Coco Vandeweghe has begun her 2015 WTA season by making an impact. She moved up to a career high of #32 in the world after she reached the third round of the recent Australian Open. In the last twelve months Vandeweghe moved up over eighty spots in the rankings. She made her WTA debut in the 2007 Acura Classic in San Diego. In 2014 she won her first WTA tournament at the Topshelf Open grass tournament in the Netherlands, beating Zheng Jie in the final. Since her strong showing at the Australian Vandeweghe has been selected to the USA Fed Cup which will be played on the outdoor red clay courts at the Pilara Tennis Club in Buenos Aires, Feb. 7-8. When I spoke with Vandeweghe she was on the way to the airport to catch a plane to Argentina where she will join her Fed Cup team-mates, Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Taylor Townsendand seventh year Fed Cup captain Mary Joe Fernandez.
SZ: I read that you played competitive basketball until you were fifteen years old. What events shifted your attention to tennis full-time?
CV: I always played tennis, basketball and multiple sports. Basketball was a sport I always played. My mom didn’t really want me to continue to play basketball because she loves tennis. She fell in love with tennis after her sporting career in volleyball and swimming were over. She felt that tennis would be a better outlet for me in the sporting world which I came to agree with later. At first I thought my mom just didn’t want me to play basketball anymore which being a 14/15 year old kid drove me to play even more. But then there was a season where I ended up missing a couple of team practices for tennis and vice versa missing tennis practice for basketball. The girls began to take on the attitude I wasn’t committed to the team. So I wasn’t getting the ball passed to me. I was getting shunned out a bit. At that point I decided I didn’t need this and that I could play tennis which doesn’t require team-mates.
SZ: Is basketball part of your cross training? 
CV: I still play sometimes. I don’t participate in pick up games or anything to protect myself from being hurt. But my coach, Maciej Synowka likes to play so I get him to play every once in awhile.
Examiner: Now that you have been a touring professional full time for a few years how has your coach/player relationship changed from the juniors to the pro’s? Who sets your training goals and directs the course on what you need to improve on to become an impact player?
CV: The way I’ve been doing this in the past year and a half with Maciej is we set our goals before the season begins. I write out what I think I can accomplish and he writes out what he thinks I can accomplish and we develop a mix of both of our goals. That dictates the training regime of what we are going to do. Maciej is in charge of the training on the court. Off court I have another trainer who works with me.
SZ: Does the training include nutrition?
CV: Everything is included and everyone is on the same page being aware of all my goals. The trainer in the gym knows my tennis goals and Maciej even though he is my tennis coach knows the goals I want to accomplish in the gym.
SZ: If anything shifts during the season like your great results at the 2015 Australian Open and now this invitation to represent the USA in the Fed Cup do you re-set the goals?
CV: I reset them. My goals at the start of this year was to make the third round at a Grand Slam event. To this point I hadn’t gone that far in a Slam. Once I accomplished that it means we reset our goals. For example, let’s see if reaching the second week of a Slam is in the cards for this year, stuff like that. We definitely reset the goals after the accomplishments are reached.
SZ: The goals are flexible through-out the season.
CV: Definitely.
SZ: Does Maciej travel with you full time or just attend the big events?
CV: He travels with me full time.
SZ: What are the responsibilities of a traveling coach to help you prepare for matches and during the tournament?
CV: Basically to make my life as easy as possible. He books the practice courts and makes sure that I am still on the practice list, scouts opponents, books transportation to and from the tournament site and basically all the miscellaneous things that a player needs to do to be ready to play. He takes the weight off my shoulders.
SZ: What personality traits do you value the most in Maciej that helps you play up to your potential?
CV: Well he’s sitting in the back seat right now, (laughing). His philosophy is more of what I grew up with. My first coach was my mother. She was my volleyball coach even though I didn’t last long in volleyball. She was always coaching and she definitely had a stern coaching philosophy from her own sporting life. (Tauna Vandeweghe swam for team USA during the 1976 Summer Olympics in Canada).My mom’s philosophy was that if you’re not working then someone else is working harder than you. There is always more you can dig out of yourself. That was kind of the parameters I grew up with. Maciej being from Poland has that Eastern European mentality, kind of old school thinking. He doesn’t coddle my feelings. We are out there to achieve our goals. I also think a big factor, which you have to grow into over time in working or traveling with a coach is the trust factor. That the coach is putting everything that they have into your success, just as much as you are.
SZ: It’s a professional team investment and partnership. As a touring pro your schedule takes you all over the world which means different time zones, temperatures, playing surfaces etc. There are all sorts of apps available on the market to log sleep, hydration, work-outs etc. Do you use any of these devices to keep track of these off court statistics?
CV: I work with a company called APS. They provide me with electrolytes, protein powder and other vitamins that I may need depending on where I go. I am pretty consistent taking my vitamins in the morning and making sure I get enough sleep. I just go about doing what I would do at home and try to keep things as normal as possible.
SZ: You had a significant win during this years Australian Open against Sam Stosur. Coming into the Australian had you prepared any differently?
CV: Yeah it was a pretty difficult off court season that I had. We were really focusing on our goals and I had a huge ranking jump last year 2014. I started the year at #120 and finished the year in the top 40. That’s a significant leap in a year. I also won my first title and reached a lot of the goals and dreams that I had as a kid. Reaching my goals was a great accomplishment last year. But then it’s 2015 and a new year and we need to improve. So we sat down before the season started and set goals. We looked at what I thought hadn’t worked well in the 2014 season and what I thought I could improve on. We looked at the game tactics my opponents were using against me. We devised a plan and tried to execute it as well as we could.
SZ: Do you watch video of opponents to identify play patterns?
CV: I watch a lot of my own videos and notice how I played against opponents seeing both the good and bad match outcomes. It’s not always fun to watch the disappointing matches but I sit down and watch even during the off season. I watch my performance during good and bad matches and study the different types of players, the hard hitters to the counter punchers and everyone in between that we have video on.
SZ: In your interview at the Australian Open you mentioned that during your first round match against Francesca Schiavone you were quite nervous. Your coach said he doesn’t train you to be nervous out on the court. Do you have a system that you use to mentally prepare yourself?
CV: I think you’re always going to have some nerves, some level of adrenaline pumping, because of the excitement of competing. If I’m not feeling that then I feel like something isn’t right. Either I didn’t prepare or I’m just not ready to play in some form. The Australian is the first Grand Slam of the year and playing a complex player who was top ten in the world and a Grand Slam Champion (Francesca Schiavone won the 2010 French Open Singles), and a player I had never beaten it was kinda….I mean we worked on it for the next match when I played Stosur because she was another difficult opponent. That match was also played on an even bigger stage as we played on one of the tournament show courts and playing Stosur the hometown favorite. You just have to manage what you can. During my match against Francesca it was very simple I was not going to change any game tactics. I was keeping it as simple as hitting every ball crosscourt. It didn’t matter to me if she hit five hundred times to my backhand. I was going to hit five hundred more times back to her backhand. I wasn’t going to change anything because at this point in time I didn’t know where my feet were landing. I had no idea what was going on at the end of the match. I couldn’t tell you what the score was. I just knew I had won. It was an unbelievable kind of feeling out there that I had never quite felt of nerves. But it was the best I had managed them.
So before my match against Stosur my coach said, “We don’t train for you to put all those hours in the gym and potentially for you to make a huge mistake and blow your opportunity because you’re nervous. Play like you can’t miss a ball.” That’s how I was thinking when I was playing Stosur. I went on the court prepared to play like I can’t miss a ball. This is my court the surface I train on when I am home. I wasn’t going to miss a ball. Whatever she hits I can’t miss it. That’s all I was thinking about.
SZ: So you don’t do any mental training like breathing, slowing things down, or defining a focal point on the court to re-center yourself between points?
CV: I actually learned those skills from my grandfather (Ernie Vandeweghe, played for the New York Knicks), he always would tell me to play fast when you’re winning and slow it down when you are losing.
SZ: It allows you a longer presence on the court to figure out how to get back into the match. It sends the message “I’m staying to play and figure this out. You will need to beat me.” Every sport has a form of this. In football when a field goal kicker comes on the field and prepares to set-up to kick often an opposing team calls a time out. It’s called “Icing the kicker.” Game tactics.
CV: I learned about breathing during my time playing basketball shooting free throws because I never practiced enough to be confident in shooting free throws and making ninety percent of them. So I learned to develop a rhythm and routine. In tennis every time I set up for a return of serve I stick to my rhythm, routines. Those are things an opponent can’t touch or move. As a player it’s all under my control.
SZ: The following round you lost to Madison Brengle who is ranked below you in the WTA this year. After your win against Stosur what was the rest of your day like? Did you have time to process and and plan for the match against Brengle or were you still processing the match and the high of your win against Stosur? What was the atmosphere like for you?
CV: It was quite a bit different. My match with Stosur finished after midnight because we were the second evening match. I didn’t get to bed until probably 3:30am. What many people don’t realize is that after a match player’s are responsible to meet with the press and other obligations. Along with that is to fit in your match recovery which for me is an ice bath and other things I need to get done with the physio. It takes time. I spent two hours just taking care of my own recovery process, and also finding food. Normally I’m in bed by 9:30pm. I typically don’t stay up late. The next day I had t.v. interviews to do and different media responsibilities that I normally don’t have. The change in routine messes up your daily rhythm.
SZ: Do you think that those things influenced your readiness against Madison Brengle?
CV: Yeah, I mean you’re at such a high and everything like that, that if you’re not used to doing something everything is so new so it puts you a bit out of your comfort zone.
SZ: Your wins against Schiavone and Stosur were a nice validation of your skills and abilities. Your next event is participating as a Fed Cup player in the match against Argentina which is being played Feb. 7 & 8. What’s the plan to acclimate?
CV: I wasn’t planning on playing Fed. Cup because I was asked pretty last minute. I had been preparing for Dubai and Doha which are on hard courts. Right now the plan is to get to Argentina and get some practice reps on clay. I thought I had two and a half weeks to prepare for the next tournaments instead of four days. We’ll see what happens.
SZ: From Argentina are you going to Dubai?
CV: I have a tournament in Dubai, Feb. 16th, and in Doha Feb. 23rd. Then I return home to prepare for Indian Wells.
SZ: Coco I appreciate you taking the time for this interview. Best of luck at Fed. Cup and the rest of your season you’re off to a great start.
*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro
*This article can also be read @ Examiner
*Thank you to Getty Images & Hannah Peters for photos
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