Tiafoe For Mayor: Affable American Finds His Focus In 2018

Frances Tiafoe is a bit too busy to be launching any political campaigns. But when the 20-year-old, who’s making his Next Gen ATP Finals debut this week, finds the time and energy to devote to politics, one of the people who knows him best thinks Tiafoe might be a natural for the field.

Nearly three years ago, when trainer Paul Kinney started working with Tiafoe, the teen-aged American was playing ATP Challenger Tour events. Tiafoe’s outgoing and laid-back personality endeared him to nearly everyone – players, officials and organisers – at every tournament.

Kinney remembers Tiafoe’s morning routine as follows: First, he’d set his bags of gear down at a table to eat breakfast, but then he’d see someone he knew and stroll over to them to talk, then there was someone else and someone else and someone else and someone else. Twenty minutes later, Tiafoe was left scanning the room, trying to remember where he rested his racquets.

Kinney called him “The Mayor.” “You’re meeting with all of your constituents,” Kinney joked.

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Tiafoe is still as outgoing and energetic as ever, but this year the affable right-hander has found a way to balance the jokes with the work and have his best year yet.

Before 2018, he was 9-29 in tour-level matches. Too often, he’d get close to the end line but fall short. He was 4-13 in deciding sets.

But Tiafoe enters the Next Gen ATP Finals, which starts Tuesday, with a 26-23 record this year, including 11-8 in deciding sets.

“I had a ton of tight matches with a lot of guys, but I always took the short end of the stick. Now I’m beating these guys,” said Tiafoe, who used to play defensively during big moments late in matches. “Now I’m feeling really comfortable when it gets tight. I actually embrace it, I want it… Now I just take it. If I’m going to lose that way, that’s fine.”

Watch: Tiafoe Qualifies For Milan

The on-court change stems from an overall new mindset that Tiafoe has carried with him this year. His coaches and Kinney all say that the right-hander is taking more ownership of his career and applying what he’s learned from his first two years on tour.

His coaches see it in the way he pays more attention to details in planning meetings, such as when they discuss upcoming goals or practice agendas.

“He’s asking more questions about his tennis, he’s trying to prepare a little bit better than he used to,” coach Robby Ginepri told ATPWorldTour.com. “Before, he would just show up and just thought he had to hit a yellow tennis ball and whatever happened, happened.”

Tiafoe said: “I think I’m just holding myself way more accountable, just really believing.”

The accountability extends to his work with Kinney as well. Besides his daily town hall meetings as “The Mayor”, Kinney remembers Tiafoe as a teenager with few, if any, routines.

Even the way Tiafoe dressed himself in the morning changed from day to day. “Shoes, shorts, shirt. Sometimes it was shirt, shoes, shorts… Everything was just kind of, ‘I’m going to throw on whatever I’m thinking’,” Kinney told ATPWorldTour.com. “The one routine that he had that was consistent wasn’t his alone: When you wake up in the morning the first thing you do is roll over and grab your phone.”

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That routine is why, in the beginning of their partnership, Kinney had to take Tiafoe’s phone away from him for an hour so they could get their work done. “Those people writing you, they aren’t going anywhere. Those text messages aren’t going to get deleted,” Kinney would say.

But slowly, Tiafoe has matured, and Kinney has helped him establish routines that have led to another injury-free year, despite the fact that Tiafoe more than doubled the amount of tour-level matches he played, from 2017 to 2018 (24 to 49).

“The best part is his trainer Paul Kinney has kept him healthy all year, and he’s been able to play a long, full season,” Ginepri said.

Tiafoe thought his long 2017 campaign would also finish in Milan. Zack Evenden, Tiafoe’s assistant coach and hitting partner, said the group thought it was a given Tiafoe would be among the world’s best 21-and-under players at the Fiera Milano during the inaugural event.

But Tiafoe finished 110 points behind final qualifier Daniil Medvedev of Russia. So this year, Tiafoe and his coaches wanted to leave no doubt.

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“We didn’t want to cut it close; we didn’t even want to think about it,” Evenden told ATPWorldTour.com. “We knew we were going to be in Milan by the end of the season.”

Ginepri views the event as another folder in Tiafoe’s growing portfolio of experiences, a binder that may one day include a trip to the season-ending Nitto ATP Finals, where the top eight players in the world compete for the season’s final title.

“[In Milan,] you get a chance to see what it’s like to play late in the season, like at the Nitto ATP Finals, where ultimately these guys want to play in their career,” Ginepri said.

The coach, however, isn’t expecting Tiafoe to take advantage of one of the tournament’s key innovations – the availability of mid-match coaching at the end of each set.

The maturing Tiafoe, Ginepri said, can usually problem solve well on his own, as he’s shown throughout the best year of his career.

“He might not even utilise me to be honest,” Ginepri said. “He feels his way around the court pretty well.”