Tennis Expert Darren Cahill's Guide On Creating Tennis Champions

0:00I know there's a lot of people out there that say, go on, get out there, do the best you can, the result doesn't matter, the result certainly does matter. There's no one that's had four champs like you've had four champs. They just expect to win. You're not just born with that. Darren Cahill's going to knock your socks off. Philosophy, ways to be successful. Do you think success was just a part of your family or did you choose it at some point? Had a former legend player and coach for the Porto Lake Football Club back in Australia. It was expected. Deep question, Australia. Yeah. All right, mate.

0:31what is your definition of success? Well, ultimately in the sporting field, you need to win. Yeah. And so getting the W is super important. I know there's a lot of people out there that say, go on, get out there, do the best you can. The result doesn't matter. It does matter. The result certainly does matter. But making change in my particular industry in tennis, making positive change to that athlete is success, regardless of whether that's a player that's ranked 300 in the world and you get that player to 100. It depends also what their dreams are and what their goals and ambitions are. Or if you take a player that's ranked 25 in the world into the top 10, or if you can get a player to number one in the world.

1:10So it's all relative to how much talent you're working with, how good the player is you're working with. There's a ceiling on some players as to how high they can go. I know I had a ceiling on my limit as a tennis player. Well, you got, what, 22 in singles, 10 in doubles. That was your highest ranking. And then you blew your knee like like you know I'm an old man I blew my knee you blew it at a young age and got into coaching so where do you think you chose success or do you think with your dad being famous football guy football coach you think success was just a part of your family or did you choose it at some point it was expected in my family I grew up in an Australian rules football family as you know my dad's a former legend player and coach for the Port Adelaide football club back in Australia which is one of the big football clubs.

1:58Boo, put it out loud. So then he ventured across to Melbourne and coached Collingwood for a couple of years, which was a great experience. So he had enormous success, especially as a coach back home. So I had an opportunity to grow up in that environment. I was able to sit on the bench with him when he was coaching. I was around all the players. I went to all the training sessions. I didn't miss a game for the first 16 years of my life. And really I was going to be a footballer or not a tennis player. And I just migrated into tennis sort of by accident because he had a real love for tennis. His favorite player was Rod Laver.

2:27So we used to go out and play tennis in the backyard. So I sort of fell into tennis accidentally, but I was always thinking and dreaming of being a football player. And because I grew up in that environment and I saw the way he coached and the way he would sell belief and the way he would deliver his messages to 20 different guys. So tennis is very much one-on-one. He had to work out the personalities and the strengths and weaknesses of each of those players and then work out the best way to deliver a message to that player. So a lot of his job was not only technical and tactical coaching, but a lot of it was selling belief and selling a team environment.

3:03So growing up around that, it was almost like there was no opportunity to choose success. It was just a thing. What's the Darren Cahill formula for success? Like how do you believe success happens for people in this day and age? well you can't you can't walk in and demand respect no matter what you've done with any particular field before or how much success you've had with a former player or how long you've been in the game or how good of a tennis player you were when you ventured into coaching i think it takes time to get to understand the player and you need to ask a lot of questions to to realize what makes them tick you know i always give this example if that i'm on the tennis court and i'm playing you, Brad, on the tennis court and you leave the ball short in the middle of the court, if I'm seeing that ball, I'm taking that ball, hitting a forehand to your backhand and coming to the net every single time because that's what I did.

3:56And I'm going to win that point seven or eight times out of 10. You might pass me once, I might miss a volley once, but that's what I did and that's what I was looking for. The first player I worked with was Leighton Hewitt. Now, if I gave that ball to Leighton, he was so fast, much faster than I would, he would get up to that ball quickly, he'd hit that ball, and then he'd wait to see if you dropped a hand off the racket, you played a defensive slice backhand, or if you attacked it and played a double-handed backhand, and then he would decide whether or not he's coming to the net. He's not instantly coming in.

4:24He was so quick. And if you're going to hit an aggressive pass, he would back up and start the point again. Now, if I gave that same ball to Agassi, he's not putting that ball away. He's thinking to himself, okay, I have a chance to run you, Brad. And I'm going to put you in this corner and hit it just hard enough so you can get to it. Then I'm going to run you here. And I'm going to run you there. Then I'm going to run you here. Then he's going to rip your lungs out. and you won't be able to breathe for the next two or three minutes. And then after the point's finished, regardless of whether he won the point or not, he's going to be on the line in the next five seconds ready to serve.

4:53So he's investing in the set and the future by trying to get to your lungs. And then if I gave that point to Simona Halep, she's going to try to hit a winner off that every single time because she doesn't want to come to the net. She just wants to finish the point. So that's just one shot that four players see completely. And the new kid? The new kid would probably try to just hit the winner because that's his shot. and he's quite happy to come to the net. He's quite happy to do anything, but his forehand is a massive bomb. So he's more than happy to hit the winner. So that is coaching, right?

5:23It's asking the questions, learning to find out why they're making certain decisions. And then there might be right and wrong within those decisions. And that's where coaching comes in. That's when you need to sell what you believe is the best thing. Got it. So what about coaching success? Because your career as a coach, I mean it's there's no one that's had four champs like you've had four champs right now admittedly Leighton you got when he was 12 Andre what 30? He was a legend already Simona was already on track new kid already had great coach but you came on and how do you succeed like your formula as success for you not them but you as a coach?

6:09How do you do that? Well, you need to be a bit lucky for sure. Yes. Picking the right players and working within that environment and making it a good environment to me is really important. Culture is everything, whether it be in business or whether it be in sport or whether it be a team sport. I think that the culture word in an individual sport has been left out many times. And the teams are much bigger now than they used to be. Back 20 when I was with Andre, it was Gil Reyes, myself and Andre the three of us and away we would go and the culture within the team was excellent but now it's a minibus full of people, you have Simone Vagnosi who's the other coach who's doing a remarkable job with Yannick and he came on before I did and doing an incredible job and then we have Umberto Ferrara who's the physical trainer and then we have an osteopath and we have a physio, then you have two agents so then you have the family sometimes so it's a minibus of people that unless all the working parts are harmonious and working together, and that's kind of where I come into this group as well.

7:12So for me, Simone is really the main coach. He's the one that's pushing a lot of the buttons, and I'm sort of sitting over the top overseeing everything. Everything gets run through me. We talk about what he's trying to do with his game, where we're trying to improve, and I'm a different set of eyes for what they're working on. But my main responsibility is to make sure this team works and it clicks and that Yannick keeps his feet on the ground no matter how successful he is or he keeps his chin up and walks tall no matter how many tough days we have. And we've had some tough days as well. Oh, yeah.

7:42And there's no – you know, it's funny because tennis and golf are very similar in the fact that the vast majority of your life you lose. Yeah, exactly. You don't – it's not like a football team where you win every other week type thing or 60 % of the time or whatever. How do you deal with that aspect of it? You have short-term goals. So there are certain, even with Yannick last year, so our theme for the year last year was knocking over hurdles, barriers. So accomplishing things that he was yet to be able to accomplish in his career. So that was head-to-head matchups. That was winning a couple of bigger tournaments.

8:21He'd never beaten Sitsapas before last year. He'd never beaten Medvedev before last year. He never beat Novak before last year. He never beat Rune before last year. So all these top 10 players and all these guys that you have to overcome at some point if you wish to win a Grand Slam tournament. Got it. So one at a time, we would try to break down those matches, give him game plans. Sometimes they would work. Sometimes they wouldn't. He'd go out there and he'd take a loss. And we'd sit back down and work out, okay, did that work? Was it good enough? Do we need to improve on that? Well, you're not beating Novak easily.

8:52He's coming back at you. And he's going to problem solve as well. He's one of the best problem solvers in the world. So he's going to make adjustments to his game, just like Medvedev made adjustments to his game at the Australian Open when he came out and played super aggressively for the first two sets. And then Yannick had to change his game to be able to stay in it. So tennis gets compared a lot to chess. You know, there are a lot of moving parts going all the time. And that's where, for us, coaching has been really important because it's legal now. We can actually coach from the sidelines and help the player.

9:21But ultimately, regardless of what information we give the player, It's the player that's swinging the racket. It's the player that has to have the composure. It's the player that has to have the belief in the big moments to execute those big forehands down the line or throw in a serve volley as a surprise tactic or be brave in the big moments. So all the credit goes to the player, but what the coaching has done for us, it's legitimized our industry. And now we can actually help the player, not only to set up and get ready for matches, but also in play, which is really important. You said to Paul Anacone on an interview one time that most of the work gets done during the week.

9:58Like on game day, Andre you did a little bit more with, Simona you played. Where's Yannick on game day? And tell me more about all that work getting done during the week rather than on game day. So Andre taught me more about coaching than I taught him about. That's for sure. And you know Andre. He's a student of the game. But he's also a perfectionist in everything. The way he grills the steak, it's got to be done perfect every time. There's everything. He has real pride in his performance and everything he does. And regardless of whether that's playing tennis or doing his charity or providing an education for the kids, I think they have over 130 charter schools around the US now.

10:38Everything he does, he does to the best of his ability. So he taught me a lot, not so much about being professional, but really doing your homework to be able to answer every single question that might be thrown your way. Because he wanted to know everything. He wanted to know what was going to happen if I hit a ball with less spin at somebody's forehand. Are they going to back up? Are they going to hold their position? Will they hit a certain type of shot? So he was looking for information that he could then relay in his brain as to how he was going to win this match. So when he could think about the match the night before, he'd already played the match three or four times before he stepped onto the court.

11:12So he was visualizing what was going to happen before he executed. So when he executed, it was like deja vu. It had already happened. It was easy for him. So that was the way he processed. Yannick's a little bit different because most of the work with Yannick is done in the week leading up, like I mentioned to Paul. He's somebody that needs to be left on a little bit before the big matches. He's got all the information. He's digesting it. A lot of what we're working with him also doesn't come naturally to him. So he's great from the back of the court, but it was really a left and right player.

11:45Wasn't someone that was looking to transition forward. Wasn't someone that would use the serve volley. wasn't somebody that was moving. The old Aussie serve volley. And sort of the body serve these days is left alone. Everyone serves so big they go for the free points and they try to go for the lines. The body serve is coming back into tennis because we used to use it a lot to set up an easy volley for ourselves. So players are working out there are other ways now to win tennis points. You don't just have to crack forehand and backhand winners. And that's kind of where we've come in with Yannick.

12:13But ultimately, he's so good from the back of the court that you have to send him onto the court to play his game. But if things are not going great, then there are other ways to get the job done, which he proved in a couple of matches at the Australian Open, which helped him get to the finish line. You're on the Big Success Podcast. I'm Brad Sugars. We're going to be back with Darren Cahill. We're going to talk about how does coaching really work. There has never been a better time to become successful in life than right now. Creating success in your life isn't about chance. It's about learning what it takes to create a great life.

12:43And that's why Brad Sugar's put together 30X Life. You get his 30 years of success in 30 minutes a day for 30 days. You only get one shot at this thing called life. Let's build an amazing life for you. So, Darren, let's chat about coaching, okay? Because obviously I'm a business coach, tennis coach, arguably the goat tennis coach at some point. We've got still a ways and ways to go. What is the top two or three things someone should know if they want to be a great coach, whether it's business or sport or whatever? Listen. You need to listen. I think it is the most important thing in tennis is to, when you first start a job, especially with a new player, is to ask a lot of questions and to listen to the answers.

13:28Not only the information that's been given to you, but the mannerisms, the way the information is given to you. Because I think you learn a lot about your player by listening and working out how they see themselves as a person, but certainly how they see themselves as an athlete and as a tennis player. So take your time, ask a lot of questions, talk through the sport, and communication is incredibly important. And if you don't communicate in the world today, it's a different generation, right? We have kids, we have younger kids. It's a different language now. Some of the stuff that comes out of my kids.

14:02And it's a different technology too. We can't call the kids anymore. You have a text. Exactly. So you have to go with the flow and keep evolving. and I think that one of the most important things also is everybody aspires to get their dream job, right? You go through the ranks, you coach younger players, you might be coaching a team, you go through various teams, then finally you want to coach at the big leagues, at the elite level, and you get that particular job and then you're satisfied. You do a great job with that particular player or team, but you don't keep evolving and you have to keep upskilling yourself and that's talking to other sports and other athletes and other coaches and doing business courses, I think.

14:41Because I think the business and sport crossover is still really prevalent. I did a director's coaching course for five days when I went on the Port Adelaide Director's Board about six or seven years ago. So I went through this five-day course. And as I'm going through it, I'm going, this is just sport. All the philosophies coming from being a director of a company and the line you have to cross and can't cross between management and director. This is sport. I know you guys are talking about culture and you're talking about communication and selling belief and setting parameters. It's exactly the same as what happens in sports.

15:12So I think the similarities are very strong. Hey, just a quick one. When I look in the back end of this, something that's quite surprising to me, I noticed that it says that 82 % of you who watch the channel regularly haven't hit the subscribe button yet. So it'd be a great favor if you could hit that subscribe button. Let me tell you why. See, over the lifetime of the channel, we scale the show and get better guests, better production, better everything by having the number of subscribers. So if you hit subscribe, it helps us plan better, do more, get better guests, and so on. Scaling production and making the show bigger is something we all want.

15:51We want more success for you. We want more success for the show. And we want to be able to get the best guests to give you the best information. So one favor. Click that button. If you've watched this show before and enjoyed it, just please click that button to subscribe, hit the notifications bell, and make sure you're a part of it. Because as the show gets better, your success gets better. Simple as that. I promise I'm willing to make you. Do we have a deal? If you do better and subscribe, I'll get better guests and make it a better show. Thanks for subscribing. You've mentioned your dad talking about selling belief and you just mentioned it again.

16:31Tell me more about selling belief. Yeah, I think that comes to, firstly, showing a real love for the sport. And I do. I think that there's an enthusiasm and a vibe that you can send off if you live the sport. And players feel it and understand it. And I think that's really important. Also, if you're treating it like a job, then the players will feel that as well. So you've got to be in it for the right reasons. You have to have a real love and care for the people that you're working with. I think that's really important. and show that on a daily basis. And we talk about culture all the time and culture is really just about doing the little things right.

17:07You know, the pleasers and the thank yous and treating the transport person well or the people that give you the practice courts or the ball kids or the umpires. You know, it's everything that you see in Yannick, hopefully, as someone sitting from the outside looking in, you can see that he's a good kid and he's got his feet on the ground. He's got a smile on his face. And even when things are not going great, he sees a reason to find a smile and enjoy the moment because he knows he'll come back the next day and get a little bit better from it. So that is good culture. And that comes from him and his upbringing and his parents and the way he's been brought up and the people that he's got around him.

17:40And I think that's winning to me. Regardless of what he does in his career, you're making him not only a better tennis player, but you're making him a better person. Yeah. So if we look at coaching as a skill, What do you think are the top two or three skills other than listening a coach must have? That's a great question because I think it can be just two or three. You're working with so many different areas. For me, I always say in tennis that the coach needs to take a back seat. It's even been doing this with you. It's a little uncomfortable. You sitting there on ESPN for years and Channel 7 in Australia for years, watching every single player game after game after game.

18:33I think that the fact that you had that knowledge of every opponent, that's got to be a skill set that, I mean, it's very hard to replicate. Not many coaches have that time. More than you think. Yeah, more than you think, really. It's tennis coaches. We're on the road 35, 40 weeks of the year. Yeah. What are you going to do? Are you going to sit in your hotel room and just watch - Play a game of golf, yeah. We live to tennis. So whether or not you're at the tennis watching matches or you're home, we have an analytics, golden set analytics that we work with, and they're amazing. So you can go deep into the analytics if you want.

19:13We have this program now that you don't have to sit there and watch a three-hour match. You can break it down in 30 minutes and then cut it off and send it to your players, seven or eight minutes of stuff that's really relevant for him to watch. So you can go deep into that. Tennis is a life sport. For us and a lot of the coaches, we live it. So going out and watching matches is not just me. It's all the coaches. And I think it's part of doing your job properly. It's part of executing what you need to do to be as good as you can be for your player. For me, it's just normal. It's our life. And I know other coaches do exactly the same as me.

19:49So I'm nothing special in that area. So flip it over then. ESPN. I mean, you and Brad seem to have an amazing banter and that sort of thing. Is that because of the love of the game that you have that? Just the knowledge of the game or the way you break it down? What makes you guys so good at being the commentators? We're good mates. We've always been good mates. Even when we played against each other, I used to hate playing him because he would commentate during the match. You know, he was a nightmare to play against because, oh, you're so lucky, man. Oh, that late court. but I can't believe that.

20:22Oh, what a bad call this. Brad would always give a run in commentary. Brad's gilled it for anyone who doesn't know it. BG. So during the match and then after in the locker room, if he'd beat my ass, which he normally did, then he'd come in and sit next to me and talk about the match. So that's Brad. He just loves the sport and loves to talk about tennis. And I think we see the game very similar, mostly 99 % of the time. We communicate it a little bit differently, but I love him to death. He's the first person that calls me every day and he's talking about sport. He's already messaged me this morning when I'm getting down to Indian Wells because he's got practice down there with Coco.

20:57You can feel the love of the sport when you talk to Brad. And Brad, which most people don't know, is that I was a decent tennis player, but I needed the best players in the world to have a bad day, to have a chance. And if they had a bad day, I had a good chance, and I was able to get some good wins over some good players. Brad didn't need that. He could beat them when they were playing well. He was number four in the world. He was a heck of a tennis player. And if you look at him, you go, God, how can this guy? Where's the athlete there? But he had this big first serve, but his second serve was nothing.

21:28The back end didn't look like it was much. He had a great forehand, but he had this ability to find weaknesses, which is why he wrote that book, Winning Ugly, because he would work out way. He was like a flood of water coming down. And then players, you know, when you sandbag a house because of the flood, we just had those big floods down the Murray River in Australia. it but water finds a weakness yeah it finds a way through the sandbagging and you just need one little weakness and then it all tears down and that's brad brad would find a weakness and just tear your game apart and you'd come off the court going god i just lost to brad four and four and i felt like i couldn't play at all at the end he just made me feel so bad and that was brad's superpower because that's the way he played and that's the way he coaches as well so i i think he's amazing and hopefully some of that comes through in the way we talk on espn Yeah.

22:16So some players, you watch them go on the court and you mentioned this, you know, you needed them to have a bad day or Brad finds the weakness. You watch a Rafa or a Novak or a Roger walk on the court. Andre was like this too. They just expect to win. Like they know they're going to win. There's not even a shred of evidence in their mind that there's a chance that they can do anything other than win this game. And even when they're a couple of sets down, how do they learn that mental fortitude? Or is it something they learn? Or is it something they grow? Or how do you coach that into someone? Well, I think you need to build that through resilience.

22:58So you're not just born with that. You don't just have it. So you have to go through some tough times to build up that resilience and find ways to overcome it. and all the best players in the world. You're right. They all have that belief. Who was the best at that, do you think? Andre was the best that I've seen, that I've worked with. Other players would be, I think Novak's incredible. I think Raph is amazing. To beat Nadal at the French Open over five sets is maybe the toughest thing in the world in our sport to do. His record there speaks for itself. I don't think he would say that even going through the juniors, there were some times when he had to really pull himself off the ground and find ways to become a better tennis player.

23:40And it's one of the great things about Rafa is that every time he walks on the court, no matter who he's playing, he treats it like it's a Grand Slam final. And that's why you see his excitement. If he's winning in the first round of Acapulco and gets through four and four, no matter who his opponent is, you know, there's a big fist pump to the crowd and he's excited to win. And we're all thinking, why are you so excited? You're always going to beat this guy. But no, he takes everybody as if he's playing a Grand Slam final. and that's a real asset that he's always had. It treats everybody with great respect.

24:10So that flows through to his personality as well. For me, the player that I worked with, definitely Andre, definitely. And I think one of the important things is no matter what the score, one of the great things about tennis is you can't run the clock down. So you're always in it until the last point. So what you try to do is you put things in compartments. The first couple of sets, you've lost the first couple of sets. Okay, we're at the start of set three. incredibly important that I just hold my serve here. I hold my serve for the first couple of games, stay in touch with my player, and let's build from that.