Biofile: Felix Auger-Aliassime Interview

Man, it really shows you, especially with the young guys, what a totally limiting sport tennis is. None of these guys seem to have time to read or book or remember what the last book they read was. It’s amazing. You ask me the last book I read and I say, “Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt and I have a job, a family and a nine-year-old who I have to get his racquets strung, take him to practices and tournaments, hit with him and talk tennis with him all the time.

“Harrison is notable for being the third-youngest player since 1990, after Richard Gasquet and Rafael Nadal, to have won an ATP level match, defeating world no. 130 Pablo Cuevas in the 2008 U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championships. Entering the tournament as a qualifier ranked no. 1000, he was only the tenth player in the history of the ATP Tour to have won a match before turning 16.”

That would be Ryan Harrison

I like the kid. Nice game. Just think the expectations are too much.

Thankfully he is in Canada. He’s fortunate because the expectations are probably a lot lower and the press there has enough to work with in Raonic and Bouchard. That should give him some space to keep working on his game without the pressure.

The ATP requires a lot. Once you win a match the expectations skyrocket. Sampras was probably lucky because other players got the praise and he could develop without the media pressure. They all became great – Chang, Agassi, Courier – so they didn’t buckle under the expectations. But Sampras got extra time to work on things that they didn’t. Something to think about. Maybe Felix benefits here with everyone talking about Coric or the next u.s. players, meanwhile in Canada a player who doesn’t have the same urgency develops a better game and better tools to handle the grind.

Harrison himself says it was too much. Suddenly you are feeding an expectations beast. He has more support now but the point is a career can’t be built on expectations.

No, Ho is an investment banker type guy in Houston I believe. Macci told me that Ho had this amazing hitting technique and racquet speed, but the reason he didn’t get much higher than like no. 80 is that he wasn’t really that good of an athlete. When you look at Chang, it’s really remarkable what he did. The guy’s maybe 5-7. How many small Asian men, how many Asian men at all, have made it to no. 2 in the world or made it at all on the pro tour. Maybe one of the reasons he made it is he did turn pro so early and was willing to take on the slings and arrows of playing men early.

I mean if Felix is already playing Paul to a near stand-still, he’s not going to get a whole lot of quality competition playing against juniors anymore. If he moderated his pro tournaments and travel, I think playing pro is the way to go now for him. Certainly, Kozlov thought so and he’s not the supernatural player Felix is.

Every junior in Felix’s rarefied air made it. This kid is going to make it. School?! How big do you think school is in his life when he can’t remember the last book he read? I wasn’t a big reader when I was 15, but during the school year, I could tell you what the last book I’d read was.

How many good juniors can there be out there when Felix just won the 18’s at 15?

Agassi regretted not reading earlier.

Doesn’t surprise me the juniors are great players. When I played juniors I was stunned how good my opponents were. I’d play the #1 in New Jersey one week, the #7 in Texas the next, the #18 in the nation the week after that, top 20 from different south american countries following that week. All of those guys were very solid.

They even had – all of them – a backhand (which is why I am so troubled when I see a lot of U.S. up and coming players that can’t hit a firm backhand).

No surprise to me either that Spadea made it. He was playing a different division at the same tournaments, so these kinds of players were his competition day in, day out. I’d see most of the scores for Spadea as well – he’d ROUTINE most of the players 6-0 6-0.

So I never think that it’s a matter of technique. There’s so much more that’s needed at the pro level – the funding is probably #1, consistent coaching, match play out of competition, improvement, conditioning, health, some luck. And these days, some sort of consistent entourage. I don’t think it’s a stretch to believe the guys I played could have broken top 300, top 200 (some of them, top 100) if they had this mix.

Never a matter of technique alone. I think it matters at the upper reach of the game, where opponents probe for weaknesses and just pound it there, which then rattles a player because they aren’t used to the pressure.

I think it’s easy to forget when it comes to the Williams – they had enormous support. When they moved to Florida they basically had free lessons and court time. More importantly, they had signed huge, multi year and multi million dollar endorsement deals with Reebok, which gave them some space to pick how and when they’d go for the tour. Then you had the madison square garden exhibition between Aranxta Sanchez Vicario and Venus Williams, with Williams beating her for the most part, and suddenly they were off to the races.

Getting that kind of set-up today is just not happening. The pressure is completely on the players and what kind of things they can get set up. If they can get the national system to support them, somehow lock down a few sponsorship deals. Probably one of the reasons that a player like Felix isn’t playing all that much outside of Canada.

books are overrated and dated….IMO – a good film or recording, etc. are more effective modes of communicating and teaching, etc….people in general are too busy with their lives and on the flipside – not THAT bored to engross themselves in a book….which do convey stories, messages, instructions, etc. in the old and boring way.

Tennis players aren’t going to be intellectual giants – we shouldn’t expect it. 15 year old isn’t going to be engrossed in books either.
But books ‘old and boring’ ?
That’s an idea beyond the range of reporting junior tennis tournaments.You must be young.

You haven’t been reading the right books, Moskova, if you think they’re boring. I like films and music, too, but for me, a good book is even more pleasurable than those other two options.

I didn’t read a whole lot in high school, but I did read three of my favorite all-time books as a teen and they were Catcher In The Rye, Ball Four and Great Expectations.

Thing is, MM, some of the very best books on certain subject/areas aren’t available in Ebook format. I enjoy reading Medieval History as a side hobby, and many of the best books in that field are absolutely not profitable to the publishers in print format to begin with (at least not in America), so why should they waste the time/effort/money to make them into Ebooks/PDF/etc? I just feel fortunate to have been able to buy some Medieval History books when they were dirt cheap (usually used) on Amazon/Ebay/etc. Nowadays they sell online for many times the cost I paid for them (way too much for me; one of the books I want, but don’t have, was asking for over $350, in so-so condition).

The popular stuff (including lots of drivel that sells well but is the publishing equivalent of Kardashian propaganda, dandied-up) of course does fine in the Ebooks/PDFs, but why would I want to fill my head with that?

Andrew Miller – “Like you guys pointed out, if development costs are in the six figures and a family has basically maxed out for the kid, there’s no choice here.”

Tennis Canada has a pretty good system set up for their youngsters and there’s basically no one who isn’t able to play for lack of funding. The costs of coaching and court time and travel and whatnot is all covered for kids who show promise and progress. One thing TC does which I don’t know if other federations do is require them to pay back what’s been spent on them once they start making millions. Both Milos Raonic and Genie Bouchard have already paid them back and it then allows TC to fund the next up and comer.

nerds nerds nerds nerds nerds !!!

sorry scoop – cant stop chanting it HAHA

Regarding Tennis Canada, their current system, with the National Training Centre, etc., has only been in place for a few years. Players like Raonic and Bouchard got some assistance under the new system, but results will show up more with the junior players – there are several promising ones on both the boys and the girls sides.