Frances Tiafoe makes no secret about the first half of his 2024 season. Without longtime coach Wayne Ferreira by his side, he struggled to find his footing.
“It was definitely tough,” he admitted last week in New York. “You've got an ego that gets hurt and things like that. You don't want to play, your practices are bad. You just go down a rabbit hole. It's all part of the process, man. You need those moments because [they make the good] ones feel really good.
“Outside of every tough moment, success is at the end of the tunnel, but a lot of people quit right before that, and I wasn't trying to do that.”
It was Tiafoe’s no-quit attitude that led him to take a chance with David Witt, the longtime coach of Venus Williams and Jessica Pegula, who just happened to be free after Wimbledon, when Tiafoe decided to hit him up.
“After Wimbledon he called me personally and asked, “Do you want to coach me?” Witt tells USOpen.org. “It kind of just happened like that.
“I was like ‘Hell yeah, that’d be awesome’ and he said ‘Let’s do it.’”
Since linking, the pair have spent the hard court season preparing Tiafoe for this moment. The American has reached his third consecutive US Open quarterfinal and will face Grigor Dimitrov for a spot in Friday’s men’s semifinals in Flushing Meadows.
“We’ve known each other for a long time, we’ve always seen each other at tournaments, I’ve always followed him, and his career. I think because we are both so chill, we like to keep it real, and light, and have fun, and it just happened quickly,” Witt said.
It sounds like Tiafoe’s enthusiasm for the sport and hunger to prove himself beneath the bright lights of Arthur Ashe Stadium is rubbing off on Witt.
“It’s been fun,” Witt says. “We have a great team around Frances. We all vibe really well and have a good time and the chemistry is there as well.
“When you come to work every day and you are around somebody that’s positive and likes to have fun, it just makes everybody else want to be the same way. The team is kind of built that way—there are no bad apples.”
One of the best at letting fans into his joy and passion for the sport, Tiafoe is as light-hearted and playful as they come off the court. But that joy doesn’t come at the expense of hard yards.
What impresses Witt about Tiafoe, now that they are working together?
“[Tiafoe's] magical power is his positive energy and playing with that energy. When he plays flat it’s tough, his whole game revolves around energy and playing with excitement.”
“I kind of already knew it about him, but I love his work ethic,” he says. “He works extremely hard, he loves tennis, he wants to keep pushing and be the best.”
The mission this summer was to capitalize on the momentum Tiafoe built at Wimbledon, where he returned to form and nearly took out eventual champion Carlos Alcaraz in the third round. The five-set loss to the four-time major champion was a hard one to take, but it was also a sign that things were turning for the man known to most simply as “Foe.”
Since returning to the States, the good times have not stopped. After a week spent training in Boca Raton, Fla., Witt and Team Tiafoe hit the road with the goal of competing ferociously every week.
“I think he’s done a pretty good job of getting better every week, starting in Atlanta, and then going to Washington and having a good week,” Witt said. “In Montreal, we kind of had a little bit of a setback, but sometimes you run up against a player that’s kind of hot. You have to get through those moments, but then he followed up and had a good week in Cincinnati.”
Arriving in New York City with a tailwind behind him, Tiafoe has been switched on throughout his first four rounds, which included a third-round five-setter with his friend and rival Ben Shelton.
Witt says the energy is off the charts.
“The electricity in New York and playing in front of the fans, if you can’t get up for these matches then you probably don’t have a heartbeat,” he said. “It’s crazy.”
But the backbeat anchoring all those high notes is one of the things that Witt is most interested in: consistency.
“The thing I really stress with Foe is being consistent,” he said. “Over the summer, through all the tournaments, if you have a good week, follow it up with another good week. You don’t have to go to the finals every week, obviously every player is pushing to win every week, but you can’t have first-round matches where you’re just not up for the match.”
Another key area? The return.
Shelton said that he has never had anybody return his serve as well as Tiafoe did in their third-round encounter. Tiafoe credits Witt for helping him reshape his approach in that key element of his game.
“Before we started, [David] was, like, ‘Look, you play your return games way too relaxed. We need to adjust that,'” Tiafoe said last week. “I'm returning much better, making returns, I'm making guys play.”
Aggression–in all elements of the game–has been a major talking point between Witt and Tiafoe.
“Starting off, I felt like when Frances is playing his best tennis, he’s playing aggressive and moving forward,” he said. “He’s looking to play one-two tennis and looking to play short points, being explosive. I think over the summer he’s been getting better and better at that.”
And once the groundwork is laid, and the lights go on in Ashe, Tiafoe can take the wheel and let the magic spill out of him.
“His magical power is his positive energy and playing with that energy,” Witt says. “When he plays flat it’s tough, his whole game revolves around energy and playing with excitement.”
