YOSHIHITO NISHIOKA ON THE BENEFITS OF A HIGHER RANKING - ‘Before I was seeded at Grand Slams I was looking at the draw ceremony and thinking that I didn’t want to play Djokovic or Medvedev and those top players, but now that I’m seeded I don’t have to think about that and then I can focus on my tennis for the first few rounds’.
YIBING WU ON MAKING SACRIFICES - ‘In the past two years I’ve only been home once and I didn’t have that much time because I’m now based in Florida. It’s very tough not to see family, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices to achieve your goals’.
ZHIZHEN ZHANG ON IS TENNIS IDOLS - ‘All the time was Roger Federer, but there was one moment for Safin because they had a great match in the Australian Open semi-finals as they had a five-setter, so in that period it was for Safin a little bit, but all the rest was for Roger’.
JUNCHENG SHANG ON HIS PARENTS - ‘My dad was a professional footballer and my mum played table tennis, they were both professional, so I was lucky to have two athletes with me telling me their experiences and that’s been helping me a lot’.
BENJAMIN EBRAHIMZADEH ON HIS COACHING PHILOSOPHY - ‘As a coach you need to understand the person first. You need to understand how to talk to them, how to approach them and you need to understand their story a little bit, because the story comes out in the stress moments. It’s easier to have the understanding sometimes of why things are happening, because when you have certain situations in your life, they can be expressed in the match’.