US OPEN

September 6, 1997

Brian Teacher

Q. Brian, you obviously heard the answer that Greg said about the depth of the game. When you were playing, do you know what --

BRIAN TEACHER: There's so much more money in the game. I think with the money, more kids want to play tennis. I mean, gee, we have probably 500 to 1,000 guys on The Tour, satellite players, this and that. Even the satellite players are very tough. You have guys coming up from the satellites that beat guys on the regular Tour fairly consistently. It's a revolving door now. Before, when I was playing, it was like, you know, you'd look at the draw and you'd see guys that you knew you weren't going to have too tough of a time. Yeah, it exists a little bit still, but not to the level. I mean, sometimes you could go two or three matches and think, "I'm not going to have much competition in these two rounds." It just doesn't happen. Now, it's like, you get in the first round, you have to be ready to roll, otherwise you're going to be out of the event.

BRIAN TEACHER: How did I come to work with him? I was kind of out -- you know, I had worked in coaching about four, five years ago with some guys, Jimmy Grabb, Richey Reneberg, Derrick Rostagno. I kind of worked with that group for about six months. I had some property development going on at Telluride. I had a decent experience with them. I had some business to attend to, that I got back into. I got finished with that, moved on to another project in Colorado. That kind of culminated, as far as what I needed to accomplish there. Then I basically was talking to Brad Gilbert, telling him I'd been out of coaching for a while, like to get back in it, "Can you help me?" Brad's agent was John Mayotte. John is Greg's agent. John was trying to find a coach for Greg. He talked to Brad and Brad recommended me. So we hooked up about 15, 16 months ago in May. I actually flew to St. Polten, which was the week before the French '96. That was really the first week that I met Greg. It was at a tournament. It was kind of a funny time to start working on his game. But at least, you know, that was the best we could do under the situation. It was then that I started learning about his game. I'd seen him play. His father sent me a number of videos. I'd seen him play in the past. I hadn't seen him play a lot in the last couple years. It was a learning experience for me as well as him.

BRIAN TEACHER: The best qualities? He showed a lot of determination and guts and willpower. I thought the second and third sets were very one-sided. Jonas was playing extremely well. It was like the first set was, like, too good to be true. I mean, Greg seemed like he played flawless, hitting everything he tried. Jonas really had trouble getting his, you know, racquet on the ball when Greg was serving. He was a little tentative. But, you know, in three out of five sets, it's too good to be true that that is how the match is going to go. I knew Jonas was too good, he was going to start playing better. Sure enough, not only did he start playing better, he played great. In the fourth set, Jonas, I don't know exactly what point, he made a couple errors, Greg made a few good shots. Next thing you know, the momentum, literally it just flip-flopped. It flip-flopped after the first set, flip-flopped in the fourth. It was like Greg broke once in the fourth. I was thinking, "It would be great to hold here." He didn't hold. He broke back. He finally held. Then he got a little steam going. I just knew at the start of the fifth set that he was going to be more pumped up and moving better than he was in the second and third. Sure enough, he really did. He pumped himself up. The adrenaline carried him through there.

BRIAN TEACHER: Let's see. Well, today is?

BRIAN TEACHER: On Thursday he started actually coming down with something. We hit a little on Thursday. I noticed that he had a little -- his voice was getting a little rough, sounded like he was getting a cold or virus or whatever. So we had a decent hit, the same that we'd be doing every other day. I talked to him later that night. His voice, you know, it got considerably tighter. You could hear it. He was like (indicating). He could hardly talk. He went to see the doctor. The doctor advised him, you know, "Greg, whatever it is, virus, bacterial, I'm putting you on antibiotics and just rest tomorrow." You know, I certainly wouldn't want to go against what a doctor is saying. It would have been nice if he hit, but at the same time I was feeling, "Look, if he's not feeling well, instead of hitting, I'd rather have him have all his energy and rest up than hit. He's hit enough tennis balls." Throwing him out of his rhythm, not hitting one day, is not as important as him feeling well for the match. Obviously that's what he did. It was a good move.

BRIAN TEACHER: Before he lost to Pioline, yeah. I was concerned with that. Before he lost to Pioline at Wimbledon, we were supposed to practice the day before, and we'd been hitting on the off days every day. I was waiting at Queen's Club for him to come over. He got stuck in traffic, he couldn't make it. He couldn't hail a cab. He called a cab, they were going to come. Didn't come. He waited for like 45 minutes. He was out in the streets trying to get one. Finally he called up the Queen's Club a little like an hour after we were supposed to meet, said, "Forget it, too aggravating, I don't need to hit." That's what happened. I was concerned that, you know, maybe the same thing would happen. And it didn't.

BRIAN TEACHER: That's funny. I certainly -- yeah, I'd say I did see the potential of a Grand Slam finalist and a Grand Slam winner potentially. I didn't see it at that time that we would be sitting here 15 months later and him having the opportunity to do it. No, I didn't. That's like too much of a fantasy from where we were 15 months ago. But I did see that certainly he had the weapon at the time, which was his big serve. He's got a big forehand, and he volleys well. I saw the makings of it. It's been a building process, you know. He surprised me. I'd be the first one to say that.

BRIAN TEACHER: Certainly. I mean, you know, Greg didn't expect to be in the Finals here. But, hey, we're here. We're going to make the most of it. He's got a great shot tomorrow.

BRIAN TEACHER: Well, I don't think the work in December had anything to do with the mental toughness of him getting through the fifth set. That completely, you know, had to do with Greg and the guts and stuff that he wanted. That comes just from the will and determination of the player. They both had moments of getting a little nervous here or there. You'd see how the match would switch back. I don't think anything of the work had anything to do with his fifth-set win today. It's just been a gradual building process. You're seeing here a player emerge all of a sudden and hitting his peak. He's improving not only in front of my eyes but in front of everybody else's eyes, too. That's a beautiful thing, as far as a coach is concerned.

BRIAN TEACHER: Absolutely. He's got a lot of room for improvement. There's no question. He doesn't know how much room for improvement he can still have. I see it, you know. Maybe he does. But he's doing just fine as he is. He's doing fantastic.

BRIAN TEACHER: Greg can improve literally every aspect of his game. You would look at his serve and say, "Can he improve his serve?" He's got one of the best serves in the game. Some days he serves as well as anybody in the world. It's an incredibly consistent weapon. Maybe that's the one area that I could look at and say, "That's granted; that doesn't necessarily need any improvement." Everything else in his game, he can still do better. Sometimes he goes after his volleys a little bit more than others; he's a little more aggressive. Sometimes he gets a little standoffish. That's a correction that he ended up making today. Got aggressive, went after the ball. His forehand, it's a big weapon. Sometimes he makes a few too many errors on it. He takes too big of a swing. There's a few little technical things. His backhand is getting better all the time. There's no question that it's improving over the 16 months, and it's going to continue to improve.

BRIAN TEACHER: I don't think you can say, "Don't let the match get near a fifth set." I think you can try and say, "Hey, let's not try and battle Mike Chang from the back court. Let's not try to have 25-ball rallies. Let's take some chances against the guy, try and make the points a little quicker." I mean, you can't keep a match from going five sets. Nobody can do that. It's going to do what it's going to do. You can try and make the points a little quicker and take your chances when you see them.

BRIAN TEACHER: The next 24 hours? Not much in the next 12, 15 hours really. I mean, Greg's just going to go back and relax and get some dinner and call it a night or day. Really my role doesn't start again except to make sure that he turns the phone off and doesn't answer any calls, you know. I'm going to be sure and tell him that. Then, you know, my role tomorrow is just to get him going, see how he's feeling, make sure I try -- if he's got any negative thoughts and stuff. He seems like he's great mentally. I'm hoping I'm not going to have to do much but just warm him up. He wants to win this thing. He's got a real shot. That's more important than anything that I'm going to give him.

BRIAN TEACHER: I did have a little concern about that. We talked about it. You know, he put in it perspective. I felt he was going to put it in the proper perspective. I don't think he overdid it at all. He seemed pretty balanced about watching it, you know.

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