competitive level when almost nothing feels normal.

That applies to the player.

It applies to the team around them too.

What those 197,347 miles really represent

When I look at the Flighty numbers now, I do not really see 118 flights.

I see hundreds of small moments when the plan changed.

Flights delayed.

Connections missed.

Early mornings.

Late nights.

Jet lag.

Different courts.

Different countries.

Different conditions.

And somehow, you still have to find a way to do the job properly.

I think that is one of the greatest educations professional sport gives you.

You stop expecting perfect conditions.

You become better at solving the problem that actually exists rather than the one you hoped you would have.

You learn that consistency does not mean doing everything exactly the same way every day.

Sometimes consistency means finding different ways to produce the same standard.

And personally, I am realising that lesson needs to extend beyond my work and into my own health as well.

As I start another week in New York, preparing for the last Grand Slam of the season, that feels particularly relevant.

I want the next 197,000 miles to look different.

Not necessarily with fewer flights or less ambition, but with better habits, better physical condition and a greater understanding that looking after myself is part of being able to perform for other people.

The Tour has taught me that adaptability is not something you use when things go wrong.

Things changing is the normal environment.

Adaptability is part of the job.

And maybe the real skill is learning how to keep improving, keep performing and keep looking after yourself, wherever in the world the next week happens to take you.

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I’d love to hear your thoughts

For anyone who travels regularly for work, what is the hardest thing to maintain on the road: sleep, training, nutrition, routine or simply your energy?

The Margins That Matter

Elite performance is rarely decided by the obvious. I share lessons from inside professional sport about coaching, performance and the details that can make the difference.

Why clarity in tennis often comes from removing information, not adding more

There has probably never been a time in tennis when coaches have had access to more information.

We can study where an opponent serves at different scores, how their return position changes between first and second serves, which direction they prefer from each side, how rallies develop, where they make contact with the ball and how their patterns change when the scoreboard becomes uncomfortable.

For someone like me who has spent a large part of his career working with performance analysis, that is incredibly exciting.

It also creates one of the biggest challenges in modern coaching.

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What do we actually tell the player?

Because having more information does not automatically mean making better decisions. In fact, I increasingly think one of the most valuable skills a coach can develop is knowing which information to leave out.

A scouting report might contain twenty genuinely interesting findings. The video might reveal another ten. A coach might then add their own observations from watching the opponent practise or compete.

Suddenly we have thirty pieces of information.

The player does not have to play thirty pieces of information. They have to play the next point.

That distinction has become increasingly important to the way I think about coaching.

The work behind the scenes can be incredibly detailed. We should challenge what we think we are seeing, study patterns properly, compare matches and understand the opponent as deeply as possible. But by the time that information reaches the player, our job has changed.

Now we have to simplify it.

For me, that is the point where analysis becomes coaching.

Finding something interesting is one thing. Deciding whether it should influence the way a player competes is completely different.

I tend to think about information in three categories. Something can be interesting, something can be important and something can be actionable. They are not always the same thing.

An opponent serving more frequently to one location might be interesting. If that tendency becomes significantly stronger at break point, it becomes more important. If knowing that tendency allows our player to make a clear adjustment to their return position or anticipation, it becomes actionable.

That final step is the one I care about most.

What can the player actually do differently because we know this?

If there is no clear answer, I start questioning whether the information needs to be in the match meeting at all.

That can be difficult because, as coaches and analysts, we naturally become attached to the work we have done. If you have spent hours finding a pattern, there is a temptation to show it. But the purpose of analysis is not to prove how much preparation has taken place. It is to help the player make better decisions.

Those are two very different things.

Some of the most valuable work in a performance team may never reach the player. Not because it was wrong or uninteresting, but because it was not important enough to compete with the information that really mattered.

That is good filtering.

And I think filtering becomes even more important as the match gets closer.

A player sitting in a meeting room can understand a complicated tactical explanation perfectly. They are relaxed, there is no scoreboard and they can ask questions or replay the video. Twenty four hours later, they may be serving at 5 all after two hours of tennis, with their heart rate elevated, the crowd making noise and the opponent changing tactics.

The information has to survive that environment.

That is why I believe the closer you get to competition, the simpler the message should become.

The analysis can get deeper. The communication should get clearer.

Sometimes hours of preparation eventually become three things: where do we want to serve, what are we looking for on the return, and which rally pattern gives us the best chance of controlling the court?

From the outside, that can look almost too simple. But simplicity at the end of a process does not mean the process itself was simple. Often it means the opposite.

A huge amount of work may have been required to arrive confidently at those three conclusions.

That is something I admire in great coaches across different sports. The environment behind the athlete can be incredibly sophisticated, yet the athlete still needs clarity about what their job is in the moment.

The complexity belongs in the preparation. The clarity belongs in the performance.

There is another area where I think knowing what not to say becomes incredibly important: opponent scouting.

The more we learn about an opponent, the easier it is to become fascinated by them. We find a weakness and immediately want to attack it. We see a statistical tendency and begin building the plan around it. Before long, there is a danger that the opponent starts dictating everything we want our own player to do.

I think that can be a mistake.

A good match plan still has to fit the player who is going to execute it.

If a player’s biggest weapon is their forehand, I do not want to design a strategy that removes that weapon simply because the numbers tell us the opponent is slightly weaker somewhere else.

The best plans, in my experience, sit somewhere between two questions:

What does the opponent dislike?

And:

What does our player do best?

The answer has to respect both.

That is another reason why giving a player every piece of opponent information can become dangerous. The more you tell them about the other side of the net, the easier it becomes for them to move away from their own identity.

Players still need to know what makes their tennis effective.

Scouting should sharpen that identity, not replace it.

The same applies when we start discussing tendencies as though they are guarantees.

An opponent may serve wide 70% of the time in one situation. That still means they do something else 30% of the time. A player who walks onto court believing they know exactly what is coming can quickly become frustrated when the opponent changes.

Tennis is too dynamic for a match plan to become a script.

Conditions change. Players adjust. Confidence moves. One pattern might work brilliantly for twenty minutes and then disappear completely.

A good plan therefore has to provide reference points rather than instructions for every possible situation. Something the player can return to when the match becomes messy.

A trusted serve pattern. A clear return position. A reminder about where we want the first forehand. A rally direction we believe creates an advantage.

The plan should create clarity without removing the player’s ability to think.

That balance matters because ultimately the player has information that no dataset can completely replicate. They feel the weight of the opponent’s ball. They know whether the conditions are affecting their timing. They can recognise when a particular pattern feels different from the way it looked on video.

The player still has to play the match.

Data should inform their intelligence, not replace it.

That is why I think technology is at its best when it helps us ask better questions rather than pretending to provide every answer.

We can use numbers to challenge assumptions, discover patterns the eye might have missed and make preparation much more precise. But more slides do not automatically create a better meeting. More statistics do not automatically create a better match plan. More information certainly does not automatically create more confidence.

Sometimes confidence comes from the opposite.

Knowing exactly what you are trying to do.

I think the ability to compress information is becoming one of the most important skills in a modern performance team.

Take hundreds of points and find the patterns. Take those patterns and identify the ones that matter. Take those and turn them into language the player immediately understands.

Then let the player compete.

The same principle applies when we review our own performances.

After a match, I can produce dozens of numbers. But ultimately I am interested in one question:

What changes because of what we have learned?

Maybe the return position needs adjusting. Maybe a serve pattern produced less advantage than we expected. Maybe the tactical decisions were actually good but the execution was poor, which creates a completely different training priority.

Maybe nothing needs changing at all.

That last possibility is important too.

Not every loss demands a new solution. Sometimes the player made the correct decisions and the opponent simply performed better.

If we react to every result by adding something new, the player’s game can quickly become overloaded.

Improvement is not always addition. Sometimes the best decision is to protect what is already working.

That is perhaps the broader meaning behind the title of this article.

Knowing what not to say is not simply about talking less. It is knowing what does not deserve the player’s attention.

It is resisting the temptation to include a statistic simply because we have it. It is recognising when an opponent tendency is interesting but not actionable. It is knowing when one clear message is more valuable than five good ones.

And it is understanding that the sophistication of a coaching team should not be measured by how complicated they can make tennis sound.

Quite the opposite.

The longer I work in the game, the more I believe our job is to absorb complexity so the player does not have to.

Because when the scoreboard gets tight and a player has seconds to decide what happens next, they are not thinking about a twenty page presentation. They are looking for something they trust.

One clear idea. One familiar pattern. One decision they can commit to.

Professional tennis does not have an information problem anymore.

We have an information selection problem.

And that means one of the biggest skills a coach can develop is not simply knowing what to say.

It is knowing exactly what not to say.

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I’d love to hear your thoughts

With more data and technology available in tennis than ever before, do you think the biggest challenge now is finding information, or deciding what information a player actually needs?

The Margins That Matter

Elite performance is rarely decided by the obvious. I share lessons from inside professional sport about coaching, performance and the details that can make the difference.

When we talk about what makes a great tennis player, the conversation normally begins with talent.

We talk about the size of the serve, the quality of the movement, the ability to take the ball early or the confidence to produce a winner under pressure. Coaches spend thousands of hours developing technique, improving physical capacity and building tactical understanding.

All of those qualities matter.

But after spending much of my career around professional tennis, I have come to believe that one quality sits underneath everything else.

Resilience.

Tennis is one of the few sports where almost everyone loses every week.

At the beginning of a tournament, dozens of players arrive believing they can have a successful week. By the end, only one leaves without experiencing defeat. There are no draws and there are no teammates who can rescue an individual performance. Eventually, almost every player walks off the court having lost.

Even a player ranked around No. 50 in the world, someone who is better at tennis than almost anyone on the planet, may spend a season winning only slightly more than half of their matches. Outside the very top, it is completely normal for excellent players to lose as often as they win. The ATP publishes year to date and 52 week win loss records because defeat is not an occasional interruption in a tennis career. It is a permanent part of it.

That reality changes how we should think about success.

A professional tennis player cannot rely on winning to feel confident, because winning may not happen often enough. They cannot allow every defeat to become a personal crisis, because another tournament, another opponent and another difficult moment are always waiting.

The sport keeps asking the same question.

What are you going to do next?

That, to me, is resilience.

It is not pretending that losing does not hurt. It is not forcing a smile after a painful defeat or repeating positive phrases while ignoring what actually happened. Real resilience is more honest than that.

It is the ability to experience disappointment, process it properly and still find a useful response.

Sometimes that response is needed within seconds.

A player misses an easy forehand at break point. They double fault while serving for the set. They make the correct tactical decision but fail with the execution. The crowd reacts, the opponent gains energy and suddenly the match feels different.

The next point still begins.

There is no time to hold a meeting or complete a detailed review. The player has to recognise the emotion without allowing it to control the next decision.

That does not mean becoming emotionless. Some of the greatest players in history have competed with visible frustration, anger and tension. Resilience is not the absence of those feelings. It is the ability to keep functioning while they are present.

The best competitors do not necessarily forget the previous point. They simply refuse to let it decide the next one.

That sounds simple, but it may be one of the hardest skills in tennis.

A player can spend years developing a forehand and still lose control of it when the scoreboard creates doubt. They can understand the correct pattern perfectly and abandon it after two mistakes. Pressure changes perception. It makes the court feel smaller, the opponent appear stronger and the safest decision suddenly feel dangerous.

Resilience allows a player to keep returning to something reliable.

A clear serve location. A trusted rally pattern. A movement cue. A breathing routine. One simple message that reconnects them with what they are trying to do.

This is why resilience is not only a personality trait. It can be developed through preparation.

Players become more resilient when they have a game they understand. They become more resilient when the tactical message is clear enough to survive pressure. They become more resilient when training includes difficult situations rather than constantly protecting confidence.

A player who has practised responding to frustration is better prepared when frustration appears in competition.

But resilience within a match is only one part of the challenge.

The harder version often begins after the match has finished.

A player may spend a full week preparing for a tournament, travel across the world, adapt to a new court and wait several days to compete. Two hours later, they can be out of the event.

The hotel room is still booked. The flights have already been paid for. The next tournament may be in another country, on another surface and against another opponent. There is rarely enough time to feel completely ready again.

This is the part of professional tennis that people do not always see.

They see the rankings, the trophies and the prize money. They do not always see the early losses, the empty practice courts the following morning or the weeks when a player does everything correctly and receives almost nothing from the scoreboard.

A player can be improving while their ranking falls.

They can be training well while losing matches.

They can be moving closer to a breakthrough while feeling further away than ever.

Resilience is continuing to work when progress is not yet visible.

That does not mean blindly repeating the same process. There is a difference between persistence and stubbornness. Sometimes resilience means continuing. Sometimes it means changing the plan, adjusting the schedule, listening to the body or accepting that a part of the game needs to be rebuilt.

The strongest players are not simply those who can endure the most. They are those who can remain honest enough to adapt.

This becomes even more important across a full season.

The tennis calendar offers very little natural space to recover emotionally. A difficult defeat on Sunday can be followed by another first round on Tuesday. Ranking points from the previous year disappear regardless of how the player currently feels. A great result can become a source of pressure twelve months later when it has to be defended.

The sport constantly brings the past back into the present.

A player does not only compete against the opponent on the other side of the net. They compete against expectations, comparison, previous results and the fear of losing something they have already achieved.

For players outside the very top, the pressure can be even greater. Travel, coaching, accommodation and support teams cost money. An early defeat is not only emotionally difficult. It can have a direct financial impact.

That is why telling a player to simply “be tougher” is rarely helpful.

Resilience is not created through criticism alone. It is built through an environment that gives the player enough support to face difficulty without becoming dependent on being rescued from it.

This is where coaching matters.

After a painful loss, the player does not always need an immediate technical review. They may not be ready to hear five reasons why the match was lost. There is a time for honesty and analysis, but timing is part of coaching.

Sometimes the first responsibility is to help the player separate the result from their identity.

They lost a match. That does not mean they are a failure.

They made poor decisions. That does not mean they cannot make better ones tomorrow.

They struggled under pressure. That does not mean pressure will always defeat them.

A good coach does not remove accountability. They create enough emotional space for accountability to become useful.

The review should eventually be clear. What happened? What was within our control? What needs to change? What can we take into the next training session?

But the purpose of the review is not to make the coach feel better or prove that the analysis was correct.

The purpose is to help the player move forward.

That is the difference between examining a defeat and living inside it.

I have seen players lose matches they were expected to win and return the following day with extraordinary focus. I have also seen one difficult result remain with a player for several tournaments, influencing decisions long after the original match had ended.

The difference is rarely that one player cared and the other did not.

Often, the player who struggles to move on cares too much. The result becomes evidence about who they are rather than information about what happened.

Resilience allows the result to remain information.

That does not make losing comfortable. It makes losing usable.

This is why I believe resilience is the most important quality a tennis player can have.

Talent can create opportunities. Physical capacity can keep a player competitive. Tactical understanding can expose an opponent’s weaknesses. Confidence can produce extraordinary performances.

But none of those qualities can be accessed consistently without the ability to recover.

Recover from a bad point.

Recover from a lost set.

Recover from an early defeat.

Recover from injury, loss of confidence, ranking pressure and the periods when the sport gives very little back.

The careers we admire are often presented as collections of victories. In reality, they are built from thousands of responses to disappointment.

The public remembers the trophy.

The player remembers all the mornings when there was no trophy, no applause and no guarantee that the work would eventually be rewarded.

That is where careers are really built.

Not in avoiding difficult moments, but in developing the capacity to move through them.

The most resilient players are not always the loudest or the most visibly confident. They are not immune to doubt, and they do not enjoy losing more than anyone else.

They simply keep returning to the work.

They keep searching for the next useful decision.

They keep finding reasons to believe that one difficult result does not have to become the next one.

In tennis, everyone eventually loses.

The question is never whether disappointment will arrive.

The question is what the player does when it does.

Talent may determine how high the ceiling is.

Resilience determines how many times a player is prepared to climb towards it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts

Do you believe resilience is something a player naturally has, or is it a quality that coaches and environments can deliberately develop?

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The Margins That Matter

Elite performance is rarely decided by the obvious. Every Monday, I share one lesson from inside professional sport that most people never get to see.

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Today, the North American hard court swing moves into Washington, where another demanding stretch of the tennis calendar begins. The combined ATP and WTA 500 event runs from 27 July to 2 August, with the US Open now less than a month away. ATP Tour

For players and their teams, this part of the season can create a familiar temptation. There are ranking points available, important matches to be played and pressure to build momentum before New York. The obvious conclusion is that the best preparation must involve competing as much as possible.

I am not convinced it does.

Sometimes the most important decision a player and coach make is not which tournament to enter, but which one to miss.

That can be difficult to accept in a sport built around weekly results. The rankings reward activity, sponsors expect visibility and players naturally want opportunities to compete. When someone withdraws from an event, the decision is often interpreted as a setback or a sign that something is wrong.

Behind the scenes, it can be the opposite.

Choosing not to play may create the time needed to recover properly, make an important technical adjustment or complete a period of physical training that would be impossible during consecutive tournament weeks. It can also give a player the mental space to reset after a demanding run, rather than travelling directly into another environment where results are expected immediately.

The challenge is knowing what the player genuinely needs.

There are moments when competition is the best form of preparation. A player may need matches, confidence and exposure to pressure. No amount of practice can fully recreate serving at 5 all, defending a break point or closing out a match when the finish line suddenly feels close.

There are other moments when more competition simply reinforces the same problems.

A player who needs to change a return position, develop a new serving pattern or improve a physical quality may not be able to do that properly while moving between tournaments. Match days become recovery days, travel replaces training and every practice session is shaped around being ready for the next opponent.

The player remains busy, but busyness and progress are not the same thing.

Some of the most productive periods I have seen in professional tennis have happened away from the scoreboard. Without the immediate pressure of preparing for tomorrow’s match, a team can examine what is actually limiting the player and create enough time to address it.

That work is rarely glamorous. There are no ranking points awarded for a good training week and no crowd applauds a carefully managed recovery block. The value may only become visible several tournaments later, when the player moves more efficiently, trusts a new pattern or arrives at an important event physically and mentally fresher.

Elite scheduling therefore requires a team to distinguish between three different needs: competition, training and recovery.

They are connected, but they are not interchangeable.

Competition tests the player. Training develops the player. Recovery allows the player to absorb both.

The mistake is assuming that every available week should be used for the same purpose.

Data can help us understand the picture. We can examine match volume, physical output, movement quality, serve performance and changes in decision making under fatigue. We can look for signs that a player is maintaining their level or beginning to lose precision as the workload builds.

But the data cannot make the decision alone.

Two players can complete the same number of matches and respond completely differently. One may feel physically strong and desperate to compete again. Another may be carrying fatigue that is not immediately visible in the results. A young player building experience will often require a different schedule from an established player trying to peak at a small number of major events.

Context matters.

So does honesty.

The player has to be honest about how they feel. The coach has to separate what the player wants in the moment from what may protect their performance over the next several months. The wider team must be willing to share information clearly, particularly when the physical, technical and emotional pictures are pointing in different directions.

That becomes harder when the player is winning.

Success can hide fatigue because nobody wants to interrupt momentum. A deep run is often followed by another tournament, another flight and another expectation to perform. The schedule can begin to control the player rather than serving their development.

Losing creates a different pressure. After an early defeat, the instinct may be to enter another event immediately and try to repair the result. Sometimes that is exactly what is required. At other times, the rush to compete again prevents the team from understanding why the performance broke down in the first place.

Good scheduling is not reactive.

It is planned backwards from what matters most.

That does not mean treating every tournament outside the Grand Slams as unimportant. It means understanding the purpose of each block of the season. Is the player competing to build confidence? To test a tactical change? To gain experience on a surface? To accumulate matches after an injury? To prepare for a major event?

When the purpose is clear, decisions become easier.

Without that clarity, the calendar can become a series of tournaments entered simply because they are there.

The strongest teams I have observed are prepared to ask a difficult question before each part of the season:

What does this player need next?

Not what looks best publicly.

Not what everyone else is doing.

Not automatically another tournament.

What does this individual player need next?

Sometimes the answer will be competition. Sometimes it will be a difficult training block. Sometimes it will be several days completely away from tennis.

The courage lies in accepting that the correct answer may not produce an immediate result.

Professional sport encourages short term thinking because every week provides a new scoreboard. Yet careers are shaped over years, not Mondays. A decision that sacrifices one tournament may improve the player’s chances across the next five. A week used properly can protect a body, rebuild confidence or create an improvement that remains valuable for the rest of the season.

That is why skipping a tournament should not automatically be seen as stepping backwards.

It can be an active performance decision.

The key is that the week must have a purpose. Missing an event only becomes valuable when the time is used deliberately. Recovery should restore the player. Training should address a genuine priority. Preparation should leave the player clearer and more capable than before.

Otherwise, it is simply an empty week.

As the hard court season gathers pace and attention begins to turn towards New York, players will make different choices. Some will compete every available week. Others will protect time for training or recovery. There is no single schedule that works for everyone.

The best schedule is not necessarily the fullest one.

It is the one that gives the player what they need, when they need it, while keeping the larger goals of the season in view.

The calendar rewards activity.

Careers reward timing.

And sometimes the tournament you skip can be just as important as the one you win.

I’d love to hear your thoughts

Do you think elite players compete too often, or has the modern game made careful scheduling more important than ever?

The Margins That Matter

Elite performance is rarely decided by the obvious. Every Monday, I share one lesson from inside professional sport that most people never get to see.

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Most will remember the goal, the decisive moments, the celebrations and the sight of the Spanish team lifting the biggest trophy in football. I found myself watching something slightly different.

My attention kept drifting towards the touchline.

I was interested in how the coaches responded when momentum changed, how they communicated after mistakes and whether they could create calm while everything around them became increasingly emotional. A World Cup Final may look completely different from a tennis match, but the coaching challenge is often remarkably similar.

How do you help talented people make good decisions when the pressure is at its greatest?

That question has fascinated me throughout my career, and it is why I believe every tennis coach should watch more football.

When I first started coaching, I assumed the best way to improve was simply to watch more tennis. I studied Grand Slams, Challenger events, junior tournaments, practice sessions and countless hours of match footage. I wanted to understand every tactical pattern, technical detail and movement sequence I could find.

That education was invaluable, but over time I realised it was only part of the picture.

Some of the biggest developments in my own thinking have come from watching sports that, on the surface, have very little in common with tennis. I have studied Pep Guardiola’s ability to create clarity within an incredibly sophisticated tactical system. I have admired the way Jürgen Klopp has generated passion and belief without allowing emotion to replace structure. Toto Wolff has shaped how I think about standards and accountability, while Phil Jackson’s work has made me consider the importance of trust, personality and creating an environment in which elite athletes can think for themselves.

The more I watched them, the more I understood that I was not really studying football, Formula One or basketball.

I was studying performance.

The sports are different, of course. Football is a team game in which the manager can communicate constantly, change the formation and make substitutions. In tennis, the player is largely alone once the match begins. The coach cannot step onto the court to solve the problem for them.

That difference makes clarity even more important.

By the time a tennis player walks onto court, the most important thinking should already have been done. The player does not need every statistic or tactical possibility we have uncovered. They need a small number of ideas they understand, trust and can execute when the scoreboard becomes uncomfortable.

This is one of the qualities I admire most in Guardiola. His teams can be tactically complex, but individual players generally appear certain about their responsibilities. That simplicity is not evidence of a lack of detail. It is the product of enormous detail being organised effectively.

The complexity belongs in the preparation.

Clarity belongs in the performance.

That principle has influenced my own work in professional tennis. We can study thousands of points and examine serve locations, return positions, movement patterns, rally construction and decision making in extraordinary depth. The temptation is to share everything because every insight feels interesting.

The best coaches resist that temptation.

They understand that the purpose of analysis is not to demonstrate how much information the team possesses. It is to identify the information that will help the player make a better decision.

Under pressure, more information does not automatically create better performance. Quite often, it creates hesitation.

Another lesson I have taken from football is the importance of emotional leadership. Klopp’s best teams have always played with visible energy and passion, yet their strongest performances have also been built on organisation and collective understanding. The emotion has served the plan rather than replacing it.

I was reminded of that while watching Arthur Fery at Wimbledon this year. His run generated incredible energy, and competing on Centre Court brought a level of attention and expectation that few players experience. What impressed me most was not simply his passion. It was his ability to compete with that emotion while remaining composed enough to make clear decisions.

Passion can give an athlete energy, courage and belief. It can also cause them to rush, force the wrong play or become consumed by the occasion. The role of the coach is not always to reduce emotion. Sometimes it is to help the athlete use it without being controlled by it.

That balance is relevant in every sport.

The same is true of standards.

One of the moments that stayed with me most from Wimbledon happened on the practice courts while watching Novak Djokovic. There was no trophy available that morning and no match result at stake, yet the intensity and purpose were unmistakable. Every repetition mattered. The quality expected in competition was already being demanded in preparation.

It made me think about the culture Toto Wolff helped establish in Formula One. In an environment where tiny mistakes can have immediate consequences, excellence cannot be something a team attempts to produce only on race day. It must become the normal expectation in meetings, preparation, communication and execution.

Watching Novak practise reinforced the same lesson.

Greatness is not something the best performers suddenly switch on when the stadium fills. It is built through standards that remain in place when very few people are watching.

I saw another version of this through the planning surrounding Jannik Sinner’s matches. The timing of practice, recovery, preparation and competition appeared deliberate. Nothing felt rushed or improvised. The structure around the performance created the freedom to compete naturally when the match began.

That is one of the great paradoxes of elite sport. The performances that appear most instinctive are often supported by the most detailed preparation.

Phil Jackson understood this particularly well. His work with some of basketball’s biggest personalities showed that coaching is not simply about controlling athletes or constantly providing instructions. It is about creating a structure strong enough for players to trust themselves within it.

That idea is especially important in tennis.

A tennis coach cannot call a timeout in the middle of a difficult service game. There is no substitution available when confidence disappears. Once the match begins, the player has to recognise problems, manage emotion and find solutions for themselves.

The coach’s work must survive their absence.

That requires more than a good tactical plan. It requires trust, shared language and a clear understanding of how the player responds when pressure changes their perception of the match.

Over the years, I have worked alongside Grand Slam champions, leading ATP and WTA coaches, performance specialists and analysts. They have all had different personalities, communication styles and ways of seeing the game. The strongest among them, however, tend to share one quality.

Curiosity.

They do not assume every useful lesson must come from tennis. They study leadership, psychology, technology, business and other sports because they understand that the fundamental challenge of coaching is universal.

How do you build trust?

How do you communicate honestly without damaging confidence?

How do you remain passionate without lowering the quality of your thinking?

How do you create clarity when the environment becomes chaotic?

How do you maintain standards after success?

The setting changes, but those questions remain.

A football manager deals with a squad of players and a tennis coach may work with one athlete, yet both are trying to help human beings perform while dealing with expectation, fear, fatigue and doubt.

That is why I watch football, basketball and golf. It is why I am interested in Formula One garages as well as tennis coaching boxes. I am not looking for ideas to copy directly. Context matters, and what works for one team or athlete may fail completely with another.

I am looking for principles.

Clarity under pressure.

Passion without a loss of quality.

Preparation that creates freedom.

Standards that do not depend on the size of the occasion.

Leadership that helps athletes become less dependent on the coach rather than more.

Last night’s World Cup Final provided another reminder that great coaching leaves clues everywhere. Some will appear in a tactical adjustment. Others will be found in a coach’s reaction after conceding, the tone of a conversation on the touchline or the way a team responds when momentum moves against them.

Those moments are not exclusive to football.

They exist on Centre Court, inside an NBA arena, on an Formula One pit wall and during the final holes of a major championship.

The best coaches are specialists in their own sport, but they remain students of performance everywhere.

That, to me, is why every tennis coach should watch more football.

Not to become a football coach.

To become a better observer, communicator and leader.

Because the sport may change, but the people rarely do.

And in the end, the greatest margins still exist in our ability to help them perform when it matters most.

I’d love to hear your thoughts

If you could spend one week learning from any coach or leader in world sport, past or present, who would you choose, and what would you hope to learn?

The Margins That Matter

Elite performance is rarely decided by the obvious. Every Monday, I share one lesson from inside professional sport that most people never get to see.

When people ask me about my week at Wimbledon, the first question is usually the same.

“What was the best match you watched?”

It’s a fair question.

But it isn’t the one I’ve been thinking about on the journey home.

This year I had the privilege of working alongside Marta Kostyuk and her coach, Sandra Zaniewska, preparing for one of the biggest tournaments in our sport. Between scouting reports, match analysis, long conversations over coffee, and speaking on Radio Wimbledon about performance analytics, it was one of the busiest weeks I’ve had in tennis.

Ironically, what I’ll remember most has very little to do with statistics.

For those who know me, that probably sounds strange.

I’ve built much of my career around data, performance intelligence and helping players find the smallest advantages that might change the outcome of a match. Every day I’m looking for patterns that most people never notice. A change in return position. A shift in momentum. A movement pattern that slowly disappears as fatigue builds. The margins that separate winning from losing.

I genuinely believe data has transformed professional tennis.

But Wimbledon reminded me that it can only ever tell part of the story.

Every morning the grounds felt different.

Before the spectators arrived, there was a calmness that’s impossible to appreciate on television. Coaches walking between practice courts. Players quietly beginning their routines. Grounds staff preparing immaculate grass that millions of people would admire just a few hours later.

Then, almost without warning, the Championships came alive.

The crowds arrived.

The outside courts filled.

Centre Court became the focus of the sporting world.

Yet some of the most valuable moments happened away from the biggest stages.

They happened in conversations.

With coaches discussing ideas.

With players trying to make sense of a difficult performance.

With colleagues sharing different perspectives on the same match.

Those conversations rarely appear in the headlines.

They’re often where the real learning happens.

Working with Sandra throughout the tournament reminded me of something I’ve seen throughout my career.

The best coaches aren’t searching for perfect answers.

They’re searching for better questions.

Yes, we looked at the numbers.

We analysed patterns.

We challenged assumptions.

We looked for small tactical opportunities that might help Marta.

But the data never replaced coaching.

It simply made the conversations better.

Sometimes one observation would lead to another.

Sometimes the statistics confirmed what we’d already felt from watching the match.

Sometimes they challenged us completely.

That’s the beauty of elite sport.

Curiosity usually beats certainty.

One of the unexpected highlights of the week was speaking live on Radio Wimbledon.

Ten years ago, if you’d asked tennis fans about artificial intelligence or performance analytics, the conversation would probably have ended quite quickly.

Today it’s different.

People genuinely want to understand how the game is evolving.

How data supports coaching.

How technology helps players improve.

How small decisions can influence the biggest matches.

Watching that curiosity grow has been one of the most rewarding parts of my own journey.

Not because technology is replacing coaching.

Because it’s helping coaches see the game differently.

As the tournament progressed, I found myself thinking less about forehands and backhands.

Instead, I was watching people.

The belief a player carries onto the court.

The trust between coach and athlete after a difficult loss.

The emotion hidden behind routines that have been repeated thousands of times.

The quiet confidence that exists before anyone hits a ball.

Those things don’t appear on a dashboard.

They don’t fit neatly into a spreadsheet.

And yet they’re often the reason the numbers look the way they do.

As I packed my bag and walked out of the All England Club, I realised Wimbledon had given me something I wasn’t expecting.

Not another statistic.

Not another performance metric.

A reminder.

A reminder that behind every data point is a person.

Behind every scouting report is a relationship.

Behind every performance is years of sacrifice that most people never see.

Data will always be one of the greatest tools we have in professional tennis.

I’ll continue searching for better insights, better questions and better ways to help players perform.

But Wimbledon reminded me that the game will always belong to people first.

And perhaps that’s the biggest margin that matters of all.

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I’d love to hear from you.

Whether you watched Wimbledon from Centre Court, Court 18 or your living room, what was the one moment you’ll remember from this year’s Championships?

The tournament has reached the stage where the margins become even smaller.

Every player left in the draw can serve at over 190 km/h. Every player can strike beautiful winners. Every player has spent thousands of hours refining their technique.

But that’s not what I’m watching.

Today I’ll once again be working with Marta Kostyuk and her amazing coach, Sandra Zaniewska, preparing for one of the biggest tournaments in the world.

People often ask me a simple question.

“When you’re sitting courtside, what are you actually looking at?”

The honest answer usually surprises them.

I’m rarely watching the ball.

After almost fifteen years working across the ATP and WTA Tours, I’ve realised I don’t watch tennis like a fan anymore.

Whether I’m sitting in the coaching box at a Grand Slam, building an opponent scouting report, or reviewing matches long after everyone has gone home, I’m searching for tiny details that most people never notice.

Because those tiny details usually decide the biggest matches.

I watch momentum before I watch the scoreboard.

Most spectators see games.

I see sequences.

One of the very first things I look for is consecutive points won.

Not because five points in a row guarantees anything.

Because momentum is rarely emotional.

It’s measurable.

Five consecutive points can completely change the psychology of a match.

Confidence quietly grows for one player.

Doubt quietly appears in the other.

Neither player realises it immediately.

The crowd rarely notices it at all.

But inside the coaching box we’re already asking questions.

Has something changed tactically?

Has someone’s return position moved?

Has the quality of movement dropped?

Has one player suddenly stopped playing aggressively?

The scoreboard tells you who’s winning.

Momentum often tells you who’s about to.

I watch the feet before I watch the racket.

Television follows the ball.

My eyes often follow the feet.

Everything starts there.

Balance.

Recovery.

Explosiveness.

Efficiency.

The best movers don’t simply arrive at the ball.

They arrive balanced enough to hit the shot they actually wanted to play.

When movement begins to slow by even a few percent, technique often receives the blame.

The forehand suddenly looks rushed.

The backhand starts missing.

The serve appears less effective.

But the real problem started two movements earlier.

The feet almost always tell the truth first.

I watch where players stand to return.

One small adjustment can reveal an enormous tactical decision.

Half a metre further back.

One step inside the baseline.

Standing wider.

Protecting the backhand.

Inviting the serve down the T.

These aren’t random decisions.

They’re conversations taking place without anyone speaking.

Sometimes a player changes their return position before changing anything else.

That’s usually my first clue that they’re searching for answers.

I watch the points between the points.

Some of the most important moments happen when nobody is hitting a tennis ball.

How quickly does the player walk?

How do they react after losing a long rally?

Do they immediately look towards the coaching box?

Do they avoid eye contact?

Do they speed up between points?

Do they deliberately slow everything down?

Pressure leaves fingerprints long before it appears on the scoreboard.

The body usually reveals what the face tries to hide.

I watch the first point after something important happens.

This might be my favourite moment in any match.

A break of serve.

A missed set point.

A medical timeout.

A challenge that goes against them.

A twenty-five-shot rally.

Everybody remembers the dramatic moment.

I’m interested in the point immediately afterwards.

Can they emotionally reset?

Or are they still playing the previous point?

The greatest players recover astonishingly quickly.

Not just physically.

Mentally.

I watch patterns, not highlights.

The crowd remembers spectacular winners.

Performance analysts remember repetition.

Has every important second serve gone into the backhand?

Has one forehand pattern worked six times already?

Is someone refusing to change direction under pressure?

Has the opponent stopped using one serve location completely?

One brilliant shot is exciting.

The seventh identical pattern is far more valuable.

Championships aren’t usually won by extraordinary shots.

They’re won by ordinary decisions repeated exceptionally well.

I watch courage.

Statistics are incredibly powerful.

But numbers only explain behaviour.

Behaviour explains belief.

Is the player still stepping inside the baseline at 30-30?

Do they still trust the forehand under pressure?

Do they attack the second serve?

Or has fear quietly started making decisions for them?

The difference between winning and losing at this level is rarely ability.

It’s often conviction.

I watch the movement behind every shot.

One of the most fascinating projects we’re working on at Orreco Tennis isn’t the shot itself.

It’s everything that happens around it.

We call it the movement life cycle of the shot.

Instead of analysing a forehand or backhand as one isolated action, we break every shot into its complete athletic journey.

Where was the opponent at contact?

How did the ball travel through the air?

How quickly did it cross the net?

Where did it bounce?

How efficiently did the player move into position?

How well did they recover before the opponent’s next contact?

Suddenly, one tennis shot isn’t one event.

It’s an entire movement cycle.

When you analyse hundreds of thousands of these movement cycles across professional tennis, patterns begin to appear that simply aren’t visible to the naked eye.

You discover which players maintain movement quality deep into long rallies.

Which athletes recover most efficiently after wide balls.

How movement speed gradually changes as fatigue builds.

Which movement patterns consistently produce higher-quality shots.

Sometimes the difference between winning and losing isn’t hitting a faster forehand.

It’s arriving two tenths of a second earlier.

Recovering one step quicker.

Maintaining movement quality through the seventh or eighth shot of a rally.

Those are the margins television rarely shows.

They’re also the margins that often decide Grand Slam matches.

Then I ask one final question.

If these two players walked back onto the same court tomorrow…

Would the match look the same?

If the answer is yes, we’ve probably found something real.

If the answer is no, it was probably just noise.

That single question has guided almost every scouting report I’ve ever written.

As Wimbledon enters its second week, millions of people will watch incredible winners, impossible passing shots and unforgettable match points.

I’ll enjoy them too.

But my eyes will keep drifting somewhere else.

To the return position.

To the feet.

To the five points in a row that quietly changed the momentum.

To the body language after a missed forehand.

To the patterns developing long before anyone else notices them.

To the movement life cycle behind every shot.

Because after fifteen years inside professional tennis, I’ve realised something.

The biggest moments rarely decide matches.

The smallest ones usually do.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

The next time you watch Wimbledon, don’t just watch the ball.

Watch the feet.

Watch the recovery.

Watch what happens after someone loses a twenty-ball rally.

Watch who wins five points in a row.

Watch how momentum quietly changes hands.

Then come back and tell me…

What did you notice that you’ve never seen before?

The Margins That Matter

Elite performance is rarely decided by the obvious. Every Monday, I share one lesson from inside professional tennis that most people never get to see.

If you’d like to learn more about how we’re using AI and performance intelligence across professional tennis, take a look at Orreco Tennis:

Orreco Tennis

Earlier this week I was fortunate to be featured in The Times discussing how artificial intelligence and performance intelligence are beginning to change professional tennis.

^{Battle Planning with Jarmere Jenkins Head Coach of Serena Williams earlier last week}

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The article covered the technology.

What it couldn’t fully explain was the human side of it.

That’s the part that fascinates me most.

Whenever I tell people I work in performance intelligence, I usually get one of two reactions.

The first is that we spend our days producing endless statistics.

The second is that artificial intelligence is somehow replacing coaches.

Neither is true.

The reality is much simpler.

Our job isn’t to produce more information.

It’s to remove the noise.

Before a Wimbledon match, we might analyse thousands of points, every serve location, every return pattern, every rally length and countless tactical situations. Modern AI allows us to process that information faster than ever before.

But here’s the important part.

None of that information is useful if it doesn’t help a player make a better decision when it matters most.

By the time a player walks onto Centre Court, they don’t need fifty statistics.

They don’t even need ten.

Most of the time they need absolute clarity on two or three ideas they can trust under pressure.

That’s where coaching begins.

One of the biggest privileges of my career has been working alongside coaches and players at the highest level of the sport.

Whether it’s preparing for a Grand Slam, sitting in a coaching pod during a live match or reviewing hours of footage after a tough loss, I’ve realised that the best coaches all share one characteristic.

They simplify.

They know that pressure doesn’t create better thinking.

Pressure exposes it.

Technology can identify patterns.

It can tell us where an opponent serves on break point.

It can reveal which rally direction wins the most points.

It can highlight subtle trends that even experienced coaches might miss.

Those insights are incredibly valuable.

But technology cannot walk onto the court.

It cannot calm a nervous player.

It cannot decide the exact words to say during a change of ends.

It cannot earn trust after months of working together.

And it certainly cannot replace the relationship between coach and player.

That’s why I don’t believe the future of tennis is artificial intelligence versus human coaching.

The future is artificial intelligence supporting better coaching.

The coaches who embrace technology without becoming dependent on it will have an advantage.

The analysts who understand tennis rather than simply understanding numbers will create more value.

And the players who can combine preparation with instinct will continue to separate themselves from the rest of the field.

As Wimbledon begins today, every player will arrive believing they have a chance.

Some will have prepared better than others.

Some will have identified one tactical edge that nobody else has noticed.

Some will make a tiny adjustment midway through a match that changes everything.

Those moments rarely make the highlights.

They don’t usually make the headlines either.

But they’re often the reason championships are won.

That’s why I called this series The Margins That Matter.

Because at the highest level of sport, success is rarely about one dramatic breakthrough.

It’s about hundreds of tiny decisions, made consistently, long before anyone is watching.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

As technology continues to evolve, where do you think the greatest competitive advantage will come from in the future: better data, better coaching, or better decision making under pressure?

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For the first time at a Grand Slam, coaches and analysts were given access to dedicated on court coaching pods. Positioned courtside, these pods provided live performance data throughout the match, creating a completely new way of supporting players and coaching teams during competition.

I found myself sitting inside one during Holger Rune’s fourth round match against world No.1 Jannik Sinner on Rod Laver Arena.

As someone who has spent much of my career working in performance analysis, it was fascinating. We had access to live information, real time trends and performance metrics while the match unfolded in front of us. From the outside, it probably looked like another step forward for technology in sport.

What I didn’t expect was the lesson it would teach me about coaching.

The match itself was full of drama. Melbourne was experiencing extreme heat and Sinner looked physically uncomfortable for large periods. At times he appeared to be struggling. There were medical concerns, momentum swings and the sense that the match could turn at any moment.

Then, in one of the strangest moments I’ve witnessed on a tennis court, the net strap broke and play was suspended while officials repaired it. Players left the court, coaches regrouped and everyone tried to process what had just happened.

From the stands, it felt chaotic.

Inside the coaching pod, however, something interesting was happening.

While the emotions of the match ebbed and flowed, the data remained remarkably consistent.

The numbers kept pointing to the same conclusion. Despite everything happening around him, Sinner was still performing at an incredibly high level.

This is one of the things I love most about performance analysis.

The crowd sees one match.

The media often sees another.

Players and coaches experience something entirely different again.

The data doesn’t always provide the answer, but it often helps separate perception from reality.

Watching live, it was easy to focus on Sinner’s physical condition. The television coverage certainly did. Yet the performance metrics continued to show a player serving exceptionally well, winning key points and maintaining a level that very few players in the world could match.

The experience reinforced something I have seen repeatedly throughout my career.

The best players are not the players who perform perfectly.

The best players are the ones who continue to perform exceptionally when conditions are far from perfect.

Every player can perform well when they feel great, when momentum is on their side and when everything is going according to plan.

The true test comes when none of those things are working in your favour.

Can you still execute?

Can you still make good decisions?

Can you still trust your process?

Can you still find solutions?

That afternoon on Rod Laver Arena, sitting inside tennis’s first live data coaching pod, I realised that technology hadn’t changed the fundamentals of coaching at all.

The data was valuable. It helped provide context. It highlighted trends. It supported decision making.

But it didn’t replace the qualities that matter most.

Composure.

Problem solving.

Resilience.

Execution under pressure.

Those qualities still separate the very best from everyone else.

Walking away from the stadium, I wasn’t thinking about the technology or the novelty of the coaching pod.

I was thinking about the level required to become world No.1.

Sometimes the biggest lessons in sport don’t come from your victories.

They come from watching greatness find a way, even when everything around it suggests it shouldn’t.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned from a defeat, setback or challenging moment in your own career?

Holger Rune arrived at the Paris Masters as one of the most exciting young players in the world. A week later, he left as a Masters 1000 champion after defeating five Top 10 players in succession, including Novak Djokovic in the final.

At the time, I was working as part of the wider team around Holger and Patrick Mouratoglou.

As a performance analyst, my role wasn’t to coach. It was to observe, identify patterns, provide insights and support the coaching process wherever possible. Sometimes that meant analysing opponents. Sometimes it meant identifying trends in Holger’s game. Other times it meant offering observations that could help the coaches make better decisions.

Like many people who work in tennis, I assumed that the higher you climbed in the game, the more technical the conversations would become.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

What struck me most throughout that period was how little time was spent discussing technique.

There were no endless debates about forehand mechanics. No obsession over grip changes. No constant analysis of swing paths or backswing positions.

Instead, Patrick consistently focused on clarity.

What was the biggest opportunity?

What was the simplest message?

What would give the player confidence?

Every day we had access to huge amounts of information. Match statistics, tactical trends, scouting reports, performance data and video analysis.

The challenge was never finding information.

The challenge was deciding what actually mattered.

One of the biggest lessons I learned from working in that environment was that great coaches are exceptional editors.

They know what to leave out.

As analysts, we could provide pages of observations and data. My skill was often identifying the one or two insights that could genuinely move the needle.

Everything was about creating clarity rather than complexity.

A year later, I had the opportunity to observe another world-class coach from close quarters.

This time it was Boris Becker.

By the end of 2023, Boris had joined Holger’s team and was helping guide him through some of the biggest matches of his young career.

During the ATP Finals in Turin, Holger pushed both Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic to three sets in a brutally competitive group.

Once again, what stood out wasn’t technical discussion.

It was competition.

Boris viewed everything through the lens of performance under pressure.

What happens at 5-5?

What decision can the player trust when everything is on the line?

Which patterns hold up in the biggest moments?

The conversations were rarely about how to hit a ball.

They were about how to win.

As an analyst, my role was often to contribute observations that could support those discussions.

Where was the opponent vulnerable under pressure?

Which serve patterns consistently produced positive outcomes?

What tactical decisions gave Holger the highest percentage chance of success?

The data itself was never the answer.

It was simply a tool to help answer better questions.

What fascinated me most was how different Patrick and Boris appeared from the outside.

Patrick built one of the most successful coaching businesses and academies in the sport.

Boris won six Grand Slam titles and coached Novak Djokovic.

Different personalities. Different experiences. Different styles.

Yet both shared a common trait.

Neither seemed obsessed with technique.

Of course, technique matters. Every elite player spends years building their game.

But once players reach the highest levels, success is rarely determined by who knows the most about a forehand.

It’s determined by decision making.

It’s determined by confidence.

It’s determined by clarity.

It’s determined by communication.

And it’s determined by how well a player can perform when the pressure is greatest.

Looking back over my career, some of the most valuable contributions I’ve made as an analyst haven’t been technical observations.

They’ve been insights that helped coaches make better decisions, create clearer plans and simplify complex situations for players.

The best coaches I’ve worked alongside understood something that took me years to fully appreciate.

Great coaching isn’t about showing people how much you know.

It’s about helping people perform at their best when it matters most.

And that’s why the best coach I ever worked with never spent much time talking about technique.

One thing I’ve learned from working around some of the best coaches in tennis is that their greatest strength often isn’t technical knowledge. It’s their ability to simplify, communicate and build belief.

If you enjoyed this article, please subscribe to receive future insights from professional tennis, coaching, performance analysis and the lessons I’ve learned working alongside players and coaches at the highest level of the sport.

I’m curious: what’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned from a coach, mentor or leader in your own career?

👇 Share your thoughts in the comments.

Like most careers in sport, mine has not been a straight line.

It’s been a journey filled with opportunities, setbacks, lessons, risks and countless hours spent trying to answer one simple question:

How can we help players perform better?

Today I work across professional tennis as a performance analyst, consultant and coach, helping players and teams use data, intelligence and performance insights to make better decisions. I’ve been fortunate enough to work alongside some of the best coaches, practitioners and athletes in the game while building a career that combines my passion for coaching with my fascination for performance.

But this story didn’t start on the professional tour.

It started in Leicester.

Like many people who end up working in elite sport, I wasn’t born into tennis. I simply developed an obsession with understanding performance. I loved competition, loved sport and was fascinated by why some athletes consistently found ways to win while others struggled to reach their potential.

Over time that curiosity became a career.

What began as coaching evolved into performance analysis. What began as watching matches evolved into studying them. Eventually I found myself spending thousands of hours analysing player behaviour, tactical patterns, movement, decision making and performance trends.

The deeper I went, the more I realised that tennis is one of the most complex sports in the world.

A player can hit the ball perfectly and still lose the point.

A player can play brilliantly and still lose the match.

Success often comes down to making slightly better decisions, slightly more often, under enormous pressure.

That challenge fascinated me.

Over the years I have worked across different environments, from local clubs to some of the most recognised academies and performance programmes in the sport. I’ve had the privilege of supporting junior players, professional players, Grand Slam competitors and world-class coaches.

I’ve sat in player boxes during major tournaments.

I’ve spent late nights building scouting reports.

I’ve analysed matches from courtside, from hotel rooms and from airports while travelling between events.

I’ve watched thousands of hours of tennis searching for patterns that most people never notice.

And I’ve learned that performance is rarely about finding a magic solution.

It’s about consistently doing the small things better.

Recently I’ve become increasingly involved in the intersection between coaching, performance intelligence and technology. The growth of tracking systems, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence is changing how elite sport operates.

Yet despite all the technological advances available today, the most important part of performance remains remarkably simple.

People.

The best coaches I’ve worked with are not necessarily the ones with the most data.

They’re the ones who know how to connect with athletes.

The best analysts aren’t the ones who produce the biggest reports.

They’re the ones who can identify what matters.

The best athletes aren’t always the most talented.

They’re the ones who can adapt, learn and improve under pressure.

This Substack is where I want to explore those ideas.

I’ll be sharing insights from professional tennis, lessons from coaching, thoughts on leadership, performance analysis, athlete development and the evolving role of technology in elite sport.

Some articles will come from courtside observations at tournaments around the world.

Some will come from data projects and performance trends.

Some will come from conversations with coaches, players and practitioners working at the highest level of sport.

And some will simply be reflections from someone who has spent most of his professional life trying to understand how high performers get better.

My hope is that whether you’re a coach, athlete, parent, sports scientist, analyst or simply someone interested in performance, you’ll find something useful here.

Thank you for reading.

This is just the beginning.

Mike

Performance Analyst | Consultant | Coach

Saint-Laurent-du-Var, France

Mike James is a performance analyst and consultant working across professional tennis, specialising in player development, match intelligence and performance strategy.