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A couple of you asked here in my post about Tursunov's response to Ivan Ljubic's question on why the turnover in WTA top 20.
This piece by Carole Bouchard might be of interest on either that or Dimitri's prior charge Emma Raducanu
Tursunov: With Emma, I walked away, yes. That was my choice. I could have stuck around, I could have agreed on everything that her team proposed. But, deep down, I felt like that wasn’t the right thing to do.
I think the original is in The Telegraph but here's a link I can read it at:
https://www.tennismajors.com/wta-tou...at-631908.html
Tursunov said he did NOT leave to work with Bencic. He was leaving anyways.
“I was walking away from Emma regardless of whether there was another [player] available or not. We didn’t agree on the terms and there were some red flags that just couldn’t be ignored. So that’s why it’s a little frustrating to read things like that… I wasn’t hopping from one player to another, I wouldn’t do that.”
“Our trial period was over at the US Open but I stuck around, trying to see if there was going to be a way to impress the team (he laughs). I really wanted to make it work.”
He has indeed nothing but good things to say about his time with Raducanu. “First of all, she’s absolutely great, she’s a hard worker and she doesn’t think or act like she’s a superstar. She is hungry to improve and is obsessed with tennis. I think it’s quite a rare combination. So I really loved working with her, and I really wanted to make it work. It was a very difficult decision for me to walk away from a player that I like and respect.”
“The only difficult thing with her – that you actually have to do with every player – is trying to change certain things: she believed that she had to play a certain way. So I was trying to convince her to change that mindset and change her convictions about her own game. You come in but before you start planting in the garden you have to clean everything out. Then you plant when everything is clean. That’s what I was trying to do and there was maybe a minor difficulty with that but I think we got past that and were on the right track, and she was starting to trust me a little bit more. At least, that was my perception.”
~~~~
“In my opinion, she’s minimum a one-year project but I would say that she’s probably a two-and-a-half-year project to be on the safe side. Of course, it’s hard to say that and it’s hard for people to understand how it is possible because she already won the US Open. But, in my opinion, her game is very raw, and I think in many ways it could use a lot of improvement. It’s going to take some time, but as I said to her and to pretty much everyone on her team: I think you just need to have one voice and just try that for a bit. And then if it doesn’t work, you cross that off your list.”
“But she has a tremendous upside: she’s extremely talented, she’s very athletic, and very coordinated so she can get away with some things that other players can’t. The ingredients are very good, but you can still mess it up. So I felt it was going to be an interesting project, but a very long-term project, and as a coach, you want to have a belief that you’re going to be at work for that period. But of course, with her coaching situation, there’s now a thought going through every coach’s mind… So I was really hoping to find a solution to continue, which is why I stayed for a few weeks past the trial period. But in the end, we just couldn’t agree on the terms so I had to leave, and Belinda had nothing to do with that.”
~~~~~~
On working with Bencic
"“Belinda is obviously talented. But there are a lot of talented players out there. It’s just a question of how much she’s willing to suffer mentally. That’s what a lot of people don’t understand: they think it’s quite easy to change but it’s not. You’re used to doing something one way and then all of a sudden, it has to be done differently. To change things, you have to go through this period where something just isn’t feeling comfortable or familiar. You’re gonna have a lot of doubts in your mind. So you have to be strongly convinced that the change is going to be for the better. There has to be a very solid commitment. And that’s the difficult part of it. We all say, ‘oh, I want to be better’, but ultimately if things don’t work out right away…”
This piece by Carole Bouchard might be of interest on either that or Dimitri's prior charge Emma Raducanu
Tursunov: With Emma, I walked away, yes. That was my choice. I could have stuck around, I could have agreed on everything that her team proposed. But, deep down, I felt like that wasn’t the right thing to do.
I think the original is in The Telegraph but here's a link I can read it at:
https://www.tennismajors.com/wta-tou...at-631908.html
Tursunov said he did NOT leave to work with Bencic. He was leaving anyways.
“I was walking away from Emma regardless of whether there was another [player] available or not. We didn’t agree on the terms and there were some red flags that just couldn’t be ignored. So that’s why it’s a little frustrating to read things like that… I wasn’t hopping from one player to another, I wouldn’t do that.”
“Our trial period was over at the US Open but I stuck around, trying to see if there was going to be a way to impress the team (he laughs). I really wanted to make it work.”
He has indeed nothing but good things to say about his time with Raducanu. “First of all, she’s absolutely great, she’s a hard worker and she doesn’t think or act like she’s a superstar. She is hungry to improve and is obsessed with tennis. I think it’s quite a rare combination. So I really loved working with her, and I really wanted to make it work. It was a very difficult decision for me to walk away from a player that I like and respect.”
“The only difficult thing with her – that you actually have to do with every player – is trying to change certain things: she believed that she had to play a certain way. So I was trying to convince her to change that mindset and change her convictions about her own game. You come in but before you start planting in the garden you have to clean everything out. Then you plant when everything is clean. That’s what I was trying to do and there was maybe a minor difficulty with that but I think we got past that and were on the right track, and she was starting to trust me a little bit more. At least, that was my perception.”
~~~~
“In my opinion, she’s minimum a one-year project but I would say that she’s probably a two-and-a-half-year project to be on the safe side. Of course, it’s hard to say that and it’s hard for people to understand how it is possible because she already won the US Open. But, in my opinion, her game is very raw, and I think in many ways it could use a lot of improvement. It’s going to take some time, but as I said to her and to pretty much everyone on her team: I think you just need to have one voice and just try that for a bit. And then if it doesn’t work, you cross that off your list.”
“But she has a tremendous upside: she’s extremely talented, she’s very athletic, and very coordinated so she can get away with some things that other players can’t. The ingredients are very good, but you can still mess it up. So I felt it was going to be an interesting project, but a very long-term project, and as a coach, you want to have a belief that you’re going to be at work for that period. But of course, with her coaching situation, there’s now a thought going through every coach’s mind… So I was really hoping to find a solution to continue, which is why I stayed for a few weeks past the trial period. But in the end, we just couldn’t agree on the terms so I had to leave, and Belinda had nothing to do with that.”
~~~~~~
On working with Bencic
"“Belinda is obviously talented. But there are a lot of talented players out there. It’s just a question of how much she’s willing to suffer mentally. That’s what a lot of people don’t understand: they think it’s quite easy to change but it’s not. You’re used to doing something one way and then all of a sudden, it has to be done differently. To change things, you have to go through this period where something just isn’t feeling comfortable or familiar. You’re gonna have a lot of doubts in your mind. So you have to be strongly convinced that the change is going to be for the better. There has to be a very solid commitment. And that’s the difficult part of it. We all say, ‘oh, I want to be better’, but ultimately if things don’t work out right away…”
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