Paul Annacone has been a fantastic tennis player in his days. The American has reached a world no.12 career high (singles); he won 3 titles in singles and 14 in doubles.
Nowadays Paul is well-known especially for his coaching career as he managed two of the greatest of the game: Pete Sampras and Roger Federer.
In what Federer was better than Sampras
During a recent interview with Express Sport, Paul Annacone had an interesting comment about how Roger handles his losses and he made an intriguing comparison with how Pete Sampras was coping with that.
Paul commented
“For Roger, he has done an amazing job of keeping a similar perspective throughout his career. When I was with him, starting in 2010 and even talking to him this year seven years later at 36 years of age, he generally perceives the losses very similarly to what he did when he was younger.
When Pete got to the end of his career, he went through something that I think most people do, which is the losses start to hurt more and the winning doesn’t feel as good.
And that’s because, and this is how I felt too as a player, the winning feels normal. You get to a certain level, and you expect to win. So, it doesn’t feel as good.”
How Roger copes with losses
The Paul added
“But when you lose and you see the window of your mortality starting to close, the losses start to hurt a little bit more because you feel like the clock is ticking.
Yet with Roger this year, in particular, he did an amazing job of being able to absorb and soak in that euphoric feeling of winning.
And the few losses that he had, he only lost five times this year; he knew how to lose with the perspective very similar to what he did when he was younger. And that is because he has such a great sense of self.”
That was an enlightening point. Let’s see if Roger can do the same in 2018.
