Dmitry Tursunov claimed he experienced situations when one of his players would throw a tantrum over nonsense stuff but noted that he didn’t have such issues with Aryna Sabalenka.
Between 2018 and 2020, Tursunov and Sabalenka had two stints. During that period, the Belarusian broke into the top-10 for the first time in her career and evidently improved as a player.
Later, the former Russian tennis player also worked with Emma Raducanu, Belinda Bencic, Anett Kontaveit and Veronika Kudermetova. However, the former seven-time ATP champion had some other stints when he was asked to assist younger players.
In an interview with a Russian sports publication, Tursunov said that coaching nowadays was far from being an easy job. And then, he recalled one of the scenes he had with a younger player.
Tursunov: I didn’t respond to a message for 30 minutes and she was already throwing a tantrum
“Naturally. For example, I get a message from a tennis player, I don’t have time to answer within 30-40 minutes — and she’s already throwing a tantrum. Or an incident on the court. Training. The girl leads me to the corners. When I see that another ball is flying out of bounds, I don’t run after it, and I hear: ‘But you tried harder before,'” the 42-year-old told Sport-Express.
Sabalenka, with whom Tursunov had success, is well-known as a very outspoken and fiery personality. But when asked if he had any problems with the current world No. 1, the former Russian tennis star praised the three-time Grand Slam champion by saying that she always respected his coaching.
“She is, of course, fiery – but she listened. She didn’t resist much. I was able to convince Aryna, we had a good connection. And what progress she made! For the sake of becoming the world’s number one tennis player, she was ready to change,” Tursunov recounted.
In the same interview, the 42-year-old Russian shared that he put his coaching career on “a pause.”