Jorge Fernandez on US Open lessons and 'a very difficult conversation'

well it's been a magical and emotional two weeks what were you feeling this morning waking up everything was hurting this morning my body was hurting my head was hurting um it was a difficult morning to be honest um to get out of bed we've always trained to win championships so when you get so close to such an incredible prize it does take a lot out of you you know emotionally and physically so it was a little bit difficult and uh but yet here i am and we're talking so it can't be that bad and we appreciate that um looking back at that final match how did you assess it layla didn't give her best tennis not even close i believe that she let the [Music] finals be bigger than her tennis and the few moments that she did have to turn it around in the first set a couple of times and in the second set a couple of times she didn't capitalize and uh in the end you know the better player won the better player for that day one and it was a fair um result do you feel like the fatigue the four three stretch setters the all the hours she put on the court do you think it might have caught up to her a bit definitely definitely it's very difficult you know to to absorb so much power for over two hours in four different matches and constantly be problem solving constantly managing your stress level and your anxiety level and mounting comebacks constantly it's a difficult way to live and you know we have we have to fix that because that's not the right way i mean it's great for the fans and it's great for the drama and the spectacle of it all but in the end but you don't have enough to get to the end and perform when you need to which is in the finals you you want to walk in to a finals fresher um energized you wanted to win sharp and it's all the things that i didn't see in her so yeah absolutely it definitely affected her i'm glad that you know she was able to see that when she plays well she's able to play top 10 tennis you know unfortunately in the finals she didn't play top ten tents she said one of the things she learned about herself during this tournament is that she's better when she's more of an outgoing extrovert on the court and she really seemed to have a connection with the new york crowd uh she used to i guess be calmer of course on the court more in the kind of federer vein were you surprised by that development not really i'm not surprised by that development because she's still growing she's still getting to know each ourselves right this is not this is the difficult part of the coaching is understanding the player in their different age group and understanding that they are growing as people and they're still finding out what they enjoy so what you are between 10 and 12 is not the same who you are and what you are between 12 and 14 14 16 16 and 19. so her discovering this about herself is is you know great i think it's fantastic i hope that it's going to help her in the future and i hope that really is something that is going to um stay with her because she does it really well so i'm glad that i'm glad that she discovered it you know a long time ago way way many moons of them i knew of a person that enjoyed the spotlight and enjoyed you know the drama and enjoyed being very outgoing and having a great personality and then also you step off and you become extremely private and extremely quiet you don't want to talk to anybody and you just want a little bit of tranquility and you know almost quietly just going to a obscurity and i think from our family my uncle my uncles were professional jockey my grandfather was a professional jockey i remember watching them you know galloping on their horse and stopping in front of the the fans and just winking at them and smiling at them and doing some nice tricks with the with the whip in their hands and it's always about the persona that you bring and that you feel comfortable in and it almost shields you from your own fear and insecurities so i'm glad that you discovered it hopefully it'll stay i mean people love it yes they do you know losing a grand slam final is incredibly difficult uh it's not easy to have poise in some class under those circumstances what did you think about how she addressed the new york crowd afterwards and specifically bringing up 911 again it shows who she is because i think no matter how hard layla has worked to try to prove everybody wrong no matter how many challenges she's had to overcome she always finds a way to find a reason that is giving so for example she's doing all of this but it's because she wants to motivate little girls and little boys not to give up on their dreams you know she feels that she she has to sacrifice more so other people can see that it is possible so this once again showed just how selfless she is to say well you know what i'm hurting right now but i'm not hurting as much as you have experienced over the last you know whatever years and again you know it's she's selfless and i hope i hope that she she gets another opportunity i hope that she gets to to be in the finals again because these things are not never guaranteed you know and uh they're difficult to achieve now of course i believe that she can but you never know but i hope that she does because what it what i want her to be is sometimes a little bit more selfish because she gives everything away i think she keeps one percent for herself and 99 to everybody else as a coach you know tip my hat as a father you know i share a tear that's all you can do that's that's exactly what i think about it but i hope in the future you know she can be a little bit selfless on the court more selfish maybe she'll get the result that she wants what was your first conversation like with her after the match it was a very difficult conversation it was very difficult it was you know this is this is my first you know grand slam defeat in the finals so i i didn't know exactly how to how to handle it to be quite honest with you and it's not because i didn't want to say oh you know we're all very proud of you we're all very happy it's just with her we've always had a very true relationship from the very very beginning that was one of the things that if she hurts she needs to tell me that she's hurting if i'm unhappy i need to tell her that i'm unhappy and um it was very difficult for us to even begin to have that conversation just because there was so much going on around her and she and what usually happens since you know i took over full-time um montreal is that i gave her the 10 minutes i gave her 10 minutes to just for her to speak and then i ask questions as opposed to having myself talk um just so she can kind of be a little bit more in control of the conversations after so she didn't really really really know exactly what to say except for you know that she blew it and she was hurting so i said i know me too so that's okay and um you know think about it because there's a lot of action we'll talk later and that's it that was pretty much it that's as on as i can as i can be and i i know everybody want and everybody's proud i know i know i know but everybody out there needs to understand that you know we got what we got because we're so competitive because of our constant attention to detail and constant willingness to to sacrifice more and more and more and we just fall short it really really does hurt and um for the moment but i can promise you that in a few days you know the smiles will be back and everybody will be grinding it out again looking forward to the next challenge we just have to kind of go through that moment of you know deception you

Channel: TSN

Views: 36,806

Rating: 4.8155136 out of 5

Keywords: Leylah Annie Fernandez, Mark Masters, US Open, WTA, Tennis, Canada

Id: O7X6qmih0W8

Length: 10min 3sec (603 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/AlekseiZee]

Great words

[u/Sorrowful_Panda]

Don't like a lot of the things he said as a coach and father. After watching this I think she could do better without him on the coaching team.