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WESTERN & SOUTHERN OPEN

August 14, 2018

Darren Cahill

Cincinnati, Ohio

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. When you go on court for on-court coaching, is it mostly you telling Simona what she's not doing, your observations of the other player, or a combination? What happens more so than not?
DARREN CAHILL: Yeah, it's a good question. A little bit depends on what the score is. A little bit depends on the player's attitude, whether they are struggling. Normally I like to try to ask a question to get a feel for what she's thinking. We had a few good ones across in Canada.

In the final, she was a little bit emotional in the final, so then it becomes more of a pep talk than it does tactically. So a lot depends on what the first reaction from my player is, anyway. So you have to sort of go out there with a set thought as to how you'd like to change the game plan, but that can change pretty quickly.

Q. What was the reason behind the emotion in the final? Was it just because it was another final that she was in, that it was Sloane? What was it?
DARREN CAHILL: Nerves, a little bit, I think with her. She's pretty honest. I think with Simona you know what you're going to get from her, and she doesn't hide her feelings very well. I think that's the great thing about her, and it's also the struggle that she has, as well. That's why we ride this roller coaster a little bit in her career. That's why we love watching her play, as well, is you're always going to get something that's really interesting.

I think nerves a little bit. She was up 4-1 in that first set, and then she had a couple of game points for 5-1, had game points for the 4-2 game to go to 5-2, missing a few backhands which she normally never misses. Just a little bit of frustration, little bit of nerves, little bit of self-doubt. Normal. Most of us try to hide it and keep it in. Simona likes to talk about it and let it fly.

That's why the on-court coaching with her is very interesting. I actually shook her off for the second on-court coaching. She called me out middle of the second set. I could tell that she was emotional again. So I figured nothing good was going to come by it.

The most important thing I think for a coach also is to try to teach your player to problem-solve themselves. We are doing our job much better if we are giving them the tools to work through the problems on the court and problem-solve those times when things are struggling.

If we are not doing that, if we're relying on the player to call the coach out to come and fix it for the player, we're not really helping them in the big picture. So a lot of what I have been working with Simona for the last three years is, Okay, I will help you, but try to help yourself first. I think in the final that was just an example of that.

Q. On-court coaching, you know you're on live TV. Would you coach differently if you were behind closed doors?
DARREN CAHILL: I might swear a little more (smiling).

Q. Do you like it personally? You can't do it in the Grand Slams.
DARREN CAHILL: Good question. I think it's good for television. It's good for people sitting in the living room. It's basically what we do on the practice court when your players are playing practice matches is that between points or it could be a couple of games, we just talk about things.

I think with the WTA, if you're going to do on-court coaching, I would actually like to see more of it, not just once a set, because I think there is, to be really effective -- the problem with the once-a-set is normally the player will call you out when things are going badly. As we said before, emotions can play a part as well. Sometimes the message is going in this ear and out the other one, because all the player wants to do is complain.

But if you know the coach can come out more often, then it's a more relaxed conversation. You're not trying to get all this information out in 60 seconds. It's tough to retain a lot of that information, but if she knows she can call me out every four games and we can talk about how those last four games went and have a more relaxed conversation about how things are going, then I think you'd get some more technical stuff.

So if you're going to do it, I would like to see it more often. I do think there are big benefits for it, but as you say, in the Grand Slams, it's really important the players problem-solve for themselves. I think the last couple of years I have done it less and less with Simona for that very reason, and she's getting a lot better at it, as well.

She knows exactly what I'm going to tell her most of the time, because she understands the game incredibly well, but I think she likes to hear it from me just to reinforce the message. Sometimes good, because she can go out there and execute; sometimes bad, because she can use me to blame me if it's not working.

The mind of a tennis player is really complicated. We have all been through it because it's a lonely sport. You're stuck out there one player on one player and you've got nobody to talk to. You've got 10,000 people looking down at you. You can feel pretty lonely at times.

You have these internal conversations going with yourself. So to have somebody to come out and talk to every now and again is a good thing.

Q. You mentioned you know Simona so well. You know what to expect. When you made the decision to walk away and say, Change your attitude, was that a tactic where you knew probably it was going to move her and advance her in a way that she needed to in order to achieve the goals, Grand Slam, being No. 1, but also it was a risk on your part? I'm just curious.
DARREN CAHILL: "Tactic" is probably not the right word. I think "last resort," a little bit, because we'd worked through a series of structures to try to help her get better on the court, and she was still getting in the way of herself.

So I didn't know if that was me being the roadblock or whether it was more her. So you go through the stages of trying to get better. And she had gotten better in many, many areas, but she was also getting in the way of herself in a lot of matches and letting her emotions control her and her decision-making.

It was either basically problem with me and she needed to hear a new voice, and the last thing any coach wants to do is hold a player back. I was having these internal discussions with myself as to, okay, maybe she does need a new voice, or maybe she needs a sparkplug moment where it might be a bit of a wakeup call for her to really look inside herself, try to get better, and get the most out of herself.

Yeah, I think that's always the last resort. She had to go away for three, four, five weeks, decide what she needed to do. I know she's never going to be perfect on the court, and I don't want her to be, to be quite honest, because she's got this Romanian blood, which is fire in the belly, which is fun, exciting, emotional. You want that in your players, because it's part of the reason why she's so good.

But there has to be a balance, a line, and we weren't finding that balance. She's worked really hard over the last year and a half to find that balance. She's not perfect, but she's getting better all the time. But more than anything, she understands herself a lot better now. She never used to do that. She would walk off the court and go, What's the problem? Then you'd sort of sit down and walk through the match.

Now she's understanding what the problems are, when she gets a little bit emotional, how many points in a row she's losing because of that. She's starting to see the structure and the momentum changes and the swings much better than she used to. That's why now she's able to turn matches around, whereas once upon a time, they used to slip away pretty quickly.

Q. (Indiscernible.)
DARREN CAHILL: She's a great gal. I love her to death. She's a good person. I wouldn't be doing this with her if I didn't think a lot of Simona. She has a good team around her, great family, comes from a normal family in Constanta, Romania. Her mom and dad don't speak a word of English, but I feel like I have known them for 50 years. They are incredible people. Great person, and, yeah, she's always very thankful. I'm thankful to be able to work with her, as well.

Q. She said yesterday she knew she wouldn't be No. 1 or have a Grand Slam if you had not been there.
DARREN CAHILL: She said that? Oh, can I get a tape of that (smiling)?

She was already a great player before I started. I think she was ranked 4 or 5 when I came on board about three-and-a-half years ago at Indian Wells and I worked as a consultant with her team for the next nine months and then full time for the last three years.

It's hard to say, because when you are so good, you need a lot of weapons, and you need a lot to go right to win a Grand Slam, as well. It's not easy -- I think it's incredibly difficult to, more difficult to be the No. 1 player in the world, because you need to play incredible tennis over the course of 12 months. To win a Grand Slam, sometimes you just need to get hot for a couple of weeks.

Not easy to do either, but becoming the No. 1 player last year I think gave her the confidence and belief to know that she's capable of making it happen. And since then -- some players, when they become No. 1, they are a little bit intimidated by the responsibility, the fact that you're at the top of the tree and everybody is chasing you, the fact that every time you step onto the court you're a target.

And that's not easy psychologically for a lot of players to handle. I think she's handled it beautifully. I think she's done an incredible job putting that aside and just making it about one opponent every single day. That's been really important for her.

To me, she was always going to be a champion, Grand Slam champion, but it does take that little 1% sometimes to get that, and maybe I have been able to help with that 1%, which has been great. It's been a great ride for me.

I said after the Paris win that, for me, apart from the birth of my children, it was the greatest day ever for me, being with her on the ride that we had so many ups, so many downs, so many emotional losses. The French Open final last year was just gut-wrenching for everybody. Even here last year, she had the chance to be No. 1 last year and she put in a bad one against GarbiÃ±e. We had a few of those last year.

And to spend time with her after those moments and see what it meant to her and how it affected her, and then to finally win the Grand Slam, I have never been happier standing there watching a player do what she did. It was wonderful.

Q. You said that one of your long-term goals over the duration of your time with Simona has been for her to be able to troubleshoot better on court.
DARREN CAHILL: Yep.

Q. We have seen, especially this year at the French Open when she was down against Sloane, that she was able to do that, you could say, finally in the big moment.
DARREN CAHILL: Yeah.

Q. Are you now able to take a more firm stance with her when she wants that midmatch counseling, you can say, Look, you just did it? Is that something kind of the way you were thinking in Montreal?
DARREN CAHILL: It's the first time I've ever shook her off. It's the first time she's ever called for me and I gave her the "not coming out," (shaking finger). I don't expect I will do that often, because it was more just knowing that she had it. If she could just reach down deep and find it, she just had to do it herself.

And sometimes those moments also, you know, piss her off a little bit, which gets her fired up, and instead of concentrating on me, she concentrates on her opponent a little bit as well. I'm learning all the time with her. I'm finding out that coaching is -- it's like an ocean, always moving, and if you're not moving with it, you're not learning.

With her, I feel like there is so much to her personality and her game and the way she plays that I'm learning as a coach all the time.

Hopefully that helps me be a better coach, as well. I don't think that I have changed my coaching all that much. I think I listen better than I used to do. I used to walk out and have a set opinion as to what she needed to do to win a tennis match without really listening to what she was saying, which is normal, because we have 60 seconds to walk out there, have to get it done, get the message across, and hopefully they implement.

Now I feel like I listen to her words, see if she's struggling, she what's she's struggling with, and try to find a quick resolution for her, or something, at least, to go out there and concentrate on.

It's been good. But I don't think my coaching has changed that much. Hopefully I'm becoming a better listener.

Q. Obviously different times, before with Lleyton and Andre, different tour now, WTA, but do you sometimes use analogies from the past? I showed this to Lleyton, and this is the result, or Andre, and you explain to Simona currently with respect to what she's done?
DARREN CAHILL: To be honest, we use Rafa a lot, some of the struggles that he's had, the Aussie Open final when he injured himself against Wawrinka. I use YouTube videos. I use matches that she's played. I use -- video technology now is much better than it used to be. Hawk-Eye information is incredible. The access that we have as coaches to help improve our players is nonstop.

So we have all this information. I think the trick is finding that small bit of information that we can deliver to our player that's going to have an immediate impact. Because if we go in there and give them two hours of information, I have lost it. I don't expect my player to retain it. Finding what is relevant, finding what's going to make an impact, and then delivering that information in a way that inspires your player.

Rafa has inspired her with what he's been able to do it, with the way he trains, with his work ethic, the way he fights for every single match no matter what the score is. He can be down 6-Love, 5-Love, 40-Love. You wouldn't even be able to tell with him.

That, to me, is what she's modeled the last year and a half on. I think you see a little bit -- no one's going to be like Rafa. But you see a little bit of the old Simona compared to the new Simona, and she's more like that, because she's always had a great work ethic. I have never had to push her on the practice court. She always gives 100%. She's like a little Rafa on the practice court. We need to make her a little Rafa on the match court, as well.

It's nice that her two victories, the one she had in Paris and the one she had last week, both coincided -- we spoke about this after the match -- coincided with Nadal doing exactly the same. It's been pretty cool, actually.

Q. You talked before there were also hard times last year, but in general even the best players lose almost every week.
DARREN CAHILL: Yeah, sure.

Q. How is your job in handling the losses and how long do you talk about losses? Do you push it away very fast?
DARREN CAHILL: It depends. Sometimes I won't even talk about a loss, to be honest. Sometimes if there is good lessons to be learned, we will talk about them straightaway. It just depends on the loss and depends on the way she played.

If she went out there and gave everything she has and tried everything she could try, there is no real need to talk about them, because that's all you want from your player is to give everything you have to find a way to win a tennis match.

It's impossible to win every single week, but if you go out there with the attitude that you're going to find a way to give your very best and control -- the only thing you can control is your effort. You can't control how your opponent plays, can't control the wind or the line calls or whatever, but you can control how clearly you think and how much effort you give. And if you do that, then I'm proud of her no matter what the result.

I think that's been a constant message throughout the course of our three years. If there is lessons to be learned from a particular match, yeah, we will definitely talk about them. Sometimes that's determined by how she feels after a match. Sometimes she's smiling after a match. Sometimes there are tears. Sometimes it's just a hug and move on. It's really determined by how she is.

But I think the beauty with her is that she's always treated both the wins and the losses the same way. She doesn't get overly carried away with the wins and she has great respect for the losses and her opponents. I think that's one of the great things that I really admire about her, as well, just the way Sloane has handled the last couple of matches. I think with the after-match speeches and the way she's handled those losses -- obviously the US Open was a big win, but big wins are just around the corner because good things happen to good people.

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