Chatting with Wolfgang Oswald, Taylor Fritz's physio of eight years
We dive into his hilarious first experience on tour with Fritz, what it's like working with a top 5 player, why he's forming a PT association for the tour, and so much more.
You’re reading The Insider, a series on the many folks doing really cool shit behind the scenes of tennis to help the sport run. Warning, this one will test our TikTok-addled attention spans.
The more you watch tennis, the more acquainted you get not just with the players on court but the people around them who play a massive role in their performance. With a passing glance from the camera, you can ID their coaches, physios, hitting partners, real-life partners, and so on. If you’re fully geeked out, you want to know as much about their day-to-day lives as those in the limelight. That’s the whole ethos behind this series, after all.
I’m human, so there are certain tennis teams I just gravitate towards for the way they talk about the sport and their player (deeply analytical, honest, humble) and their overall vibe (laidback yet serious, not too much player hand-holding), and the Fritz squad fits that bill. So I’d been itching to chat with Wolfgang Oswald—Taylor Fritz’s physio of eight years and a Davis Cup physio—about his impressive career and what it’s really like behind-the-scenes when you’re traveling the world with a top player.
We talked for over an hour while he was on a long layover in Paris headed to the Six Kings Slam and, with his wealth of tennis stories, could have talked for longer. He was warm, funny, and had the effect of someone still pinching themselves for living out their dream. It was one of my favorite chats to date.
I spoke to Wolf—a self-proclaimed tennis junkie—about his hilarious first experiences on tour with Fritz, what an average day at a tournament looks like, why he’s forming a PT association for fellow tour physios, what a longer tennis offseason could do for performance, and the story behind that tennis meme earlier this year. It’s a long one, I confess, but filled with gems you don’t want to miss.
Let’s start with how you got involved in this world in the first place, I know you played tennis yourself for a bit.
Yeah, I tried to play minor league professional stuff in Australia, where I’m from, before I went to college. But I realized I wasn’t going to be making millions as a professional tennis player, so decided to go the US college route and got a scholarship to Northern Illinois University (NCAA Division I) and played there. I stayed for a fifth year to finish my physical therapy training. At the time, I remember reading online about this ATP physio who ran all of their sports medicine, and he also played college tennis. I wanted to do what he did.
But when I graduated, I worked in a clinic and moved more into the endurance sports space working with triathletes, cyclists, and a bunch of Olympic teams. Eventually I started playing tennis again in the USTA League—I got to number five in the over 35 field in the country— and I was hitting with a bunch of academy kids as well. Coincidentally, Bret Waltz, who’s a good buddy of mine and was the physio for Frances Tiafoe for a long time up until recently, he was working with Jack Sock, and he met me and he said, “Hey, all these academy kids are going to your clinic, they like your work, and we could use more physical therapists that actually play tennis.” So he asked me if I’d like to work on the ATP Tour. At that point, I was getting burned out from all the documentation and paperwork required in the healthcare field. It was taking 3-4 hours a night, every night, so he came to me at the right time. I was like, “You know what? That sounds like fun.”
So how did you first get connected to Taylor?
It took about a year and a half until the right fit came along in late 2017. I was actually playing a minor league professional event in California on a Saturday, and I got a call saying, “Can you be in Chengdu on Wednesday for this young player named Taylor Fritz?” I was like I’ll try—I had to scramble to find coverage for a solid three weeks of work and get a Chinese visa. It was the most hectic three days. I went for a three week trial period that ended up being five weeks.
During that period I actually ended up playing in one of the same events as Taylor, it’s actually quite a funny story. One of the guys I was flying with was in the tournament, one of Taylor’s junior buddies, and he’s like, “Oh, I know the tournament director. Just ask him if you can get a wild card into the tournament.” So I send the guy a text, he doesn’t respond for like four hours, and then he just writes back in all caps, “LOL.” I had sent him my tennis resume and that I was currently top five in the US for my age group, blah, blah. But still he’s like, “Yeah, no chance.” This was in Vietnam, so later that day we got to the tournament, and I warm up Taylor, and there’s this guy watching from the sidelines. We finish up and the guy asks if I can hit with him. So I do, and at the end he says to me, “You want to play tomorrow?” He’s like, “I’m the tournament director that sent you a text. You’re in.” So he put me in and I was first on Center Court, live on nationwide TV in Vietnam, which just made me even more nervous. I actually have a video of me during the change of ends, and the camera pans to my box and who’s in it? It’s Taylor and his dad [laughs].
That’s hilarious, I feel like this story needs to be told more.
It’s folklore on the tour now, most of the players know about it. I’ve also become really good friends with that tournament director, who happens to be Asian-Australian and lived near my parents for years, and he still jokes to me, “Hey, if you ever want a wild card again, I’ll give it to you.”
So how did you go from the five-week trial period to working with Taylor full-time?
I was only supposed to be gone for three weeks and I remember my boss called me after three weeks and he was like, “You’re never coming back to the clinic, are you?” And I said, “No, I’m a tennis lifer now,” not knowing yet that I was going to get the gig for the next year, but I knew how to make it work.
I got asked if I would do it full-time the next year [2018]. Taylor wanted to develop a team around him that would grow with him. Back then, he wasn’t ranked high enough to have me every single week, but I’d work with some juniors on tour and a few other pros. Then his ranking continued to improve and I met all of his best buddies—Reilly Opelka, Tommy Paul, Frances Tiafoe—they would all play video games with each other and be like, “Well, can you just treat us while we’re in the room?” I said sure. It helped split their expenses, because physio work is the biggest expense on tour, sometimes it can be double what a player’s pay is per week.
But backing up, in those days Mardy Fish was coaching the Davis Cup team and he was like, “Well the entire Davis Cup team is basically your boys, do you want to join the team?” I said absolutely. As an Australian, Davis Cup is a huge deal and I’m such a tennis junkie that this was all dreams coming true for me. From that gig, I got asked to be on the Olympic team last year, where Tommy, Fritz, Rajeev, and Austin all won a medal. So for me, it’s been a dream run of eight years and I count my blessings every single day.
It sounds like a dream come true for a tennis fan, you really lucked out, but I’m sure a lot of this also has to do with your talent.
Well, you know the quote, “luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” I had 17 years under my belt in the clinic, working with a bunch of high level Olympians, multiple gold medalists and other American athletes as well. So I wasn’t starstruck—it wasn’t like a big deal working with pro athletes, and I think those 17 years in the clinic helped build that foundation. I was confident in my skills as a physio, and then you blend that with your tennis knowledge, and it was a good fit. I’ve been a sparring [hitting] partner as well, which is not in my job title, but I do it. Like when we played a different event in Riyadh a few years ago I was his hitting partner the whole week, and he won it. So we have this joke that anytime I warm him up for a match he wins. When he won his first title in Eastbourne, for example, I was his hitting partner all week. It’s obviously not because of me, it’s purely coincidental, but we have a running joke about it. But getting to warm up the guys at Wimbledon and The French Open is a full dream come true for me.
I bet, I would be geeking out the whole time.
Oh, big time. I got to meet Roger Federer, I mean, he knows me by name. I speak with Rafa in Spanish—my mother’s Spanish, so the Spanish boys all kind of took me in. And so I feel very at home with this traveling family that we are on the tour.
It seems like you’ve been with Fritz the longest of almost anyone, is that correct?
Oh, definitely. I mean, David Nankin was with him when he was really young, like 14, and he’s consulted all the way through. But I think I’m up there in terms of being with him the longest, as far as the traveling team entourage goes. He’s really close friends with his agent Matt Fawcett who’s been with him since the beginning, too. But literally just as I started with him, Paul Annacone joined the team as well so Paul’s right alongside me.
But yeah I’ve had a good horse in the race, so-to-speak. I can tell you there’s a lot of good physios and coaches that have been doing this for 30-40 years and maybe the best player they ever had was ranked 50, which is amazing by the way, to help develop a top 100 player. I just happened to get someone who made it into the top five. I’ve been very, very fortunate.
What has it been like to watch someone you’ve worked with for so long get to this level? Like when you first started working with him, did you see him getting to number four in the world?
You know, one never knows in professional sports how good someone’s going to be. That’s why the agents do scouting. And for every world beater, there’s always a bunch that fizzle out or fail. So you don’t know, because a lot of it’s between the ears. But Taylor was always one of the biggest ball strikers. Some of his techniques are unorthodox, and it wouldn’t work unless you had ungodly talent. Fritz is up there right now in this generation as one of the best ball strikers. You almost never see him mishit a shot, almost never. So we knew there was a lot of potential, and obviously being tall and having a big serve, as well as a big forehand, those are all assets in the modern game. The goal was always to develop a top 10 player. And then from there, you start setting higher goals. Can we win a slam? Yeah, let’s shoot for a slam. Obviously, he’s close, he made the US Open final and he beat Alcaraz a few weeks ago at Laver Cup, so he’s right there.
Every year you’re doing assessments: What do we need to do better? Does our fitness need to be better? Does our technique on a certain shot need to be better? Do we need to add some variety to our game? You know, his slice has come a long way—his forehand slice out of the forehand corner defensively has come a long way. He had a big serve when I first joined him, but he wasn’t hitting his spots. Now he hits his spots, and he’s statistically one of the best servers in the world. We could geek out on tennis and all the things that’ve improved. So you see these developments and you know, for him, the learning curve was continuously pretty steep and still an upward trajectory, and obviously it plateaus out a little bit now in the top five but we still think there’s things he can improve. He’s getting better every year, as you should until Mother Nature catches up and you start to decline physically. Back in the ‘90s, if you were 30, you were considered a grandpa who would retire soon. But now, with better science, recovery, physical therapy, strength and conditioning, etcetera, we’re seeing guys play much later. So hopefully he’s got another five to eight years in him—we don’t know, no one knows.
Yeah, I feel like people talked about Novak for a while as if he was going to be an anomaly, but I think we could see more guys playing well as late as he has.
For me as a biomechanics nerd, I’m curious about it because the game is more physical than it was for the last 20 years. Even when Federer was dominating, everyone had one side that was a little bit weaker. Now the guys and gals are crushing from both sides and then moving side to side and sliding on a hard court. If you look at matches early in Fed’s career and later in Agassi’s career, no one was sliding on these hard courts. So the question I have is, does that counteract the sports science and medicine improvements? And are we going to see people retire a little bit sooner, like their early or mid 30s, instead of late 30s? Plus, a lot of these young guys are just assuming that they’re going to play as long as this last generation into their late 30s but are maybe not doing the same amount of work that that generation did to be able to do that. So I’m curious to see how that goes.
Yeah that’s a really good call out. Can you speak a bit more about these last two years with Fritz, which have inarguably been the best of his career?
He just kept getting better. And then after last year a lot of people were like, “Okay, he was top five in 2024, had a couple of good tournaments, big deal, can he do it again?” And he’s done it again. Even when the US Open final points fell off, he didn’t drop one spot in the rankings, which shows how consistent he’s been all year long, to be that far ahead that you can lose 1200 points and not lose a spot is incredible.
Right, and he was also injured for a big chunk of the first part of the year.
Yeah, exactly, and he had to miss events that he had done well at in the past. He had to miss Monte Carlo, where he’s made the semis. He missed Munich, where he made the final last year. So the fact that he’s held close to that ranking is a testament to his good year. He’s pretty consistent on all surfaces, obviously on grass he’s done really, really well. He had Carlos on the ropes this year at Wimbledon—that was heartbreaking, could have been in the fifth set, but anything happens. But yeah, he’s been able to back it up and prove that he belongs in the best of the rest. You know, then we’ve got those other two that are a little bit further ahead of us.
Hmm, who are they? I’ve never heard of those guys.
[laughs] Exactly. But yeah if you would have told me five years ago, he’s going to be top five and stay top five, I would have been like, “Oh, that’s going to be a bit of a jump,” and he’s made that jump. So it’s pretty impressive stuff.
You talked a bit about his game. I’m curious what are the unique physical demands that come with his game style—what are the areas of the body that need the most work?
Well with all tennis players you’re using everything in your body, there’s almost nothing that doesn’t get used. For him, he has a very explosive, fast arm. So if you’re watching from the sideline when he serves, the racket goes through the air so quick, it’s a blur and it’s the same with the forehand, just an absolute blur. He’s got more of a bunty, flat backhand and it’s a different technical backhand to say, a Sinner or Zverev. So the physical demands for him are that he moves the arm very, very quick. Now for someone else with the identical swing, that could lead to wrist issues or elbow issues or a different player might have shoulder issues. A lot of it comes down to just genetics, your body makeup. Taylor’s hyper mobile, he’s very flexible, that’s not a secret. He’s kind of like Novak in that sense. So a lot of those players have to pile on a lot of stability and strength to protect their joints, whereas other players are super stiff and they need to work more on mobility. You know, the issue he had earlier this year that kept him out for a bit comes from all of the explosive rotating he does. He hurt his obliques because that’s a rotation muscle. You really see the gamut with tennis players because it’s so multi-directional and multi-planar in terms of movement that it can affect anything.
But you try to do resilient work so you don’t have to do the treatment work. If you have an area that keeps cropping up, you need to build some robustness in the system so that area can take the punishment of life on the tour, which is a big struggle, because we don’t have an off season. You could see a lot of people were cooked physically—not just because of the heat, but just mentally and physically, it’s been a long year for everyone—by the time Shanghai rolled around.
You mentioned the heat in Shanghai and there’s been a lot of talk about the conditions that players are being forced to play through. Do you think there should be more rules around that?
I’ve been going since to that tournament since 2017 and that was the hottest Shanghai I’ve ever experienced. It was an anomaly year, which we’ve had at other tournaments like the US Open and Australian Open before. So, yes, there should probably be a heat index rule when it gets unsafe but I also think the issue in Shanghai was multifactorial. They had changed the balls and resurfaced the courts so they were very slow, whereas Shanghai was traditionally very fast, which means shorter points. I don’t think you would have seen people like Zverev and Fritz struggle in the heat on the old courts because they would have won points easily, but everything was coming back. So next year, I think they’re going to revisit the court surface, or at least that’s what they’re telling us.
More players, including Fritz, have been speaking up about how long the season is. What are your thoughts on the lack of a true offseason?
Everyone plays almost every week now, partly because the ATP has almost forced their hands—even though you don’t technically have to, you kind of do for the ranking points. You don’t have these gap weeks to train. I’ll go back to my old sports, working with Tour de France riders and Ironman athletes. Ironman athletes, for example, are going high intensity for eight hours in the Hawaii heat and humidity. Why aren’t they crashing? Because they’re doing heat acclimatization workouts to prepare, they’re doing a full training day and then sitting in a sauna, which increases your blood volume and blood plasma. We play every week so if you’re in an event, let’s say you’re at Laver Cup, are you really going to be going to the sauna and exhausting yourself before you have to play Alcaraz because you know it’s going to be hot in Shanghai? If we had more time to prepare for the heat, I think it would be very doable, but we don’t. We keep complaining about the conditions on the tour, how it’s physically and mentally burning out these kids, but at the end of the day it’s just a dollars and cents game. I don’t think it’s going to change.
As a tennis fan, players falling apart on court is not what I want to see—that’s not fun to watch. I would love for them to get more time off, and when they do come back rested, the tennis will be better too.
Exactly, better quality. You and I understand this as tennis nuts—by the end of the year, you have tennis fatigue. People are like, “Wait there’s Davis Cup during the week of Thanksgiving? They’re still playing tennis?” Whereas with the NFL, I can lock in to my favorite team for 16 weeks. The ATP says they’re going to try and make all the mandatory tournaments be done by October, and so then you could have Nov-Dec off, but we’ll see.
Their counterargument is, “Well, when we cut things short, you guys go to Saudi Arabia and play for money, so you’re going to play anyway.” And the counterargument from the players is, “Well, if you paid us more from your cut of the profits, then we wouldn’t have to go play exhibition matches.” So there’s a tug of war.
It’s overwhelming, and I’m just on the outside looking in. You’re the one living it day in and day out, and I can’t really imagine what that does not just to the players, but the support staff as well.
We’re seeing a lot of physical therapists and ancillary staff, even some coaches, getting burned out because it’s so much. So we’re starting to see a hybrid model, where a lot of teams have two physios and two coaches who just trade off. Even Zverev was joking with me the other day, he’s like, “There’s no one that does as many weeks as you,” because I say yes to everything and these are opportunities that I relish but, you know, I don’t think it’s sustainable for another decade. I’ve done it for eight years and we give up our personal life big time. If I was just a physical therapist and not a tennis fan, I’d be totally cooked by now. Like up until this week, I had four days off since D.C., and a lot of those days are 12-16 hour days where you’re lacking sleep and going through time changes. The way things are right now cooks everyone involved.
How do you guys decide as a team when Taylor should push through a niggling injury versus pull back? I know in Shanghai, he mentioned having a minor leg thing but still played, so I’m curious where the line is for you.
Very good question. I tend to be very conservative. If it’s something that could be sinister, I try to educate all my clients on the potential repercussions if they play through it. When we did the Break Point and he got that ankle injury, I didn’t want him playing that final against Rafa at Indian Wells but he played it and won it. And then, the next day, he had no issues. So for him, it ended up being nothing, but part of it is knowing your player.
There’s this complex thing called the biopsychosocial model of pain where, you might have an injury that’s a 4 out of 10 in terms of severity but your brain—due to stress, lack of sleep, or, say, the stress of having a big final—can perceive that injury as an 8 out of 10, and it truly feels that bad because of the environment you’re in. So pain isn’t always correlated to the degree of the injury. If you get to know your player, sometimes they worry, especially if they’ve had a long injury list in the past where they’re like, “Well, if I play, I might hurt this, maybe I shouldn’t.” So the way we go about it is we do a good physical exam and look for any weakness (which could indicate a tear). I usually have an idea from there of what the issue is but then we’ll get imaging to confirm or deny my hunch. My joke with all the boys on tour is that I’ve almost always been on the money with predicting the result of every single image they’ve ever had. Because if you have a lot of experience, you do a good physical exam, and you know what they’ve been through, you can kind of predict what they have, just maybe not to the exact degree.
But knowing your player is important—there are certain players I’ve worked with in the past where, if they’re complaining, you know, it’s legit, major pain, because they will not complain about anything. And then there’s others where you’re like, “Hey, I think this is something you can play through.” There’s been a few times where Taylor’s rather played than took my advice not to play, Indian Wells was the good one. But there have been others where it ended up hurting us a little bit, because instead of having one week off, we had to take two weeks off. He is ultimately the CEO of his career and I just try to give him the best, sound clinical advice that I can.
Taylor’s talked pretty openly about being very competitive and at times stubborn about not wanting to take time off when he should. I imagine that’s hard to navigate at times.
It’s hard to juggle. He would rather be on court playing a match. Everybody’s different and it depends on the personality, like, if you talk to McEnroe, practice would bore him so he would play a practice set to keep the competitive juices flowing. Whereas Lendl would do eight hours of training like a cyborg. Taylor’s strength, probably bigger than his serve or his forehand, is his grit, competitiveness, and mental toughness. He has this ability to hang in matches and turn them around, so he’d always rather be out there gritting it away. We know each other really well that if I’m really stern, then he’ll listen, but I mean, many of these players are still young and figuring it out for themselves. As a physio, you just try to educate them on any potential long-term risks, which can be very real and take you out of the sport for a long time.
You’ve mentioned being close to other physios and teams, so I’m curious, what are those conversations like—especially when you’re working with players on opposite sides of the net?
So obviously there’s patient confidentiality, so we don’t and are not allowed to discuss anything medical, but we’re like a big traveling family. We stay at the same hotels, eat meals together, talk shop, and so on. Over the years, I’ve gotten to know everyone really well and most people are quite open. I’m very close with Carlos’ team, because they’re Spanish, and they kind of brought me into the circle. We don’t talk details about our players but we talk about general concepts and things we like to do, and it’s nice to bounce ideas off of each other.
I’m actually starting a private physical therapy and strength and conditioning association. It’s to help the support staff with their own personal branding—we will have a sponsorship arm—as well as education and a mentorship program for new people on the tour. And then we’ll also have a list of trusted, vetted physios for players to choose from. The ATP coaches have an association like this and are recognized but we don’t. The goal is also to help us get important benefits like travel insurance and so on.
But I’ll tell you an interesting story. When I was playing at the minor league level, whenever you’d go to a tournament it would feel like everyone’s sizing you up. It’s an alpha dog environment. So when I came on the ATP Tour, I thought, “Okay, this is a million alphas, there’s going to be a lot of friction.” And it was so refreshing to find that it was not—the players and their teams are so businesslike. At the end of the day, these are the guys you’re going to be practicing with after you compete, because there are only so many people in the world on your level. Out of the top 100, there’s maybe like three guys that people don’t really associate with, either because they just have chosen not to make friends with anyone or they’re just not liked. But for the most part, everyone talks and jokes and hangs out during meals together. Most people are actually quite good friends. It’s almost shocking.
I love that and I keep hearing that—that it’s not as tense behind the scenes as one might imagine.
It’s completely the opposite. It’s almost like troubling the other way [laughs], like, “Hey, you want to take that guy’s head off in the next round.” But it is very matter of fact, like I bring my best stuff, you bring your best stuff, and then we move on.
Can you walk me through what an average day at a tournament looks like for you guys from the moment you wake up to the time you go to bed?
I’ll break it up into match days and non-match days or training days. Now, we try to practice around the time he’s going to play a match, so you might be front heavy or back heavy. When it’s the day before a match, we only do a one hour hit, so we’ll do an hour on the table beforehand. Then we do a 30 minute gym session, active warm up type stuff—that’s an hour and a half before practice. After practice, we’ll eat on site, and then drive back to the hotel again. Then he’ll go out to dinner and we’ll do treatment after, especially if Morgan’s in town, or he’ll say, “Hey, let’s just get treatment out of the way.” If we’re prepping for a night match and we’re practicing at six, you know, we’re not getting back to the hotel until 10:30 pm and we’re doing treatment till almost midnight. It always takes me an hour before I can settle down after that, because I’m being pretty physical during my treatments. So I’m going to bed at 1:00 am even though it’s a practice day.
Night matches, as you know, can be unpredictable—we had a couple of 4:00 am finishes recently after treatment. People don’t realize this stuff. Like when it’s an 11:00 am match, they’re like, “Ah, no worries then.” But no, that’s at least a 6:00 am wake up because we have to be on site. You know, he does his warm up two hours before his match, so he can feed, shower, get changed into match clothes. If it’s an 11:00 am match, we have to be done hitting by 9:00 am, which means we’re hitting at 8:30 am, which means gym at 8:00 am, treatment table at 7:00 am. And if it’s in Manhattan, for example, we’re leaving an hour before that to make sure we’re on site on time.
And then on a match day, if you’re third on you don’t know how long those other two matches before you are going to go, so we make a prediction, and then just do a count back from there. So on many match days, I can’t even get to the gym because we leave early, we sit around on site, play a match, and then he’s got press, the ice bath, drug testing, and then we have to go back to the hotel and do treatment. So match days are really, really long, even if the match is an hour and a half.
So how on earth do you take care of yourself throughout all of this?
It’s not easy. I have a pretty good immune system, but this year, with a lot of travel and the end of last year which I think was like six continents in eight weeks or something crazy, I struggled a bit. But I’ve got my routines of trying to get over jet lag, and then it’s about trying to get my exercise in when I can. You know, mentally, I think it’d be different if he was ranked 70 and we lost in the early rounds a lot. I think that gets old, and I think you may get burned out more, but he’s often having good results so it’s exciting. But I try to keep up with my hobbies, read, write a bit, and then this PT association takes up a good amount of time as well. I may have too many irons in too many fires but it keeps me busy and stimulated. But I also try to have downtime where I’ll go for a run in Central Park and not think about tennis or meet up with friends I’ve made all over the world. When I go home, I do absolutely nothing that requires any mental stress.
You obviously care about this sport and your player a lot, which seems to be a huge motivating force. How does that translate when you’re watching Taylor’s matches—are you stressed out of your mind?
It’s funny because my friends watch on TV and they’re either like, “Oh, you look so calm, you’re expressionless,” or they’ll be like, “Will you smile? Did someone die?” I’m a constant fidgeter, so I’m tapping my leg nonstop and Morgan will slap me on the leg like, “Stop, you’re making me nervous.” So I’ve developed some coping mechanisms. But on TV, if it looks like I’m cool, I’m not cool. I didn’t have a gray hair until I joined the tour, but I also just turned 50, so the gray hair is coming regardless. But, boy, in the beginning it was really hard, especially if he made one good result and it was our first time being there. So the first time title, or the first time final, those were all new experiences for him and for us. But occasionally, on the back end of a swing—like at Wimbledon I stayed an extra day—I’ll go watch some matches where I’m just a fan, and there’s so much pleasure watching tennis like that because I have no stake in the match. It’s really weird, because every match I go to is work and there’s stress behind it, so I can’t really enjoy it. I enjoy it after the fact, but in the moment, it’s just work. So it’s fun watching other matches where I can just watch as a tennis fan. And believe it or not, I play a lot less tennis and watch a lot less tennis when I’m on the tour, because you’re so busy you don’t have time to do it.
Yeah, I don’t know how you’d be able to fit in a long tennis match with your schedule.
Yeah, I no longer play any tournaments because I’m never home to begin with. When I retire I want to get back to it—I’d like to try to win a gold ball in the over 50s. I feel like I’m still improving because I get to play with top five players in the world. I mean a lot less recently, because Mike Russell is such a good hit. But yeah, I’d like to have more time in the future and play some tennis tournaments myself, you know, the old timer stuff. But I try to stay in shape well enough that the boys joke with me, like, “Keep the pencil sharp, because you may just get a wild card with Taylor in an event someday.”
One thing I wanted to ask you about on a funny final note was that viral meme of you and Morgan Riddle where you were whispering something to her and she looked absolutely stunned as a result.
Yeah, that was in Toronto. I mean, we talk about everything and then sometimes we’ll catch ourselves like, “Oh, we could’ve have been mic’d.” We hope that they censor stuff and I know a few coaches have complained, like, “Hey, we’re talking about some personal stuff here or strategy and the mics shouldn’t be that sensitive.” They told us that week that the mics would be more sensitive and in the match prior to that one I was talking to Mike and his wife Lily, nothing inappropriate, but apparently the mics picked up our conversation as if we were mic’d up. So Morgan said something to me, and I whispered to her, “You know, they can hear every single word we say,” and that was the stunned look she had on her face. But I think they fixed it the day before because people complained, so one could actually hear us. We were probably talking tennis gossip and then that happened, it was pretty funny.
Well we’ve talked for much longer than planned, hopefully it made your layover a little less painful. Is there anything else you want to mention before we hop off?
Oh we just killed an hour? Thank you! But yeah, I’m just very fortunate to be in this position and I try to be more present and enjoy every week, because I know anything could happen. So it’s been a surreal ride as a tennis junkie to have a player in the top five, get to meet legends like Rafa and Fed—if you would have scripted my career, I would have said, “You’re absolutely joking.”