THE CHAMPIONSHIPS

July 12, 2026

Darren Cahill

Simone Vagnozzi

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for Simone and Darren.

Q. I want to ask you about serving, obviously. Sascha has one of the biggest serves I've ever seen at Wimbledon. How do you go about building a game plan to deal with that?

SIMONE VAGNOZZI: We know. We know that Sascha is one of the best server in the tour. Is not easy on grass because it's tough when he was hitting a lot of line today.

But he was changing a lot of the position on court. Try to mix. Sascha was thinking. In the end, he was able to break two times. That is the grass. It's impossible to break too many times. But he was able to break in the important moment. That's was the key.

Q. After everything that had happened over the last few Grand Slams and all the work you put in, how much sort of not pressure necessarily but how important was it for both Jannik and the team to come out on top on this one?

DARREN CAHILL: I don't think it was any more important than any other major that he's played. You're right, there's been a little bit of stuff that's gone on over the last six months, both in Australia, which I thought he managed incredibly well. Got beat by a better player in the semifinals who took his chance and played amazing tennis in Novak.

Was challenged here in the first round. Came back, won a five-set match, which was really important for his psyche, for his belief. Got better and better as the tournament went along.

It was important. I think what happened in Paris, just one of those things. You know, it's not something we can put our finger on and know exactly what happened. He went away and did what he needed to do with the testing and made a few changes to his preparation, the way he prepares for the hot days.

But don't really know it was that in Paris. It was just one of those things we don't really have answers for. It goes to show the maturity of the player that we're working with in Jannik, that he can take a kick in the guts like that, come back here, work his ass off.

We got here 12 days early, didn't play a lead-in tournament, so we knew the first couple matches were going to be really difficult for him to get through. He just puts his head down and goes to work. He's had a great attitude throughout this entire tournament.

He's going to have a long, distinguished career. He's going to put himself in a position to win more of these majors. I don't think this one was any more important than any of the others that he's played, but it felt damn special, that's for sure.

Q. Beyond this tournament, Jannik has had this incredible start to the year at the Masters level, so how much of a priority are the Masters, Montreal, Cincinnati, as he is more than halfway to the possible history of winning the nine?

SIMONE VAGNOZZI: We didn't think about Montreal and Cincinnati right now. For sure, Masters 1000 is really important tournament after the slams. So we are going to speak tonight, probably tomorrow, and we see how we plan the schedule.

Right now we don't have answer for this question.

DARREN CAHILL: There is a difference, though, between Canada last year compared to this year. There were only two weeks last year. The compressed schedule made it really difficult if you made it through to the final weekend at Wimbledon to go out and front up for Canada.

There's three weeks. It's on the schedule. We'll sit down as a team and work out what his schedule is moving forward. The Masters 1000 events are incredibly important. We have full intention to make sure we put him in the best position to do well.

Q. Zverev started really well. How strong did Jannik have to be mentally and physically to turn that around today?

DARREN CAHILL: I really thought that was an amazing performance by both players today, but especially Jannik, because Alexander, we've had glimpses of him trying to play that way in previous head-to-head matchups. The first set in Miami, when he came out, he was unloading on every single forehand, playing really aggressively, served really well, had a couple chances early in the first set in that particular match as well. We knew he's capable of doing it. We just didn't know how long he could do it for.

When you try to push yourself to redline on a particular shot, Centre Court Wimbledon, final against Jannik, he did amazing. He nearly won that second set, nearly got a two-sets-to-love lead. If he continues to play that level of tennis and that style of tennis, he's already a problem, but he's going to be a major problem moving forward.

Now that he's got the confidence of having won a major, that win in Paris, you can just see the way he's walking around the court now. He's got more belief. He knows that he's capable of winning seven matches in a major. Yeah, he's a great player. We have the utmost respect for Alexander.

Q. I wanted to bounce back on one of the things you said, Darren. You said you still never know what really happened in Paris to Jannik. How did you decide what had to be worked before Wimbledon?

DARREN CAHILL: His medical records are his medical records. We won't speak about any of that.

But it's up to us to make some changes, to do some little things differently. Jannik has spoken about that before. Nothing specific, I don't think he's really mentioned.

You can probably even see during the matches he leaves the court now after a couple of sets, goes and changes, walks into the air-conditioning, changes his shirt, even if he doesn't have to.

He's getting in a routine on the warmer days to make sure he's doing everything possible to make sure he can play these top level on those super, super hot days.

Look, he's a redhead that lives in the north of Italy, that grew up in the snow and the Alps. Hot weather is a little bit different for him than it is for most people.

The more time he spends in the heat, the better he's going to be at it. We already saw here. I think it was one of the hottest Wimbledons, right, on record. He managed through that incredibly well. We might even make some changes to the pre-season, chasing the sun a little bit more, getting him more acclimatized to playing in these types of conditions.

He did amazingly well these entire two weeks.

Q. We've seen Jannik continuing to evolve his game, playing with more variety. Do you have any thoughts on the next frontier? Where does he go from here?

SIMONE VAGNOZZI: For sure we are really happy how improve his game in the last five years. And for sure there is room where he can still improve.

Today he didn't make any serve and volley, I think. There was a 3-4 rally where he couldn't come to the net. He didn't close to the net and then he lost the point. There is always room where we can improve.

I think our project is always to be more aggressive, so try to go more to the net, try to make some more dropshots sometimes.

DARREN CAHILL: Less dropshots when you're serving for the match (smiling).

SIMONE VAGNOZZI: He took some painkillers.

DARREN CAHILL: Had to take a couple Advils after that (smiling).

SIMONE VAGNOZZI: This one, for sure.

Also, I think for this kind of player, it is tough to go on court every day without a project. So just to maintain themselves is really tough. So every day you have to go with something in the mind and try to improve something.

DARREN CAHILL: One of the great things also with the golden generation that we've just had is watching Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, and Murray evolve their games through the years as well. They never stopped. They never stopped trying to improve. They pushed each other incredibly hard.

Alexander is now playing a different style of tennis against Jannik. We know Jannik is going to have to improve in certain areas to handle that type of game. Carlos is going to come back really strong, as well, as we all hope.

At 24 years of age, to have a long, successful career, you need to keep adding things to his game. The stuff that Simone and he are doing on the court is remarkable . They work on the little things every single day. Then you need the matches to try to put that into play.

We saw a lot of the stuff he doesn't normally like doing, even in the final today. Sliced backhands, a couple lobs, couple dropshots. Really stepping up when he needed to in the big moments. Instead of being defensive and waiting the opponent to come to him, he took it away from his opponent. They're all really great things for us to look at from a coaching perspective.

Q. Darren, is there any bet going on between you and Jannik this year? Any thought that you would like to share with us today about your choices in the end of the season?

DARREN CAHILL: No bet this year (smiling).

Q. No choices?

DARREN CAHILL: No. I'm here until the end of 2026 and then we'll see. I did say I was finished at the end of 2025. I turned around and changed my mind.

No, we'll get through to the end of the year. We'll sit down as a team and talk about what is best for Jannik.

Q. This is the second year in a row Jannik has had a tough loss in Paris and came here and won the title. What are you and him doing to reset so quickly? Do you think it makes his Wimbledon titles more impressive?

DARREN CAHILL: Actually, we spoke about that before the match. It's funny you bring that up. His career at the moment, he's had an amazing career, for a 24-year-old, to be doing what he's do, putting himself at the top of the game, to continually get to the latter ends, apart from that Paris tournament, to give himself chances to win these tournaments.

There's been a few kicks in the stomach along the way. Tough losses. The match points against Carlos the previous year. What happened to him at Roland Garros this year.

But probably what makes us the most proud of him and working with him is the way he comes back from those. It doesn't put him down for too long. Obviously he's disappointed after those moments. But it's a day later. We get a phone call. All right, boys, what are we doing? Let's get back on the court. What are we working towards? What's the plan? Where are we going? What do we need to do to get better?

That's his attitude in tennis and it is his attitude in life. That's why he's so great to work with. We spoke about his resilience in those moments, being able to come back and be bigger, stronger and faster whenever he has a bad moment.

In this final he needed that to get through this match because he was tested badly against Zverev today. He showed amazing resilience. If you don't have those tough moments, maybe you never grow like he's been able to grow. We look at it as a big positive in his personality.

Q. Jannik was pretty frank when Carlos announced he was going to be missing the French Open about how differently he looks at the draw when he's gone. I don't want to overstate that, but I wonder when Carlos announced he was going to be missing Wimbledon, you guys were interested to see how Jannik would respond mentally, if anything would change in how he reacts to being the No. 1 guy and not having someone else to measure up against?

SIMONE VAGNOZZI: You know, when you play Grand Slam, you have six round before to go to the final. So Carlos and Jannik is always really far in the draw. So normally we don't think too much about this. We try to keep always easy thinking match by match.

What we always say in the team is, Every match is a final. So it's normal then that your big opponent is out, maybe the pressure is little bit more, but we try to keep it easy and think always day by day, match by match.