Ryan Harrison Analyzes His Comeback Surge in 2016

By Scoop Malinowski

Ryan Harrison reached his career high ranking of ATP No. 43 back in 2012 at the age of 20 but then lost his way over the last couple of years, mysteriously dropping outside the top 100. After a difficult start in 2016 which featured several disappointing first half of the year losses, Harrison suddenly rejuvenated his career with a surge of fine play in Washington DC. After posting several impressive wins Harrison initiated his best hot streak in years and was able to break back into the top 100. The 24-year-old now will have a direct entry into the Australian Open main draw. Last week at IMG Academy in Bradenton, FL, the soon-to-be married Harrison (late March 2017/Lauren Mchale) analyzed how he was able to turn his season and career around in 2016 and also touched on what he’s working on now to continue his ascent up the ATP World Tour rankings…

Scoop Malinowski: You got your career back on track in 2016, you had an excellent second half of 2016. What was the turning point for you?

Ryan Harrison: Starting the hard court season for me was always going to be something that I was looking forward to, just being an American and playing the US Open Series, I was able to kick it off right away in DC qualifying and make the third round. I think it was mental mostly. Just really putting myself in a position where regardless of score, regardless of what was happening throughout the match, that I was going to be tuned in the whole time. Some of those matches where I was getting down the early break or getting up and early break and giving it back, whatever sort of situation that you’d face that could kind of throw you off course. In my previous matches I’ve been letting it kind of shake me a little bit. I feel like I did a really good job the second half of the year of just staying through whatever situation of a match came about. I just stayed solid and stay mentally tough.

Scoop: So was there one specific match where the confidence came back?

Ryan Harrison: Yeah, I think the Troicki match in DC. I beat him in a real tough, hour-and-a-half-long first set 7-6 where I think I had like 12 or 13 break points which I didn’t capitalize on and I still won the set. I remember thinking I always play Victor tough, I played him three or four times that I knew I was going to have an opportunity play him tough because of our previous match history. Once I got off that match I just said if I can really play every match with the same sort of intensity that I have today and I’m going to give myself a chance to win a lot of matches if I beat him and he’s top 30 the world just doing that all the time and I know that there’s no reason why I can’t do that when I’m not playing him. I’m like, okay, I need to bring that every day and that will bring consistency in results and it did.

Scoop: Last year looked like you could have been playing better than you were when you were 40 in the world. Is that accurate?

Ryan Harrison: Yeah, definitely. If you looked at where I was in the second half of the year and how I played even after the Open, even before the Open in Toronto and DC I definitely felt like that could be accurate. My ranking is up to 90 right now which the ranking system is kind of reflective over 12 months so I guess we’ll see in June if I’m up to the top 40 or whatever or where I’ll be at hopefully. I truly feel if I continue to be as consistent as I was last for five months then I’ll be up around there and hopefully move forward. But for me, like I said, it was just a matter of consistent results.

Scoop: What was the best match you played last season?

Ryan Harrison: The biggest win was definitely the Raonic match at the Open. That was the biggest win. Had some really quality matches, even in a couple of losses. I lost four in the third round of Toronto to Berdych and we had an absolute battle. Playing a really quality first round match of Toronto against Andrey Kuznetsov, who’s top 40, and I beat him very comfortably. All in all I think that probably the Raonic match was one of the most gratifying ones. Just because it was the top four player at a slam. I hadn’t really had a big result like that a slam yet.

Scoop: What are you working on right now to take the next step in your game?

Ryan Harrison: Transition. My ground game and my overall serving and returning has been solid but now I’m trying to start to build toward more of an aggressive play. Because now that I’m playing against those guys in the top 20 in the world pretty frequently again you can’t expect to get wins over those guys on a consistent basis unless you have actual weapons. You can win every now and then if you’re playing reactive kind of tennis where you’re waiting to see what they do but in order to really put up consistent results it needs to be on your terms. So I’m working on using my ability to transition to the net. I can use my athleticism to my advantage.

Scoop: You seemed quicker last year than you ever. You’re court movement was clearly better. How did that happen?

Ryan Harrison: Well, you know, playing a lot of matches makes you faster just because you can’t really simulate that match intensity (in practice). And I had to play a lot of qualifying matches, that’s just because I was playing a lot of tournament qualies. I’m getting two to three matches in every week before the main draw even starts. So every Saturday Sunday I’m playing matches, playing matches and I end up playing four to five matches a week especially over US Open Series and all that heat, it’s hard not to get fit when you’re playing that many matches. So that was a big step as far as just playing a lot of tennis and then after that the little things come into play. If you were playing a lot of matches and you’re in a tournament it’s really easy to be on top of your diet because you know that you’re playing on a schedule… I’m going to wake up, I’m eating breakfast at this time, I’m eating lunch at this time, and then if I win we have to have a healthy dinner because we’re going to do it again tomorrow. So it’s kind of funny because I don’t know comes first, the chicken or the egg, because if you do all the things right and you have good results, once you’re having good results it becomes easier to do all the things right because you have to do it to stay on track. So I felt like the last four months for me we’re, day in and day out, I felt like I knew what I was going to get out of my game. Now going into the off-season I’m taking what I know I’m gonna have as far as the serve and the return and the consistent ground game. I’m building on top of that as far as making myself more comfortable at the net and transitioning.

Young American showed major improvement in 2016

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