Don’t underestimate Tommy Paul. It’s not what it seems. Watch him carefully when he plays, how he plays, how he builds the points and how he knows how to finish them all. Don’t get distracted by staring at his companion, Paige Lorenze, the American boy has always accompanied himself well, but he has recently settled his mind and is monogamous. Brad Stine, the coach who guided Jim Courier in the metamorphosis from ugly duckling to world number 1, with 4 titles in all Slam finals, is his biggest fan. During the Rome tournament we spoke for a long time, and we discovered several things.
Let’s start with the technique: “Tommy is constantly evolving, I have been coaching him since 2019, when he was quite messy on and off the pitch, and he has already risen to 5.0. At the beginning we dedicated ourselves to improving his forehand until it became dominant and therefore to transforming his game into an aggressive, attacking, not counterattacking way. Because in modern tennis you can’t rely on the backhand, which is Tommy’s dominant shot, and you increasingly have to be good at the transition to the net.”.
The first limit was physical: “He had to work a lot in that respect.” Indeed: “The first piece was that of concentration. Since he was a boy, his main problem has been: on the pitch he got distracted or at least his focus wasn’t so continuous.” Another problem: “he rightly had big goals in his head, but he didn’t see the daily ones, training after training, little progress after progress that could have really taken him to the top. I had to train him above all in this professional mentality, in the right attitude, in starting over the next day in the same way”.
Read also – The interview with Brad Stine (Martucci)
