“I wanted to wait for him to decide to be a tennis player because sometimes there are young ones who start too early to be professional,” Santopadre, who is still coaching Berrettini more than a decade later, said in an interview. “One of the best things I did in my career was I really trusted Vincenzo when I was younger,” Berrettini said. “He looked at me and saw I was growing a lot, that I was becoming tall, and he told me: ‘Look, you’re going to be an aggressive player. “He told me that one of the best things we did was that he understood there was a long-term project to be a very good player,” Santopadre said. “He didn’t care about the results when he was younger; he just wanted to improve.

Source: New York Times July 08, 2021 20:48 UTC