Latest news with #ApostolosTsitsipas
The National
01-07-2025
- Sport
- The National
Stefanos Tsitsipas admits tennis future is unclear as he struggles with anxiety and fitness issues
On the eve of Wimbledon, Stefanos Tsitsipas sat in a small interview room with a few journalists and opened up about his struggles with anxiety. The Greek former top-three player sounded excited about hiring former Wimbledon champion Goran Ivanisevic as his coach, and believes the Croatian legend can help him fix various technical issues with his game. Tsitsipas added though that he was acutely aware that was not going to be enough. The 26-year-old admitted he had work to do in order to 'recalibrate my mental state' and that it was on him to find solutions for his current psychological woes. 'The last couple of years, especially the last two years, I feel like I have been very stressed and anxious and I only realised that now that all of this is really adding to me and it just doesn't feel like me when I'm out on the court,' Tsitsipas revealed on Saturday. 'So I just need to manage the stress better. It's something that will pop up, something that might happen again, but I need to manage those stressful moments. 'I need to manage moments of uncertainty and figure it out on my own. I don't want to have external stuff that are causing those types of things. 'So I need to soulfully be focused on my own individuality, my own self, and let anything outside not allow any of this to distract me.' Tsitsipas did not explicitly say what those external pressures or distractions may be, but his issues with his father, Apostolos, have been well-documented during the years he served as his coach. Tsitsipas has also previously complained that he felt his parents were 'too involved' in his life and he has felt the responsibility of taking care of his whole family from a young age – even making it a mission to play doubles with one of his brothers, Petros, in order to help him get into the top 100. Tsitsipas ended his coaching partnership with Apostolos on more than one occasion, most recently last August, in an effort to focus on their father-son relationship. He has had mostly lacklustre results since, barring a surprise run to the Dubai title in February, in what was his first tournament using a new racquet. When asked if he could pinpoint the source of his anxiety, Tsitsipas said: 'Well, my life is … I feel like not just my life, I feel like most players' life is chaotic, having to travel from place to place and then switching time zones and going from one place to the other. 'Doing this for so many years, I think it's quite normal that at some point you're going to reach a place of burnout or a place where you feel like you've had enough. 'But literally, you can't do anything about that because the nature of the sport itself is to repeatedly go one tournament after the other. 'I'm a player that has been playing the most amount of tournaments, the most amount of matches, I think. For three or four years, I was the player on the tour that had the most amount of wins in a single season. 'And there comes a moment, me and Goran spoke about it, there comes a moment where you pay the price and you can't have everything in life. 'Of course, it was great at the time. But internally, you're not aligned and you're not in peace with yourself. 'You're always chasing, you're always going after things. And sometimes when you end up also being surrounded by people that demand too much from you and you feel like you're responsible for not just yourself but for other people too … it creates this inner pressure, this inner anxiety that keeps increasing week after week. So it doesn't really help you with the tennis either. 'You feel like you're battling two worlds at the same time.' Two days later, Tsitsipas retired from his Wimbledon opening round against French qualifier Valentin Royer with a lower-back injury that has been bothering him on and off since the end of 2023. The Greek is a two-time Grand Slam finalist, but hasn't made it past the second round in any of his last five majors and is currently down to No 26 in the world rankings. After this latest setback on Monday, Tsitsipas once again shared some worrying thoughts with the media. This time about his physical state. 'I'm battling many wars these days. It's really painful to see myself in a situation like this,' said Tsitsipas. 'One thing that I absolutely hate doing is retiring or stopping a match, but I've never pictured myself being in a situation like this multiple times since the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin a couple of years back. 'Since that time, I've been very fragile with my body, and I've been battling a war of feeling healthy and feeling comfortable going to the extremes, which has been a difficult battle. So I really don't know. 'I feel completely … I feel like I'm left without answers.' Tsitsipas explained that the problem is in the lower left side of his back and it limits his ability to rotate his body while playing. 'It's probably the most difficult situation that I've ever been faced with, because it's an ongoing issue that doesn't seem to be disappearing or fading off as much,' he added. 'Myself, as a person, I have a limit at some point, so I'll definitely have to have my final answer on whether I want to do stuff or not in the next couple of months. 'This is going to be hard, but if I see it going in that trajectory, there is no point at competing. If I'm not healthy, and I've talked about health so many times, if health is not there, then your whole tennis life becomes miserable.' In the Greek portion of his press conference, Tsitsipas was clearer about his future in the sport, saying he'll give it one more year before making a final decision. 'If this develops into something that doesn't let me finish matches, I get my answer there. I mean I won't play tennis again for good,' he told SDNA.
New York Times
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Stefanos Tsitsipas hires Goran Ivanisevic, Novak Djokovic's former coach
Two-time Grand Slam finalist Stefanos Tsitsipas has hired former Wimbledon champion Goran Ivanišević as his new coach. Ivanišević, 53, will join Tsitsipas' team from the start of the Halle Open in Germany, for a trial period. Tsitsipas' father, Apostolos, who has been in his coaching box at recent events, will not be part of his coaching team at least initially, according to a report in Greek outlet SDNA. A representative for Ivanišević confirmed this element of the partnership to The Athletic, and said that Ivanišević will work full-time with Tsitsipas for a substantial number of weeks per year. Ivanišević believes Tsitsipas should be in the world's top 10 and has always got on well with him when their paths have crossed on tour. Advertisement Tsitsipas later confirmed the 'new coaching partnership' on social media. Tsitsipas, who will leave the the world's top 20 for the first time since August 2018 when the rankings update a week on Monday, has had a difficult couple of years and has brought on Novak Djokovic's former coach to try and arrest the slide. He most recently exited the French Open in the second round, losing to Italian qualifier Matteo Gigante Wednesday. Afterward, Tsitsipas spoke about how he is struggling to keep up with the demands of the tour, and how he has suffered physically in the aftermath of picking up injuries over the last few years. 'It's a constant puzzle,' he said in a news conference. 'Things have definitely changed over the last couple of years, and I know that I find myself in a completely different position now. ' Tsitsipas, 26, has spent much of the last year trying to rediscover the form and love for tennis that made him look like a potential Grand Slam champion when he burst onto the scene seven years ago. In August 2024, he took the radical step of removing his father from his coaching team after a surprise defeat to Japan's Kei Nishikori, then the world No. 576, in Montreal. Tsitsipas said he was 'disappointed' in his father's work in a news conference after that loss. 'I need and I deserve a coach that listens to me and hears my feedback as a player. My father hasn't been very smart or very good at handling those situations,' he said. Tsitsipas has since worked with Greece's Davis Cup captain, Dimitris Chatzinikolaou. He also switched rackets in search of a winning formula, but could not say what the new one was for contractual reasons. The profile — and an uncovered logo seen on a stringing machine in Dubai — suggested a Babolat Pure Aero 98 model. But at the French Open, he returned to the Wilson frame, after experiencing back pain using the newer racket on the clay. Advertisement His 2025 results have largely remained underwhelming — save for winning February's Dubai Tennis Championships in the United Arab Emirates — as he seeks a return to the early days of his career, when he thrilled the tennis world with his flair and shotmaking ability. When he returned to clay, which is his preferred surface, Tsitsipas suffered a disappointing quarterfinal loss to Lorenzo Musetti at the Monte Carlo Masters in Monaco. Tsitsipas was defending champion and had won the event three times in four years; the lost ranking points attached to the defeat saw Tsitsipas tumble to his lowest position for almost seven years. He then lost to Musetti again at the Madrid Open, before losing to Arthur Fils at the Italian Open in Rome. As a coach, 2001 Wimbledon champion Ivanišević is best known for the six seasons he spent with Novak Djokovic, in which the Serb won 12 Grand Slam titles. They split in March 2024. Ivanišević then briefly worked with fellow Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina at the start of 2025, but they parted following her fourth-round exit at the Australian Open. The split came after it became clear that Rybakina was still working with her previous coach, Stefano Vukov. Vukov has since been given a one-year ban by the WTA for breaching its code of conduct with his behavior, which chief executive Portia Archer described as amounting to 'engaging in abuse of authority and abusive conduct.' It's felt as though Tsitsipas has been searching for his tennis identity ever since Carlos Alcaraz thrashed him at the 2022 French Open. 'I do need a bit more of that Tsitsipas in my game. I'm trying to reinvent myself with that fearlessness,' he told The Athletic a month after being beaten 6-2, 6-1, 7-6(5) by a 19-year-old Alcaraz, referring to the early part of his career. Advertisement Being pummelled by the next big thing in men's tennis, having held and then lost that title himself, hurt Tsitsipas. It was the first of several visceral reminders that the Greek, who lost his two major finals to Djokovic, has been stalled not just by the 'Big Three' of Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, but also the ascendant Alcaraz and now Jannik Sinner. Tsitsipas has found himself confined to an awkward spot somewhere just below the very top, along with fellow 'sandwich generation' members like Alexander Zverev and Daniil Medvedev — though Medvedev has claimed the major title that has eluded the other two. As he approaches his 27th birthday in August, it makes sense for Tsitsipas to try something different. He's worked with Australian Wimbledon finalist Mark Philippoussis before, but bringing on a coach of Ivanišević's stature feels like a significant shakeup. Ivanišević too will relish this opportunity, after a difficult period working with Rybakina and the end of what was a very successful but at times volatile partnership with Djokovic. Like Tsitsipas, Ivanišević lost his first two Grand Slam finals. He then lost a third, but finally won at the fourth time of asking by claiming the 2001 Wimbledon title. Tsistipas has not reached the semifinals of a major since he lost to Djokovic in Melbourne just over two years ago. Ivanišević also has pedigree as a coach in guiding someone from outside the top echelons of the rankings to a major title, doing so in 2014 with Marin Čilić, who was the No. 14 seed when he won the U.S. Open, beating Federer en route to the final against Nishikori. Tsitsipas will be desperate for a similar uptick in his fortunes. He has the talent to climb back into the world's top 10 — he was ranked as high as No. 3 in 2021 — but his backhand has long hamstrung him away from clay, particularly when returning serve. Ivanišević is also one of the best servers in the history of the sport, especially on grass, and he'll hope to lift Tsitsipas in that area too. If Ivanišević can tighten some of the aspects where Tsitsipas has been struggling, and help with the mental side of how to go from nearly man to champion, then men's tennis could have one of its most exciting players back on song.
