Tursunov On Facing The Big Four

I found this interview by Paul Bauman, the renowned Norcal Tennis Czar, did with former ATP top 20 ATP player Dmitry Tursunov about playing Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray…

Question: What was it like to play Roger Federer?

Dmitry Tursunov:  I was expecting lightning and fire. He can come up with incredible shots, but if you don’t play a lot of top players like that, you expect a lot more (than against others) and get a little frightened, so you think you need to jump the gun first. It helps to play players of that level more often because you get a real sense of what you need to improve on. Watching them on TV is completely different.
   For me, it was a little surprising because not all of his shots were a YouTube moment. Obviously, he’s very good at knowing when to turn it up a notch and when to conserve energy. He’s very efficient in that sense. With Rafa, you feel like every shot you hit, you need to hit a little deeper, otherwise, he’s going to destroy you. Roger gives you a little more leeway; he gives you a little bit more chance to play. But then, of course, break points, deuce points, tiebreaks — he knows when to run around, when to play a little bit more aggressive.
   Sometimes he looks a little lackadaisical on the court, but during the important points, he really steps it up and makes sure he doesn’t miss a lot. He’s very disciplined during the right moments. Rafa (who’s five years younger) plays like that the entire match. Roger picks and chooses which moments he wants to step it up. I think he conserves energy that way.
 Question: What was it like to play Murray and Djokovic?
 Dmitry Tursunov:  Andy is definitely not as spectacular a player. He kind of puts you to sleep. He looks pretty harmless. He doesn’t hit these great shots, but somehow your game magically falls apart when you play him. He’s pretty good at breaking your rhythm down, putting the ball where you don’t like it, not giving you the same shot twice. He kind of drags you into that little swamp where you drown yourself with unforced errors.
   Rafa physically clubs you to death. Roger is able to come up with great shots to which you can’t do anything. When you come off the court (against them), you feel like, I lost to a good player. With Andy, you always feel like, “S—, I gotta figure out why the hell did I lose today. He didn’t do anything. He was struggling, he was moaning, he was screaming, he hated every moment out there,” yet somehow he finds a way to win. He’s very deceptive in that sense.
   Again, I think Djokovic allows you to play, but (I faced him) a long time ago, before he became a mainstream, household name. He doesn’t serve aces, he doesn’t hit winners left and right, but he defends really well. The two years he had where he was just destroying people and couldn’t lose — when I played him, he didn’t seem like a player who was going to be capable of doing that, but I think he was able to maximize his potential and squeeze every ounce out of his game.
   He’s obviously a great competitor, but I don’t think a lot of people would have looked at him 10 years ago and said, “OK, this guy’s going to be No. 1.” It doesn’t seem like he has a weapon that people are not going to be able to play against. But he maximized himself so much that he ended up having these results.
  Question:  Which one of the Big Four impresses you the most?
  Dmitry Tursunov  Roger is definitely the shotmaker. Rafa is just pure brute strength and will to win. If he wasn’t getting paid for playing tennis, it almost feels like he would have been paying to play.
   Andy, I would say, is the least impressive of them all. He has the game that in juniors people hate playing against because everyone feels like he doesn’t deserve to win because he forces you to make a lot of unforced errors.
   Djokovic is obviously impressive in that he’s able to (do) the splits and still control himself and produce power out of these extreme angles. That’s not very common for a tennis player. He literally changed the game to where people do a lot more more stretching. People used to do it, but he took it to a different level. He took nutrition to a different level.
   It’s hard to say. They all have their own unique abilities.
   Are champions like Federer and Serena Williams born or made?
   Made. It’s obviously easier to believe that Roger is Roger because he was born that way. I’m not saying that everyone has his ability, but there’s a lot of guys in the top 100 that are just as talented as him. I don’t know where his love for the game or need to win comes from, but he remembers a lot of the matches from the juniors. He remembered that we played against him in doubles in the Orange Bowl. I thought I would remember something like that, but I didn’t. I didn’t believe him, and looked it up, and he was right.
   Obviously, he cares for the game, he loves it, he loves to improve. He surrounded himself with the right people. He’s made a lot of sacrifices to get where he is. … He’s a normal human being, but he has a goal in life, he’s very dedicated to it, and he was able to achieve that. It’s not like he woke up and everything was given to him. He had to work hard, and he still works hard at it. There’s this image of him being a perfect person. People get blinded by that. They think he sleeps on silk linen sheets and eats flowers for breakfast, but he works extremely hard to get those results.

Andy Murray · Dmitri Tursunov · Novak Djokovic · Rafael Nadal · Roger Federer

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