Brad Stine, who has coached the likes of Jim Courier, Mardy Fish and Sebastien Grosjean, began working with the US Open's fifth seed, Kevin Anderson, last December. And since, the South African has continued his climb up the ATP rankings, currently at a career-best No. 5.
Anderson has won two five-setters so far during his trip to Flushing Meadows, beating Canadian sensation Denis Shapovalov on Friday evening to reach the fourth round, where he will face No. 9 seed Dominic Thiem. Stine sat down with USOpen.org to discuss his charge's growth, closing out matches, treating a Grand Slam like "normal," and more:
After starting with Kevin this season, reaching a Grand Slam final and achieving other good results, what do you think you’ve learned this year? How do you think Kevin has grown?
I think the New York Open indoors (in February) was a big corner to turn for him, to get a title again. One of the things that we had talked about in starting to work together was focusing on winning more titles. And not just winning titles, necessarily, because you can’t always control that, but also just putting himself in a position to be playing for titles. So that’s happened a few times, he’s gone deeper in some events but at this point, from where we started in December, for me in my brief time with Kevin, I’ve seen a lot of growth in him as a competitor. That’s a little bit hard to say in a way because Kevin has always been a great competitor. I think he’s competing smarter, if that makes sense. I think that he’s found a really, really good balance between his ability to stay positive and to stay motivated and to stay clear-headed and calm and yet at the same time find an optimal level of energy and commitment to what it is that he’s trying to do. And we’ve combined that with some changes and some differences here and there tactically, maybe some different patterns that he’s trying to play and some things he’s trying to put together more, which I think is also motivating. I think all those things combined has created a scenario where he’s been able to perform at a very high level under pressure more often than he probably did in the past.
"I try to create as much of a sense of normalcy at a Slam as possible for Kevin, because they’re not normal. No matter how much I try to create a sense of normalcy, there’s a heightened sense of awareness here."
This time last year, as Kevin went on his US Open run, people pointed to Kevin’s visual positivity, the fist pumps and such. Do you think it’s become more about being positive without spending as much energy?
That’s actually been a bit of a focus. I’m not unwilling to say that. I think the process for Kevin to become a more positive player day-in and day-out required him to probably go through what he did last year from the standpoint of being more emotive on the court. But in the end, it just drains a lot of energy over the course of longer matches. And Kevin played long matches at times, like (Friday) or like the first round, because he does compete so well. He rarely loses easily if he loses, and so he’s competitive in almost all of his matches, which means that expending extra energy is not a positive thing as those matches go longer. And also, being able to stay more clear-headed and calmer while still maintaining that energy level — and that’s been our objective — is we don’t want our energy to fall off. We want the energy that was created from his emotiveness -- the fist pumps, the "Come ons" and those sorts of things -- we want to create that in him. But not in a way where it draws from his ability to play his best tennis over the long haul of a match.
Friday against an energetic player like Denis Shapovalov, do you think that mindset showed in the fifth set, when he was able to buckle down?
For me, one of the greatest things I saw (Friday) in the match was Kevin’s last couple service games. I call it the Mariano Rivera effect. Being a closer in tennis is extremely important. The best players, the champions of tennis are great closers. Doesn’t mean you close every time. Mariano Rivera lost now and then when he came in to close, but he was the greatest closer of all time in baseball. And you know when the manager comes out to bring in Rivera, that you were pretty sure the game was going to be over. Kevin went Mariano Rivera those last couple games serving (Friday). Serving for the match, especially, I think he made four first serves and just gave Denis no chance to get into the match at all and create any kind of pressure for him, so that was big.
You said you guys wanted to focus more on making deeper runs, breaking through for titles and such, so now that Kevin has two Slam finals, does anything change as far as doing something differently to get over that hurdle?
I try to create as much of a sense of normalcy at a Slam as possible for Kevin, because they’re not normal. No matter how much I try to create a sense of normalcy, there’s a heightened sense of awareness here. There’s a heightened sense of urgency, there’s a heightened sense of desire and commitment to what it is you’re trying to do. I try to reduce all those things a little bit by creating as much normalcy as I possibly can. And I think in doing that, we give ourselves the best chance to perform at the best Kevin can, and so my answer to that question would be no, I’m not trying to do something different in a lot of ways. There are always fine little adjustments we’re trying to make from match to match to do things a little bit better. What did we do that worked that we want to continue to apply? So it’s not that there’s anything major I don’t think. I think it’s much different being here after the French Open and Wimbledon compared to coming from losing in the first round in Australia against Kyle Edmund. That was the first Slam I got to watch him play at. And he was being extremely emotive during that match and I felt while watching that match that it was really draining. It was draining for me in the stands, getting up and trying, at the time we were really trying to keep him pumped up. And that paradigm has changed a little bit. So right now, I think we’re on a much clearer path as to where we want to be and just trying to ride that and seeing where it goes, and taking advantage and working hard to get through each match one at a time.
You weren’t with Kevin in New York last year, but is it difficult in a way to not treat this as where he reached his first Slam final?
Not for me, because I wasn’t here last year. But I made a very specific comment to Kevin three days or so before the tournament. I said, "You are not defending anything." There is no defense of what is going on here. This is a new event with new challenges and we were coming here to attack it and move forward and do the very best that we can possibly do at this event. And that’s been a way that I’ve always approached the concept. You hear it all the time on the tour -- "defending." I made semis last year or I made the final and I have all these points to defend for that week. I think going into events, even the term, the word "defending" comes from being defensive and I certainly don’t want Kevin playing defensive. Defensive doesn’t give Kevin a chance, whether it’s mental or emotional, tactical or technical, it doesn’t give Kevin a chance to play his best tennis. So I made it very clear about the fact that we’re not defending anything here. It’s not like we’re trying to do something based on what happened last year. This is a new tournament, and that’s the way we’re approaching it.
