Patrick McEnroe is stepping down from his position at the USTA this year. Higueras will continue as USTA Director of Coaching
Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images
Jose Higueras was hired by Patrick McEnroe
in 2008 to oversee all of Player Development’s coaching for the USTA.
Higueras brought to the job a wealth of experience as a player and
coach. He has worked with a number of the world’s top players. The list
includes Pete Sampras, Jim Courier, Roger Federer, Jennifer Capriati and Mary Joe Fernandez. He was also Michael Chang’s coach when he won the French Open in 1989. As a player Higueras won sixteen ATP singles titles and was ranked as
high as sixth in the world. He was also played for the Spanish Davis
Cup for eight years.
SZ: I read that at age nine you worked as a ball boy at Reial Club de Tenis in Barcelona, Spain. How did you move from being a ball boy to learning to play tennis? Who discovered your talent and gave you the opportunity to train, grow and develop as a player?
JH: I started working at the Reial Club when I was nine. In those days ball boy kids were very poor kids that grew up without going to school. If you go to Mexico you still see that in some parts of South America. In the old days some of the best players or most of the best players in Spain like Manuel Santana, or Manuel Orantes were ex-ball boys like myself. As a ball boy you would work for two or three hours and always had spare time. So the ball boys would make a racket out of anything or a member would give them an old tennis racket.
Inter-club matches were always very big in Spain. There were the under 14’s, 16’s and 18 and under matches. At one point, sometimes the ball boys were better players than the clubs inter-club team. The club got smart and started asking some of the ball kids to participate in the inter-club matches to help the club win. From there on that’s how I got started. I started a little bit later than some of the other guys because I had to work until I was fifteen. I had the opportunity to play in an important inter-club match and ended up winning. From then on the club tried to help me more. Then there was a gentleman that was a tennis teacher at the club who was the most influential person in my tennis life. He was a great teacher and loved kids and loved to help people. He was the one that actually kept helping me all along. Then the Spanish Federation started to help me more and more.
SZ: That’s an amazing sequence of events. It takes that one person.
JH: I was also blessed with having a great family. My parents didn’t know what tennis was. They didn’t know how to keep score or anything about tennis. That was also a blessing because there was never any tennis talk at home. I knew they loved me and once again I was blessed with a great family. Everyone needs support along the way.
SZ: Growing up did you just play tennis or were you involved in other sports?
JH: When we had spare time we played everything. We played soccer, we played marbles, although it’s not a sport but in those days it was popular with kids. We started the day at the club at 8am and depending on how much the members would play, we may ball boy for four or five hours or on some days there wasn’t any ball boy activity. When I first began working at the club I was paid 2 1/2 cents and hour and when I stopped working it was 7 1/2 cents an hour.
SZ: Did you have the opportunity to attend school?
JH: One of the reasons I began working at the club was because we had a neighbor whose son was working there. The club gave us three hours of schooling a day and fed us which was a big thing in those days. But I didn’t go to high school or attend any organized school.
SZ: Your success is incredible.
JH: I am sure there are a lot of people out there that would do the same thing. You think about how much you want to do something and it’s motivational.
SZ: When I think of junior tournaments I think of learning by experience, playing lots of matches, seeing lots of different styles of play. Has the USTA considered the format for juniors 8-12 years old to move to round robin? Smaller tournaments that ensure players will have at least four or five matches per entry? A twelve game format with a tie-breaker?
JH: I am not informed on this because it’s not really what I do in my job position. But I think the main idea is to make tennis more attractive and fun for children by making it more of a team sport. There are so many kids that have so much pressure by their parents and coaches. They play tennis but don’t actually have fun and play implies fun.
SZ: Jose when you were competing as a child were you having fun? Did you feel the pressure of, “this is going to get me out of this situation.”
JH: That was my driving force. The teacher I told you about had some of the ball boys help him during the weekends with his tennis school. He was the best tennis teacher I’ve ever seen with children. He used to place a lot of ex-ball boys at clubs in Spain because his reputation was remarkable all over the country. Frequently clubs would call him and say, “Do you have any players to send us? We have an opening for a tennis teacher.” A lot of kids that were ball boys were placed in clubs as tennis teachers.
SZ: So it was a great opportunity.
JH: It was my only way really to get out of poverty.
SZ: Do you feel the format for junior tennis development in the U.S. is going in the good direction or would you like to see changes?
JH: If there is something that I would change I would expect the kids to have fun. I think having fun is a sign of a good teacher. I think if you have a program and you lose kids, more than likely you can’t look at the kids as being at fault. The kids should look forward to going to the program whether it’s entry level or advanced, the atmosphere has to be there and once again it’s supposed to be fun.
SZ: You were coaching Michael Chang when he won the French Open. The coached Jim Courier during the height of his success. How long had you worked with Chang prior to the Roland Garros Victory? How did you end up meeting Courier and deciding to work together?
JH: I started working with Chang in October of of 1988 and he won the French in 1989. I first met Michael when he was playing at the Orange Bowl. Then at the end of the year I took a part-time job with the USTA. When I took that job I began working with both Michael and Jim. Jim was already in the USTA program and I was still working with Michael then I received a call from Jim who asked me to coach him. Jim was a pretty good player when I began working with him. He was already ranked 30th in the world or some number close to that.
SZ: Do you feel you added you not only added strategic and technical information to their games but also bigger picture life perspective?
JH: I think life will teach you through experiences. What I try to do in my coaching and teaching is work hard, be resilient and patient. Set your goals but you’ve got to be patient.
SZ: Players become nervous before matches. It’s part of competing. When you were playing competitively what techniques if any did you utilize to overcome moments of nervousness in your important matches?
JH: As I became older I began to understand how the mind works. Basically for me it was about knowing that I was ready. That I had done all these things prior to going into tournaments to prepare myself. That was my main sense of security. I was also intrigued in those days about “the zone.” People used to talk a lot about, “He or she is in the zone.” I was intrigued until I came to the conclusion, my conclusion, not proven by any means, I am not an expert in that, but I came to the conclusion that my zone was an empty state of mind. Where the whole process was that I was so focused on what I was doing that there were no worries. That state once I understood how to get there more often brought me more success.
SZ: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi would call this this, “finding flow.” How do you help players get to that state. There is a lot of hoopla that goes along with success these days. Melanie Oudin, Coco Vandeweghe, Sloane Stephens all have had break through tournaments then slowed down their upward trajectory. They become “The New American Hope.” How do you help the young player think about putting that tournament aside and staying focused on their progress particularly when their success triggers a media frenzy.
JH: First of all I make sure that I don’t tell the players what they want to hear but what I think they need to hear in a very nice way. I put things in perspective. For example, when I work with a kid just by the way I go about our practices, I send signals to them in terms of where they are and the way to keep the player going. Normally the good players are really dedicated to playing. At the same time some of the players that think they are committed but the level of commitment isn’t really the level that is needed. In that situation you have a little more issue. But once again it’s about sending the signals and keeping the player very realistic. You are as good as you are. If you are one hundred and fifty in the world at this point you are one hundred and fifty in the world. It doesn’t matter how good people think you can be. Being realistic and at the same time giving the player the confidence that you actually believe that they can be great. Let them know they can be great but at the same time to be great you actually have to do a,b,c and you have to go through the process of achieving that.
SZ: Do you feel that there are more distractions for players when they have some level of success? Whether it’s television interviews, fulfilling endorsement obligations, commitments to corporate sponsorship etc. Do you help them keep those added engagement of their time in perspective?
JH: Obviously things are a little more complicated. Some players live with those things better than others. But once again this is what you do. You have to understand what success brings and what effect it can have on people. Especially children. There are two guys right now Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer that I don’t think we will see two players like this again for many years. They are two of the best champions I’ve ever seen. Not just because of their level of play but because the way they conduct themselves and how well they wear their status.
SZ: What advice do you give to the young players you work with today to settle their nerves prior to big tournament matches?
JH: Normally how you practice is how you will play. When you practice you experiment a little more with whatever it is you are working on. More pace or coming forward or whatever. Everything starts at the beginning which is practice so it becomes habit. Then it’s important to understand sometimes a player doesn’t lose but he/she gets beat. Your opponent plays better than you. I think number one a player should judge his/her results by how he/she played the match. Number two would be to be happy if you play badly but manage to win the match because that’s actually the sign of a good player.
SZ: Your official title with the USTA is Director of Coaching, which means you oversee all of the aspects of player development. I read an interview where you are quoted as saying, “We are lacking competitiveness in our players. They’ve got good backhands and forehands and serves but they lack understanding of how the game needs to be played. We have good coaches but the culture of our players needs to improve.” How has this situation been altered since you’ve come on board as Director of Coaching? Do you still see it as a weakness in American tennis?
JH: To be honest I think it’s still a weakness but it’s a lot smaller. The culture is changing. I think the dialogue in the USTA is changing. I didn’t change it. We all did. We’ve traveled around and have had a lot of interaction with a lot of coaches and players. Traveling around is a million times harder for me than coaching a player. Coaching a player is pretty easy compared to what I am currently doing.
SZ: Because you have a direct ongoing relationship with the player.
JH: Yeah I have 100% control of what I do and the effect that I have when I talk to a player. I think we are getting a lot better in that we have a good group of girls and a really good group of boys coming up. I think you can see slowly as you go like over at the Easter Bowl. The level in general is getting better. When the base gets bigger and gets better then I think we will see more and better players.
SZ: When I think of successful players from the past, I think of their intensity and inner drive to achieve. Besides being a talented athlete what qualities do you look for when thinking about whether a player has a chance to develop into a great player?
JH: Well a couple of things I look for that are important. First off is how badly does the player want to play/compete? I can only see that once I spend some time with the player. I will put them through some work that if they want to play they will go through it. The second aspect is I like to see them play. I like to see them play a set because I can see what kind of a tennis I.Q. they have and how resilient they are. Their character is the most important thing. It’s pretty amazing what an individual can do if he/she actually puts whatever it takes to get as far as he/she can. And that’s something that I think sometimes we over look.
SZ: Jose thank you for taking the time for this interview. I know how busy you are and are preparing to leave for the French Open. Best of luck to your players.
*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro
*This article can also be read @ examiner
SZ: I read that at age nine you worked as a ball boy at Reial Club de Tenis in Barcelona, Spain. How did you move from being a ball boy to learning to play tennis? Who discovered your talent and gave you the opportunity to train, grow and develop as a player?
JH: I started working at the Reial Club when I was nine. In those days ball boy kids were very poor kids that grew up without going to school. If you go to Mexico you still see that in some parts of South America. In the old days some of the best players or most of the best players in Spain like Manuel Santana, or Manuel Orantes were ex-ball boys like myself. As a ball boy you would work for two or three hours and always had spare time. So the ball boys would make a racket out of anything or a member would give them an old tennis racket.
Inter-club matches were always very big in Spain. There were the under 14’s, 16’s and 18 and under matches. At one point, sometimes the ball boys were better players than the clubs inter-club team. The club got smart and started asking some of the ball kids to participate in the inter-club matches to help the club win. From there on that’s how I got started. I started a little bit later than some of the other guys because I had to work until I was fifteen. I had the opportunity to play in an important inter-club match and ended up winning. From then on the club tried to help me more. Then there was a gentleman that was a tennis teacher at the club who was the most influential person in my tennis life. He was a great teacher and loved kids and loved to help people. He was the one that actually kept helping me all along. Then the Spanish Federation started to help me more and more.
SZ: That’s an amazing sequence of events. It takes that one person.
JH: I was also blessed with having a great family. My parents didn’t know what tennis was. They didn’t know how to keep score or anything about tennis. That was also a blessing because there was never any tennis talk at home. I knew they loved me and once again I was blessed with a great family. Everyone needs support along the way.
SZ: Growing up did you just play tennis or were you involved in other sports?
JH: When we had spare time we played everything. We played soccer, we played marbles, although it’s not a sport but in those days it was popular with kids. We started the day at the club at 8am and depending on how much the members would play, we may ball boy for four or five hours or on some days there wasn’t any ball boy activity. When I first began working at the club I was paid 2 1/2 cents and hour and when I stopped working it was 7 1/2 cents an hour.
SZ: Did you have the opportunity to attend school?
JH: One of the reasons I began working at the club was because we had a neighbor whose son was working there. The club gave us three hours of schooling a day and fed us which was a big thing in those days. But I didn’t go to high school or attend any organized school.
SZ: Your success is incredible.
JH: I am sure there are a lot of people out there that would do the same thing. You think about how much you want to do something and it’s motivational.
SZ: When I think of junior tournaments I think of learning by experience, playing lots of matches, seeing lots of different styles of play. Has the USTA considered the format for juniors 8-12 years old to move to round robin? Smaller tournaments that ensure players will have at least four or five matches per entry? A twelve game format with a tie-breaker?
JH: I am not informed on this because it’s not really what I do in my job position. But I think the main idea is to make tennis more attractive and fun for children by making it more of a team sport. There are so many kids that have so much pressure by their parents and coaches. They play tennis but don’t actually have fun and play implies fun.
SZ: Jose when you were competing as a child were you having fun? Did you feel the pressure of, “this is going to get me out of this situation.”
JH: That was my driving force. The teacher I told you about had some of the ball boys help him during the weekends with his tennis school. He was the best tennis teacher I’ve ever seen with children. He used to place a lot of ex-ball boys at clubs in Spain because his reputation was remarkable all over the country. Frequently clubs would call him and say, “Do you have any players to send us? We have an opening for a tennis teacher.” A lot of kids that were ball boys were placed in clubs as tennis teachers.
SZ: So it was a great opportunity.
JH: It was my only way really to get out of poverty.
SZ: Do you feel the format for junior tennis development in the U.S. is going in the good direction or would you like to see changes?
JH: If there is something that I would change I would expect the kids to have fun. I think having fun is a sign of a good teacher. I think if you have a program and you lose kids, more than likely you can’t look at the kids as being at fault. The kids should look forward to going to the program whether it’s entry level or advanced, the atmosphere has to be there and once again it’s supposed to be fun.
SZ: You were coaching Michael Chang when he won the French Open. The coached Jim Courier during the height of his success. How long had you worked with Chang prior to the Roland Garros Victory? How did you end up meeting Courier and deciding to work together?
JH: I started working with Chang in October of of 1988 and he won the French in 1989. I first met Michael when he was playing at the Orange Bowl. Then at the end of the year I took a part-time job with the USTA. When I took that job I began working with both Michael and Jim. Jim was already in the USTA program and I was still working with Michael then I received a call from Jim who asked me to coach him. Jim was a pretty good player when I began working with him. He was already ranked 30th in the world or some number close to that.
SZ: Do you feel you added you not only added strategic and technical information to their games but also bigger picture life perspective?
JH: I think life will teach you through experiences. What I try to do in my coaching and teaching is work hard, be resilient and patient. Set your goals but you’ve got to be patient.
SZ: Players become nervous before matches. It’s part of competing. When you were playing competitively what techniques if any did you utilize to overcome moments of nervousness in your important matches?
JH: As I became older I began to understand how the mind works. Basically for me it was about knowing that I was ready. That I had done all these things prior to going into tournaments to prepare myself. That was my main sense of security. I was also intrigued in those days about “the zone.” People used to talk a lot about, “He or she is in the zone.” I was intrigued until I came to the conclusion, my conclusion, not proven by any means, I am not an expert in that, but I came to the conclusion that my zone was an empty state of mind. Where the whole process was that I was so focused on what I was doing that there were no worries. That state once I understood how to get there more often brought me more success.
SZ: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi would call this this, “finding flow.” How do you help players get to that state. There is a lot of hoopla that goes along with success these days. Melanie Oudin, Coco Vandeweghe, Sloane Stephens all have had break through tournaments then slowed down their upward trajectory. They become “The New American Hope.” How do you help the young player think about putting that tournament aside and staying focused on their progress particularly when their success triggers a media frenzy.
JH: First of all I make sure that I don’t tell the players what they want to hear but what I think they need to hear in a very nice way. I put things in perspective. For example, when I work with a kid just by the way I go about our practices, I send signals to them in terms of where they are and the way to keep the player going. Normally the good players are really dedicated to playing. At the same time some of the players that think they are committed but the level of commitment isn’t really the level that is needed. In that situation you have a little more issue. But once again it’s about sending the signals and keeping the player very realistic. You are as good as you are. If you are one hundred and fifty in the world at this point you are one hundred and fifty in the world. It doesn’t matter how good people think you can be. Being realistic and at the same time giving the player the confidence that you actually believe that they can be great. Let them know they can be great but at the same time to be great you actually have to do a,b,c and you have to go through the process of achieving that.
SZ: Do you feel that there are more distractions for players when they have some level of success? Whether it’s television interviews, fulfilling endorsement obligations, commitments to corporate sponsorship etc. Do you help them keep those added engagement of their time in perspective?
JH: Obviously things are a little more complicated. Some players live with those things better than others. But once again this is what you do. You have to understand what success brings and what effect it can have on people. Especially children. There are two guys right now Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer that I don’t think we will see two players like this again for many years. They are two of the best champions I’ve ever seen. Not just because of their level of play but because the way they conduct themselves and how well they wear their status.
SZ: What advice do you give to the young players you work with today to settle their nerves prior to big tournament matches?
JH: Normally how you practice is how you will play. When you practice you experiment a little more with whatever it is you are working on. More pace or coming forward or whatever. Everything starts at the beginning which is practice so it becomes habit. Then it’s important to understand sometimes a player doesn’t lose but he/she gets beat. Your opponent plays better than you. I think number one a player should judge his/her results by how he/she played the match. Number two would be to be happy if you play badly but manage to win the match because that’s actually the sign of a good player.
SZ: Your official title with the USTA is Director of Coaching, which means you oversee all of the aspects of player development. I read an interview where you are quoted as saying, “We are lacking competitiveness in our players. They’ve got good backhands and forehands and serves but they lack understanding of how the game needs to be played. We have good coaches but the culture of our players needs to improve.” How has this situation been altered since you’ve come on board as Director of Coaching? Do you still see it as a weakness in American tennis?
JH: To be honest I think it’s still a weakness but it’s a lot smaller. The culture is changing. I think the dialogue in the USTA is changing. I didn’t change it. We all did. We’ve traveled around and have had a lot of interaction with a lot of coaches and players. Traveling around is a million times harder for me than coaching a player. Coaching a player is pretty easy compared to what I am currently doing.
SZ: Because you have a direct ongoing relationship with the player.
JH: Yeah I have 100% control of what I do and the effect that I have when I talk to a player. I think we are getting a lot better in that we have a good group of girls and a really good group of boys coming up. I think you can see slowly as you go like over at the Easter Bowl. The level in general is getting better. When the base gets bigger and gets better then I think we will see more and better players.
SZ: When I think of successful players from the past, I think of their intensity and inner drive to achieve. Besides being a talented athlete what qualities do you look for when thinking about whether a player has a chance to develop into a great player?
JH: Well a couple of things I look for that are important. First off is how badly does the player want to play/compete? I can only see that once I spend some time with the player. I will put them through some work that if they want to play they will go through it. The second aspect is I like to see them play. I like to see them play a set because I can see what kind of a tennis I.Q. they have and how resilient they are. Their character is the most important thing. It’s pretty amazing what an individual can do if he/she actually puts whatever it takes to get as far as he/she can. And that’s something that I think sometimes we over look.
SZ: Jose thank you for taking the time for this interview. I know how busy you are and are preparing to leave for the French Open. Best of luck to your players.
*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro
*This article can also be read @ examiner
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