Summary: <img width="580" height="374" src="https://blog.tennisevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/article.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" style="float: left; margin: 0 15px 15px 0;"><p><a href="http://blog.tennisevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/article.jpg" rel="attachment wp-att-10754"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-10754" src="http://blog.tennisevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/article.jpg" alt="article" width="700" height="350"></a></p> <div class="smart-track-player-container stp-color-2d7bbf-EEEEEE"></div> <h2>Show Notes</h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Hi, it’s Jeff here, and today, first day of the U.S. Open, it’s Monday, it’s really exciting to watch all the action in New York. Makes me remember all the good times I had playing there, and even last year, coaching James McGee to qualify and get to the first round of the U.S. Open.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But I was watching a match today between 2 up and coming young American women: Sloane Stephens and Coco Vandeweghe. 2 young Americans, and I really had an interest in this match. I watched for about 20 to 30 minutes, and it was very clear to me early on that Coco Vandeweghe was the better player. She was playing at another level.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Now, I know Sloane Stephens has really stabilized this year, with Nick Saviano running her ship, coaching her. They go back a long way. They took a break for a few years, and they got back together this year, and she’s really done a great job. She’s back. She’s into the top 30, and she looks like she’s moving forward.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But Coco, today, she looked like she owned the court. I watched for about 20 or 30 minutes, as I mentioned, and she just looks solid. She looked aggressive. She was playing powerful tennis, and her serve and her groundstrokes were huge, and she was moving well. I mean, the key for her is if she feels like she’s moving well, if she is moving well, she is going to have some great results, and it was interesting to see.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">To my knowledge, the first on-air interview in the middle of a match, she won the first set, and they started asking her questions, and she was very poised, very confident, very focused. So, it was good for me to see, because I knew that she had made a quarter-final run at Wimbledon this year, but I hadn’t seen much of her, say, for a few points in a match against Maria Sharapova.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It just so happened that last week, I read an article about how she made a big shift in her training in 2014. She had lost a match early in 2014, and she realized she should not have lost that match. She was very frustrated. She came home. She called her trainer and she said “Listen. I’ve got to stop focusing on my skills and my technique. I’ve got to focus more on my off-court trainer. I’ve got to get fitter. I’ve got to get more focused.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">And so, she started training twice a day in a gym, focusing on improving her explosiveness, her footwork, her cardiovascular conditioning, her mobility, and her flexibility, among other things, and she also got much more disciplined with her diet, with her nutrition plan, and took that more seriously. She started sleeping more, and focusing more on her recovery. And out of that, she developed these routines that helped her create a more-strict schedule, if you will.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Work-outs, tennis practice, and naps, recovery meals, ice baths, massages, you name it, she’s focusing on it. And, well, such a life as a pro tennis player. It’s n</span></p>
