Drawing a line between professional and personal life as a Tennis Coach

Don't mix private life with your professional life. Make sure that there is always a line so you don’t start seeing your coaching career as your life. Especially the last 5-6 years it's been very clear to me this is work and now it’s time for my private life and for my family. The change for me came when I started to work with Victoria Azarenka in 2015. Before that

I didn't believe it was possible to combine both, because there were not the best examples on the tour

Now it's going well, and I can combine my private life with my professional life, but it's something that it's not easy to do.

What made it possible

At the end of 2014 Simona Halep and I stopped working together. At that point my wife was pregnant, and I didn't really believe that that I could combine being a tour coach and being a father. I decided to step into an existing academy in Belgium and also travel a bit with those players. A week later, the agent of Victoria called me and she asked me if I would be available and that Victoria wanted to work with me. For me it was clear that it was impossible. I told them I would love to because Victoria is an amazing player and I would love to work with her, but unfortunately, I just stepped into the academy. I wanted to do that and my wife was pregnant. That I was going to be a father and having a baby and then traveling again for 40 weeks a year didn’t seem like a good idea. The agent told me there was no problem. I could tell them how much I could do and they would be flexible. Which was a big surprise for me.

Victoria called herself

A few hours later, Victoria called me, and she was so motivated to start working with me. She assured me that it would be no problem at all for the family, or to do some weeks less and always bring the family to tournaments wouldn't be a problem. So, I was really surprised by that and I couldn't really believe what I heard. I took the decision and I said let's do it. It was great, Victoria was very understanding helpful. That helped us also to build a great relation player and coach and I’m very thankful for that.

It’s because of Victoria that I'm still a tour coach now

Fast forward

My oldest son is almost five years old. Things are great. He was born and since he's born, he believes that fathers are often travelling 3-4 weeks. So, he thinks it's normal. He loves to travel, too. So my family, every year they come to Indian Wells, Miami and some other tournaments and some practice weeks. So, at the moment, everyone is very happy. And for me to combine my dream job and my family with two kids now, it's fantastic. I'm very thankful for that.

(Inspired by the podcast episode #75: “How to use Data as Your Assistant Tennis Coach” w. Wim Fissette on The Adam Blicher Show — Dissecting High Performance in Tennis)

Want to listen to the full episode: https://shorturl.at/jktA8