We have tried to learn from the best," says Cahill about Sinner
Darren Cahill and Simone Vagnozzi held a press conference after Jannik Sinner's victory over Carlos Alcaraz at the ATP Finals. When asked about their working methods and areas for improvement, Cahill notably discussed his player's return of serve.
He states: "On the return of serve, you depend a bit on your opponent and the quality of their serve. I think that's what makes Carlos and Jannik difficult to face: you don't have time to breathe when you play against them.
You can struggle during a five-minute service game, because they send back a lot of returns, then they come back and hit shot after shot, a bit like Federer used to do back in the day, where he would serve in 40 seconds and immediately put pressure on you.
We have tried to learn from the best, Rafa, Novak and Roger, and to apply as much as possible what we learned from them to give to our player and put as much pressure as possible on our opponents.
It is this accumulated pressure that helps these players when the score is tight. So you are right, the first serve, the first shot and the return of serve are really important.
We still believe that, even though Jannik returns serve very well, he still has room for improvement in this area. That is what is really interesting and exciting when you work with someone as talented as Jannik: there are aspects of his game that we believe can still be significantly improved. I think that's a bit of what I talked about here a week ago, which is that we want him to play his best tennis at 28, 29 or 30 years old.
I hope we are putting in place the plan and the platform that will allow him to achieve that in a few years.
Alcaraz, Carlos
Sinner, Jannik