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NOVEMBER 2004
Editor’s Note: IT interviewed Robert Lansdorp just after Wimbledon. INSIDE TENNIS: Myskina wins the French, Sharapova takes Wimbledon and Davenport puts together a 22-match win streak. It was a heck of a summer for Lansdorp’s ladies. ROBERT LANSDORP: Before, the players were so bad at giving credit where credit is due — like Tracy Austin [who he also taught], like all of them. Now, who in the world has coached five Grand Slam champions? Tracy gives me more credit than I can handle. After all these years I’m getting credit. It’s nice. Maria is really thoughtful. She’s unbelievable and has good character. She’s a great girl, and it’s nice to have a good relationship, where I’m finally getting credit. Davenport now gives me a lot of credit. She’s talked about what a great influence I was and how without me she probably wouldn’t have been anywhere. Nobody has evolved the little ones into Grand Slam champions [like me]. The only one that came to me when she was older was Myskina, she was No. 58. She stunk. A year and a half later, she’s top 10 and she says her boyfriend [now ex-boyfriend and coach Jens Erlach] did it all. And she says, “Yeah, Lansdorp helped me with my groundies.” Excuse me, what else have you got? IT: You’ve coached Sampras, Austin, Sharapova, Myskina, Davenport.... RL: Stephanie Rehe, got to be top 10, Eliot Teltscher got to six, Brian Teacher, nine, Kimberley Po, 14. IT: So it’s obviously all a fluke. RL: Exactly. I was just lucky. IT: Does the lack of recognition piss you off? RL: No, I’m used to it. Nobody has done what I have done, the way I did it. Some radio guy called and said, “You just rent a court? You’re not on some luxurious court at an academy?” But what else do I need? All I need is a basket of balls and a court. I don’t need all the B.S. But I’ve always been the worst PR guy. I never talked. Other guys have PR people. So people say, “How come I’ve never heard about you, you’ve made all these champions.” But I’m feeling good and have a feeling I probably will have one more [champion] in my life. IT: Let’s say the day comes when you go up to the pearly gates and God says, “Hey, Lansdorp, I’ve heard you’re some kind of coach. So look, I’ll let you in if you tell me the two or three secrets of how you do it. RL: It’s easy — he’s God, he oughta know, dude! First of all, nothing can be done without discipline. Then it’s motivation and the psychology of bringing kids along, understanding what the kid needs to become better, recognizing what they’re lacking at a very early age, what it is that they have to do to become better. Look at Maria — the only one I knew who had better motivation was Tracy. IT: Really, more so than Pete? RL: Oh yeah. Pete looked like he was going to be a great player, definitely. Lindsay looked like she was going to be good, but never [win] Grand Slams. So you look at what they need. And then, you stick to what is going to make them great. My system makes them great. IT: You’re famous for feeding kids thousands of balls. RL: It’s the repetition. It’s the ability to make them hit balls that they don’t think they can hit. It’s the work ethic. Since I have a great work ethic, you get the same ethic out of them. It’s a process of several years, molding the person. Of course with somebody like Maria, Tracy or Pete, they have a championship quality within. But you have to give them the tools and the confidence that all their qualities will work. By having Maria hit her forehand over and over again, she’s able to handle it because she’s seen hundreds of thousands of balls come to her at 100 miles per hour. I can hit them out of a basket a foot inside the line, a foot from the baseline, 100 miles an hour, over and over. Then I can change the pace all of the sudden. It’s just constant work and making sure that the drive is clean and through the ball.
RL: Probably Tracy. But they all have it. In terms of showing it, it would be Tracy and Maria. They were the most aggressive in wanting to win. You saw it in the slap of their thighs —- they just can’t wait to win. Pete was a little lax. Sometimes I thought he was sort of throwing a match. Same with Lindsay. IT: She can get insecure. RL: That’s just her personality. IT: How would you compare Myskina’s desire with Sharapova’s? RL: Myskina has come around. She wasn’t the same as Maria when she came to me. She was easily distracted. At Indian Wells, she’s up 6-1, 4-0 over Nathalie Dechy, who then took a bathroom break. Then Myskina fell apart. No way would Maria have fallen apart. IT: And Myskina was once up 5-0 against Henin at the WTA Championships and she blew that, plus.... RL: She can go “walkabout,” but if she can overcome that, and also handle pace, she’s quick and has a devastating backhand... IT: We’ve seen Maria’s forehand, we’ve seen Pete’s running forehand — we’ve seen Lindsay’s backhand. Who’s got the sweetest stroke? RL: It’s a three-, maybe four-way tie. Myskina hits a little different than Maria. Maria, Davenport and Austin drive through the ball. Myskina doesn’t quite drive through, but tags the ball so well she has a lot of pace. Davenport has an unbelievable backhand, which she had at a very early age. Very clean. When she was 12, she could flip the backhand. Maria didn’t rip the backhand. Her father kept telling me, “She missed a lot of backhands.” I kept saying, ‘Yuri, don’t worry. She’s going to have a world-class backhand.” Why? Because then, she didn’t know whether she should be right- or left- handed. She could serve right or left-handed. But since the motion was a little more natural with the right arm, I told him, “You should probably have her play right-handed. But because of the left hand, her backhand is going to be devastating.” IT: What about Yuri? Tough, tough guy. Really motivated. RL: He’s an easy guy with me. No problems whatsoever. He believes in me. He took her to me because he figured I was going to be the one who could make Maria hit the ball like Davenport. He never argues with me, he never says a word. All he does is jump down to pick up balls. IT: Any similarity between him and Mr. Sampras? RL: Mr. Sampras was never around, so it’s hard to tell. Mr. Sampras would come to the lessons in the beginning, but there was not the involvement that Maria has with Yuri. They have a great relationship. He sometimes sounds a little harsh when he talks to her, and he’s very defensive when you say anything about Maria. You don’t want to get on his bad side, or say something about Maria — like what Nick [Bollettieri] said at Indian Wells, that this other girl [Bulgarian Sesil Karatantcheva] was going to be No. 1. Then it’s a done deal. It’s over. Don’t look me up anymore. But Yuri calls me all the time. I give him advice, he asks me. It’s a great relationship. I trust him because he’s not the kind of guy who will screw you over.
RL: I don’t think that’s it. To me, a kid’s a kid. When a kid loves to play at a young age, that has to be nurtured a little bit better in this country. It has to come from the parents. If the parents are behind the kid, then you have a chance. I have a couple of kids now that are very, very good. When they came to me, I had a feeling that they felt like I could make them a champion. That helps me to get them more motivated. But maybe the USTA should help. You should look for kids in the U.S. I asked [USTA High Performance chief] Eliot Teltscher a long time ago, “Why don’t you find all the top kids in the state, young ones — let me develop them?” Nothing came of it. You’ve got to start them very young, when they’re six, seven, eight. Once they’re 12, it’s more difficult. Once they’re 14, 15, it’s far more difficult, and once they’re 17,18, it’s almost a done deal. If a girl hasn’t won major tournaments by the age of 16, 17, she’s not going to be No. 1. IT: You can see talent fairly young? RL: I can see how they hit the ball. Another thing that’s important is how valuable a point is to them. Do they miss easy? Do they make unforced errors? IT: Sharapova fights for every point. RL: Not only that, but when she was 12 she knew the court. She didn’t have discipline, hitting the same ball over and over, but she knew where to put the ball. The same with Austin. They knew how to play, they just had to be developed. IT: So at Wimbledon, Sharapova went up against Serena, a two-time champ, in the final and the conventional wisdom was that Serena would kick butt. What was your feeling, going in? RL: Honestly, I thought Maria had a chance. I told her, you hit the ball hard and you crank it into Serena’s forehand and it might break down. That’s exactly what happened. With somebody like Maria, you’ve got to instill a couple of things in her and then let her play on instinct. She’d never hit a lob, but on two crucial points she hit two unbelievable lobs. Did anybody tell her, hey, when Serena comes up to the net, hit a lob? No. It was instinct. She overpowered Serena’s forehand. Serena got a little shell-shocked and couldn’t believe that this chick was actually beating her. IT: What coaching job are you most proud of? RL: The answer is weird. It doesn’t make any difference, because I never looked and said, “Okay, now I’m going to make this one a champion.” I just developed them. The first time Pete won [the Open], I was unbelievably impressed by the way he played, the way he hit his backhand. I said, “Holy moly.” IT: You weren’t the one who changed it from a two-hander? RL: I probably wouldn’t have done it, because he had a very good two-hander. Tarango had a terrible two-hander, and when we tried to change it to a one-hander, the one-hander was worse than the two-hander! Pete came to me when he was 16, because he was slicing it. He couldn’t hit his backhand. IT: And a player who disappointed you? RL: She was not really a disappointment, but I thought Rehe was going to just set the world on fire.
RL: She’s really nice. You can’t compete when you’re in pain. Obviously, your confidence dives. She just hasn’t won any matches. She can be more consistent. She moves better than Lindsay, and Lindsay does just fine. If there’s any advice I can give, it’s make sure that your kid understands consistency first. Once you have consistency, go with placement and then go with power. Maria had consistency all the way. She could hit consistently to one spot. She wouldn’t make an error. That comes from repetition. There’s nothing like muscle memory. If you hit a couple thousand balls in the same spot, the same way, it becomes so natural that you never fear that you’re not going to do it. IT: An average Lansdorp workout is an hour and a half, two hours? RL: An hour. Maria does two hours, an hour and a half. It’s rough. I work hard and they work hard. IT: Everyone says Landsdorp is “the guru of the groundies.” True? RL: I’m just known for that. Tracy had unbelievable groundies and the biggest suck serve you can imagine. It was worse than Myskina’s. Then, right away, people say, “He knows groundstrokes but [his players] don’t know how to hit a serve.” Sharapova hits a pretty good serve. Lindsay’s not bad. Pete has hit the same serve since he was 11 — never changed it. IT: Did you teach him the serve? RL: When he came to me he was nine and hit it so well, I wasn’t going to change it. But I cannot get anyone else to hit it like that. It’s funny, kids come and say, “I’m hitting the serve like Sampras.” They think it looks like Sampras because of the way they’re standing, but their arm doesn’t go the same. IT: So you teach the serve, but don’t get... RL: ...the recognition. But I still say that groundstrokes have to be very good, if not the best. IT: What about Federer? Will he have a Sampras-like career? RL: I’ll tell you what happened with Sampras. He came to me after he just became No. 1 and said, “It’s so tough being No. 1,” because Becker had recently been No.1 for just six months, Courier was No. 1 for six months. I said, “Listen, man, what’s tough is when somebody has a family and the guy gets laid off —- that’s tough. What you do, that’s not tough at all. You play two hours and then you make millions. So don’t ever come back to me and tell me that life is tough.” But what was great about Pete, was once he became no. 1, he always felt like he was going to win. When Federer plays, I’m always worried that he’s going to disappoint. I would always put my money on Pete. IT: To wrap up, the one thing that you’d like the world to know about Robert Lansdorp? RL: I’m really a nice guy. IT: And the player who was most appreciative? RL: Sharapova. There better be a Mercedes in my driveway because my neighbor said, “How come your players never give you anything? What do they give you?” And I said, “Nothing”. I’ve never received anything from one player. Not even a $500 gift. They’re all multi-millionaires but I’ve never received one thing. And I’m telling you, if Maria doesn’t put a Mercedes convertible in my driveway, I’m going to shoot myself.
© 2004 INSIDE TENNIS All
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