Larry Stefanki interview - Coaching Ríos, Henman, Roddick; Turning down Andy Murray

The Tennis Podcast

David Law

Tennis, Wimbledon, Sports, Sports & Recreation

4.6 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2019

⏱️ 82 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Larry Stefanki is one of the most respected and successful coaches in tennis. In this wide-ranging interview with David Law, Stefanki tells stories from his time coaching Marcelo Ríos, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Tim Henman, Fernando Gonzalez and Andy Roddick, and offers insight into what each player was like.

Why has he not spoken to Ríos for over 20 years? What was Henman lacking in the big matches? Were there similarities between Kafelnikov and Roddick? Why did he choose to coach Gonzalez rather than Andy Murray? And why did he think it was Roddick’s ‘destiny’ to win Wimbledon in 2009?

Plus, find out why Stefanki is strongly opposed to on-court coaching, what he makes of the Next Generation, who he thinks will end up with the most Grand Slam titles out of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, and what would tempt him to coach again.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm John McEnore. I'm Bjorn Borg. This is Martina Navratlova. I'm Matt Vylander. I'm
0:05.1	Stan Ravinka. I'm Lighten Youet. I'm Andy Murray and you're listening to the tennis podcast.
0:20.0	Hello folks, we have the US Open on the horizon but before then and all the daily tennis
0:25.7	podcasts that will be bringing you over the course of the fortnight, we have a very special
0:30.1	big interview guest today on a special separate show and it is Larry Stafanki who was a player
0:38.5	back in the day but he was also an absolutely fantastic coach. Coach John McEnore in the
0:44.1	sort of latter stages of his career helped him to a Wimbledon semi-final. He coached Marcel
0:49.1	Rios to world number one. You're going to confound the Covta world number one. He was in the corner
0:53.7	of Tim Henman and Fernanda Gonzalez and you'll probably remember most recently Andy Rodic of course
0:59.2	and that incredible 2009 Wimbledon final. He also had a couple of chances to coach Andy Murray which
1:05.8	he decided not to take and basically we've spent the hour and a quarter of this interview talking
1:11.7	about all of that. I personally think Larry Stafanki is one of the most fascinating people and
1:17.7	entertaining people to listen to in the sport of tennis that I've ever come across and I've wanted
1:23.2	to do this interview for years. It's one of those that I didn't really know whether he would really
1:28.9	remember me particularly. I worked with him but you're going back 20 years ago when I was on the ATP
1:35.8	circuit as a communications manager but I did know him a bit and I hoped that he would agree to
1:42.4	do this interview so what I did is I got in touch with a guy called Paul Little who's somebody on
1:48.8	Andy Rodic's team and still a good friend of his today still works with him today and is somebody
1:54.4	that I've got to know pretty well and just asked him if he wouldn't mind asking Larry for his phone
2:00.9	number and see if he might do this interview and then it was just a question of hoping that he answered his phone.
2:07.4	Yes, Matt, help you. Hello, Larry. How you doing? What's going on? Very good to hear you voice. Thanks
2:19.8	for making the time to do this given I know you like it about as much as Rook and I work.
	...

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