Unlock Your Excellence — Insights From Coach to Federer and Sampras | Paul Annacone

Paul Annacone (0:00)

How good are you in your average days? My mantra every player is, handful of great matches during the year, during your career, handful of garbage.

The rest is who you are. Show me who you are in the middle.

Michael Gervais (0:15)

Okay, welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade in training a high performance psychologist. I'm really excited to welcome Paul Annacone to the pod for this week's conversation.

20 time Grand Slam winner, Roger Federer, and 14 time Grand Slam winner, Pete Sampras, have at least one common thread in their tennis careers. And he happens to be our guest on today's episode.

Paul is a former touring professional player who began his coaching career in 1995, working with the legendary Pete Sampras. And since then, he's become one of the most respected mentors in the game, coaching Federer, Tim Henman, Sloan Stevens, and currently one of USA's top ranked players, Taylor Fritz.

Calling coaching one of the most enlightening things he's experienced, Paul has spent 15 years writing his book, Coaching for Life, A Guide to Playing, Thinking, and Being the Best You Can Be. In the book, which is so good and so rich, he shares how the process-oriented journey that he applies to the game of tennis can serve as a great metaphor for approaching life, period. You also might recognize him from the new Netflix series, Breakpoint, where his insights are an integral part of the understanding of what makes great players great. Whether you're a parent, a business pro, an athlete, a knowledge seeker, Coach Annacone speaks for all of us on the cutting edge of our chosen game, whatever that game may be. His front row seat to arguably the best in tennis has given Paul a true understanding of some of the guiding principles that live in the heart and live in the head of a true champion. I can't wait for to hear Paul speak to the lessons he's learned along his extraordinary path, the importance of identity and knowing who you are and what he thinks about failure and what he believes separates the greats from everyone else. So with that, let's dive right into this week's conversation with the remarkable Paul Annacone. Paul, it is great to be with you today. So thank you for coming in.

Paul Annacone (2:28)

Thanks for the patience. It's taken a while, but luckily you got a great team and you at the helm that were patient enough to get me here. I appreciate it.

Michael Gervais (2:34)

I've been looking for this for a long time. Yeah, between our schedules, it's been, this is a reward worth waiting for, so stoked on it.

Paul Annacone (2:41)

Let's do it. I'm excited.

Michael Gervais (2:43)

So you've got an incredible career in tennis. As a player and as a coach.

I'm curious if we can start with just with this big history you've got. What are some stories that come to mind, some lessons learned, some experiences that you've had that are top of mind, top of, you know, memory for you when you think about and you look back on your career and all the things that you've done and experienced?

Paul Annacone (3:05)

I think one of the hardest things for me, Michael, was actually the initiation to go from a player to a coach. Because as a player, you feel like the perception is you have so much control over so many things.

When in actuality, you and I both know that that's not the case. You have control over many things. But when you become a coach, you have control over even less things. And so to be able to transition into a stand and try to get your point across, and in an individual sport, I think it's most challenging. Because I think if you want to be good at it, you have to figure out, number one, how to get buy-in from the player, which means, how do I say what I need to say, but the way they'll receive it?

And I think that's a little different than team sports. I think a lot of teams kind of go into the coach's philosophy. You go into the philosophy of the New York Knicks coach, or Coach Carroll, or somebody else in the NBA or NHL. That's the philosophy you mold to as a tennis coach. It's one-on-one. So you tend to have to figure out the person and then get the message across that way.

So to transition from a player where it was about me, my, I, I, me, to then have to figure out these other things, that was interesting. It was a great learning process for me. I think one of the most interesting stories of my career in terms of understanding the differentiation of those things was when I was coaching Pete Sampras early on, I was really big on trying to get him all the right details, all the analytics, all the metrics, all the things that he needed to be successful. And he was playing someone in Rome in the Italian Open that he had lost, I'm sorry, that he had beaten the previous summer.