ROLEX MONTE-CARLO MASTERS

April 17, 2022

Apostolos Tsitsipas

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Questions for Apostolos?

Q. Good evening. First of all, congratulations.

APOSTOLOS TSITSIPAS: Thank you very much.

Q. When did you start thinking that your son was special? And how many risks also economical you took at that time when you didn't know that he would have become a champion? That is the most difficult part, I guess.

APOSTOLOS TSITSIPAS: Yeah, that's a good question. Actually, it's a problem to have a lot of parents choosing this kind of route in their lives for their kids. In tennis in fact you have to choose from a very young age to become seriously competitor and to go in the tour.

We are a tennis family, and me and my wife, and we know actually for us it's much easier to decide, to see things, signs that are very important for the game. In the early junior years, combining school and tennis, at some moment he was maybe his 11th birthday, if I'm not wrong, somewhere in France playing junior tournaments.

It was actually he was playing a lot of tournaments here in the summer because we used to come here with friends, and we used to combine holidays and tennis. Actually, it's a good way to present the tennis tour to the kids. It's not that hard, because they are together with the family and with the parents and with the rest of the family.

I remember we were in the North of France in Normandy, and he won a Masters. He asked to participate in a junior French tour, and he won the Masters of four tournaments. He was one of eight best players and he won the Masters.

I remember the night before we fly back to Greece, he was not sleeping, he was super excited and he came to me and asked me if he could play only tennis and don't do anything else in his life, because he feels really great in the tennis court.

Actually, I'm a high school teacher, and I always respect the opinion of the kids, and I believe one day telling the opinion like this, it's exactly what they have inside them. So my difficulty actually was to manage to bring out the best out of him from this dream and this will he had to play tennis. I think that was the first time.

Then during his tournament, during his career, it's very important the parents to be around, because it's a very hard life, traveling. It's really hard week after week traveling. At some point he start losing, you know, orientation of what's happening in life.

But if the family is around, like it's proved this week, when all the family is here, because we now live in the South of France, for him was much more comfortable, it feels like home. That gives him extra strength, I believe.

I think the parents consider very serious to stay next to their kids. Even if they go to great academies, if they go to the great schools of tennis, they have to be around them.

Q. Congratulations.

APOSTOLOS TSITSIPAS: Thank you.

Q. A lot of international attention has been on tennis families, and as you have seen, King Richard was featured in movies and so on. If you were to summarize in one sentence or in a slogan or in a leitmotif the main ethos of the Tsitsipas tennis family, what would it be?

APOSTOLOS TSITSIPAS: I could say freedom. That's the most important. When in the family you feel this freedom that you can express yourself and you can say whatever you want, whatever you feel inside you, it's very important to develop yourself to something special.

Q. Congratulations. If we go back to the end of last year, it was a difficult moment for Stefanos, his elbow, he was forced to retire from ATP Finals. What was this period like from your point of view? Because if I'm not wrong, Stefanos felt it very difficult.

APOSTOLOS TSITSIPAS: Yeah, was always injuries in our sport, it's the most scary thing I could say, because tennis, it demands to play every week. So you don't have a lot of time of rehabilitation. So if you are injured, you have to stay out for some time to maintain yourself.

It was an injury I didn't know really that it was so hard for him. He was telling me after Torino or Nitto Finals that he's feeling very painful. We decide to make a surgery. It was very successful, and now he's pain-free and I'm very happy for that.