How Novak Djokovic copied Roger Federer, Pete Sampras to improve
In an interview to Il Tennis Italiano, Riccardo Piatti commented on his successful co-operation with Borna Coric. The Croat started training at the Italian coach's tennis centre in the north of Italy in December 2017 and last year he reached his maiden Masters 1000 final at the Shanghai Masters. Piatti admitted that Coric's agent Ivan Ljubicic, a former world No. 3 who is Roger Federer's coach, was the key to convince him to join forces with a promising player like Coric. "He was telling me that the guy wanted to work with me so much", Piatti confessed. "It's not that I taught him how to play, I just put things together. I am fixing his serve, because, like Djokovic, he was not hitting as clean. When I was working with Nole (Novak Djokovic, between 2005 and 2006), I had made him notice his serve and (Roger) Federer and (Pete) Sampras's serves, who were his idols. I just told him: watch them. They are right: this is a big advantage when you have to play an important point. They do not make mistakes when it comes to win a match. Instead of the match point, there are more chances you make an error because you are not right."
Piatti also commented on his past co-operations with well-known players: "Milos (Raonic) was the project I felt most regrets for: I know that people did not like him, as a player, but he had an unbelievable efficiency and he could become world No. 1. In the end of 2016, he was world No. 3, ready to win something important. And instead the year after it was terrible, the team was not combined and didn't work in the right way. With (Richard) Gasquet, instead, no regrets: I did everything as possible. I was just asking him to take a physioterapist, a fitness trainer but nothing. If you run ten minutes per day, you cannot run a marathon. I was trying to push him but he did not want to make that change. But after Raonic, I did not want to coach players who were already settled."
from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/2Fke8QF
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