From sinking ship to gladiator: rejuvenated Tsitsipas back to his best
Out of form at the start of this year, the Greek has now won seven straight matches and is back inside the world’s top 10
Tristan Lapierre/Tennis Majors
When Stefanos Tsitsipas fell to Alex Michelsen in the first round at the Australian Open in January, perhaps the biggest surprise was that his defeat was not a surprise at all.
For the past few months, with one or two exceptions, Tsitsipas had seemed to be treading water, his confidence shot. The Greek fell out of the world’s top 10 and his loss to Michelsen made it one win from his past three Grand Slams.
But somehow, he has turned it around. Victory in Dubai last month saw Tsitsipas back to his best again and back inside the top 10. His impressive 6-3, 6-3 victory over Matteo Berrettini in Indian Wells on Sunday means he has now won seven matches in a row and he looks and sounds like a man rejuvenated.
“I’m approaching these matches with determination and willingness to just leave it all out there on the court,” Tsitsipas told reporters in Indian Wells.
“I’ve seen improvements when it comes to my mindset. I just don’t want to take anything for granted. I fight for every single individual match as a different chapter, different story, regardless of what I have done before. I just feel like I want to get out there on the court and be a gladiator, and that’s how I approach every single match I get to play.”
“They said I was sinking, so I got myself a boat”
After winning the title in Dubai last month, and collecting the boat-shaped trophy, Tsitsipas posted on Instagram, saying: “They said my game was sinking, so I got myself a boat”.
“I wasn’t doing great lately, and the last few months weren’t amazing for me. I didn’t have any big results or victories that I could say that I’m headed towards a good direction with my game. So I feel like that caption sort of was a summary of the last few months,” he said of his Instagram post.
“I just like a little bit of that humour like that. Doesn’t hurt. I was trying to find ways to improve. I feel like some of my opponents that I got to play were overpowering me and doing things much better than me when it came to playing bigger tennis. My entire career I’ve been known to be able to play big tennis but it wasn’t big enough, and I felt like I had to do something about it.”
Tsitsipas praises new coach
Tsitsipas paid tribute to his new coach Dimitris Chatzinikolaou, saying the work they had done together is now paying off.
“I was working very well with Dimitris, my coach, the last few months,” he said. “I saw big improvement in how I approached my matches but also my work ethic in and out on kind of daily tennis sessions. I felt like there were things that little by little I started to improve and kind of perfect.
“So it’s just the thing was that it felt like I wasn’t able to go out on the court and really do that to the level that I was doing it in practice. I was playing practice sets, and I was playing really well. I was winning a lot of the practice sets against good opponents. It’s just that it didn’t click when it came to the match, and I had to wait a little longer for that. With a few more changes that I added to my game (including testing out a new racket) I felt like it added a lot of confidence stepping out onto the tennis court.”
New racQUet making a big difference
Tsitsipas, who will play Dane Holger Rune in the last 16 in Indian Wells, has been testing out a new racquet in recent weeks, disguised a little by the blacked out strings, for sponsorship reasons.
With different strings and a more open string pattern – 16-20 – than before, and a bigger sweetspot, Tsitsipas has been able to play with “more freedom”, knowing he has more margin for error.
“It’s all about confidence,” he told Tennis Channel after the win over Berrettini. “I feel I can return without having to hit the ball in the middle (of the strings). There’s more room for error. I can also hit more topspin without having to muscle it.”
