Between takeaways and takeoffs

Here it goes: The last blog entry of 2025. A bit overdue for different reasons, but here it is anyway. While all of you hopefully started the year well, I will reflect a little on 2025, share personal thoughts about the December departure to Australia, and give a small outlook on what to expect from the blog next year.

Despite 2026 being already under way, I will end the blogging year 2025 with a proper, more varied entry, prompted from ChatGPT – like always. I must say, with every new update, the entries get better and better. Almost as if I was writing them. Okay I’m joking (maybe not), but all entries are created and written by myself. Like this one, written on an airplane somewhere above the Australian coast.

Let’s get a little more serious with a quick lookback at 2025. From a sportive perspective, it had everything: the highest highs and the lowest lows. From career achievements like qualifying for Wimbledon the first time or making it to the second week of the US Open, all the way to 2 surgeries and countless rehab hours - last year really had it all. I definitely hoped for more weeks on the tour, more tournament experiences, and learnings, but we can’t always choose. So, I took what was given to me and tried to make the most out of it.

Looking back, I don’t think I have learned any less than if I had been on tour more - just different. Plus, those 8-10 weeks of competition really were intense. More specifically, I feel that I learned a lot about 2 major things: the way of communicating, and coaching in a way that guides someone to learn by their own - as Darren Cahill once said: the approach of “coaching yourself out of a job”.

Communication is one key part of coaching, especially in a one-to-one setting or within a small team. Giving advice, addressing conflicts, listening or sharing opinion - a lot of conversations can go in the wrong or right direction simply by choosing the right words, tone or energy when entering them. It’s something I find incredibly interesting and I want to get so much better at (I’m currently reading the book called “How to communicate to anyone”).

The “coaching yourself out of a job” is a bit more complex. It’s learning that giving solutions to problems or answers to questions can be very satisfying in the short term, but from the perspective of a player’s self-growth, it’s not always the best approach. Guiding someone in a direction so they can learn things on their own is far more sustainable, but it also requires much more brainpower, ideas, and especially patience. Sometimes it even means watching someone make a mistake (within reasonable limits of course) without interfering, so that we come out on the other side more experienced. And believe you me, that can be very unsatisfying at first. An approach to this type of coaching is for example trying to ask as much questions as possible. I heard this from Ben Shelton’s dad, and I really liked it – it encourages the player to think and reflect.

So these were two big takeaways for me last year, there is another one too, but I’ll talk about that in a future blog entry.

Next comes the departure in December to Australia to kick off the new season — the first time for me. The practices themselves are nothing special: a lot of hours on the court and in the gym. But for me, a weird and new feeling was the casual way the tennis world talks about going to Australia. Having never been there before, nor anyone in my family, Australia was always this once-in-a-lifetime place, somewhere you would go for a couple of months. That’s not the case in tennis. In the tennis world, although it’s one of the best trips of the year for most players, Australia is just another tournament trip. Yes, the flights are longer, but the stay there is not much longer than the US or Asian swings. You go there, play your two or three tournaments, and then you go back. For me, that was weird. On one side, being excited about going to Australia; on the other, preparing and packing for a tournament trip like any other. It’s easy to take it for granted because it’s “just for the job,” but I hope I never will.

Purposely, I will not include any of the Australia experience so far, so his entry doesn’t get too long and so I can dedicate Aussie stories to the January 2026 blog.

Speaking of 2026, I want to mix things up a little with the blog entries. First, I want to promote it more and try to reach around 100 subscribers (currently at about 50). Second, I want to include a mini-series called «travel diaries» where I’ll share one insight or story from traveling. And third, I’m thinking of bringing back the Quote of the Month.

If you have more ideas or suggestions, feel free to write to me on social media, in the comments, or directly via “Feedback” under the “Contact” page.

For now, that’s it for this blog entry — and for 2025. I wish everyone a great start to 2026, and I’ll see you soon back here, between the lines.