Emilio Sanchez: transcription and translation of an extensive interview.

[I get cramps]

Horacio de la Peña- I often watched you on the circuit. And I would ask myself: "But how does this guy get these results?" Your ball had pace, but it didn't stand out. But you fought like a dog. You were winning 8-6 in the third, on clay and using the technology of yesteryear. You'd shower, go out, play the doubles, and win that, too. The next day, you'd come back and be in the same state of mind. How did you do it?

ESV - Fighting like that for so many days during the year was hard for me. I don't know if you were there that year [1987) in Kitzbühel when I beat Mecir in the tournament final in five sets. ESV won in four sets. There was rain on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. We started the tournament on a Friday morning. I played two singles matches and one doubles match. I played two singles and doubles on Saturday morning. Sunday morning, I'm in the singles and doubles finals. I played Mecir in five sets [they played four] and then the doubles final. We won. I played nine matches in three days. By the end, I realised I had to go to the hospital for a check-up.


When we played, we became accustomed to giving 100% and then regrouping to recover and perform at our best. Today, "refilling the tank to perform again" is the hardest thing for professionals. It seemed normal to us when many of us were playing singles and doubles.


HDLP: When I was studying you, I saw you played 27 singles finals and won 15 of them and 79 doubles finals. It's impressive what you did!



ESV- [laughs] It's not much besides Rafa or Vilas and people like that. However, when you put it all together to compete, you realise your serve is good, your second serve is very good, but it's not special either. Your forehand is good but not unique, and your backhand and volley are not exceptional either. At the end of some matches, I left the court happy, considering the weapons I had.




HDLP - I know you've thoroughly studied the game. So you're not running away from here without giving me answers—everything you didn't want to tell me when we were competing.



ESV - [laughs] In these times of COVID, I will happily share whatever you want with you. Besides, in conventional interviews, you don't have time, nor do they ask you anything that interests you because the person interviewing you has no interest in understanding the game or love for it. So squeeze me a little! [laughs].


To be a professional player, what do you need most?


ESV - First, the aspiring pro player today must learn to deal with frustration. We are experiencing a significant issue today. Currently, with social media, including Instagram... It's all beautiful. Everything is beautiful! The present player has minimal capacity to accept the error. In today's society, mistakes are frowned upon. The ability to learn from and move past mistakes in the next game is a gift. That gift predisposes you to play in a much better condition at the next point or game.

Being able to allow yourself to make "embarrassing" mistakes. "Look, the player is a top ten and shot the ball to the centre strap anchor!" Then, the player walks around the court, spends a lot of time with the towel, laughs, and gets ready to serve. And what follows is an ace of his own.

Let's say you take a guy with good hitting quality in front of his body. After impacting the ball, he always makes up space to have time to recover the centre. Creating time for the next shot is critical, especially for those who don't have great shots... I remember when I was commentating matches, and Moyà, on his forehand side, could take a coffee with it fully ready and still hit the ball in front of himself and break your head. However, on his backhand side? He had no time! Moyà didn't have a poor backhand, but he didn't have the time on his backhand side to create a play. Moyà would have been a deadly player had he had the same time in both wings. He could have opened a lot more courts.


If you add to these two things the ability to suffer and the hunger not to give up in the face of anything, you have a powerful combination. You will continue to improve your game throughout your career. When they are young, they may have many gifts, but they are in a moment of progression that is not linear. They are going up a ladder. If the player loses hunger at any point, a problem will arise.


I'm not sure if the same thing happened to you as it did to me. When I was young, I didn't mind losing games. But there came a time when the defeats marked me. Because I already had a more comfortable place. I lost that ability to react to improve that little thing you lack. When you stop wanting to be the best, your decline begins. Who can avoid it? These "privileged ones," Well, Sampras, Agassi,... They can return after a few crises in which they don't get a ball inside the court. They can face their fears and bring something new to their game. With the young kids you work with, you can identify all this. You know which of the kids is going to get it. You explain a concept or complex technical aspect, and you look into their eyes, seeing that they don't understand you, but you persist because they keep trying. Suddenly, they are doing it.


Two words are noxious in the youth sports environment for me: potential. This kid has potential, but what does potential mean? Nothing! The kid who is said to have potential has done nothing!

You can have the potential to become somebody. I also want to be an Einstein or a critical scientist. But can I put myself in a laboratory for thirty years to be a sort of Einstein? No! "But I'm talented; I'm super-talented! I know the perfect formulas, the mixtures of products!" But can you spend years mixing grams and milligrams...? No! However, I've potential because I've won two matches. I always ask them: What have you won to feel that way? And they can answer: I've won the national, regional, or international championship, or I need to know what. I almost don't remember who won the different masters last year. How can I remember who won the under-eleven tournament in Tejeringo el Chico in the Alps? Of course, that match in the Alps is crucial for that kid. It becomes transcendent for him because: "I want to win in the Alps, in Switzerland, in the Spanish championship..." Then we create these characters and these situations that end up hurting a lot because there are excuses everywhere: the light was bothering me, and the wind and a UFO passing by...


Do you remember Muster? After beating Becker in the quarterfinals in Monte Carlo, I lost to Muster in the semifinals. [His memory fails him; he beat Boris in the quarterfinals of Monte Carlo in 1990, but the one he lost to in the semis was Chesnokov. He never played Muster in Monte Carlo.] The first semi of the tournament ended, and only four of us were there.


Our match lasted almost three and a half hours. I have three stained shirts, all of which are covered in dirt, sweat, and filth. I'm alone in the locker room, and I've been sitting there for fifteen minutes, defeated. Suddenly, I hear a banging noise all over the locker room. So I'm walking around in a daze to see what's happening. And suddenly, I find Muster on the floor with a medicine ball that I don't know how many kilos it weighs. He's doing sit-ups with it. And I asked him, "What are you doing? And he said, "My exercise plan is three hundred crunches." I said, "But we just played for three and a half hours!" he said, "Yes, but I have to do them." Hey, I would go to serve when I finished a match; we used to do crazy things.


So, when different players told me, "Muster is so and so, or something else, or he behaves in this or that strange way, or Muster, I don't know what, I used to tell them: "No, Muster is a gifted player, he is a guy from another planet."


HDLP: Why did you achieve so much in tennis with so little?


ESV - I had an essential progression as a player.

I told my coach, Pato Alvarez, "I can't be just a clay court player who plays a few months a year. " The result was disastrous at the beginning, and I was already among the 30 best players in the world. I would spend five or six months in the U.S. and not win a single set. I remember being in Houston, having six or seven weeks in the U.S., and losing all the time.

They would tell me if I had vinegar for breakfast; my anger was continuous.

One day, when I was in an ATP indoor tournament in Houston, I threw a ball out of bounds on the singles court. Enraged, I threw my racquet, and it traced a boomerang trajectory upwards and exploded a lamp in the stadium. Pato Alvarez left and, five minutes later, showed up with a police officer. "Sir. Emilio Sanchez?" I raised my hands and said, "It's me. " "You're under arrest. " He put me in handcuffs, and I said in anguish, "But I just threw a racquet. No! I won't do it anymore! The police officer grabbed me, took me to the police car, and I cried: "No! And I heard: "They have filed a complaint against you, and we have to take you to the police station.


The police car took me away. I was in total shock. No, it was more than shock. The car turned around and went back to the stadium. I never threw a racket again.


I went to Wimbledon and lost in five sets to someone I don't know, possibly a court attendant who stopped by to buy peanuts and played against me [1986, British player Stephen Botfield, ranked 458].


I could play the games with my groundstrokes but couldn't hurt my opponents. I couldn't have the initiative with my serve, and I had a lot of difficulties in the game. But I took advantage of my serve on fast courts and clay.

 

[InsuranceMan]

I know him personally, good guy from my experience. He helped develop Jerry Shang.

 

[I get cramps]

2)

Suddenly, after three months of playing matches in the U.S., in which I did not win a set, I went to train for the last tournament of the tour. When I saw Pato Alvarez, I told him, "I am going to play well," and he answered, "Why?" "Because I can see the ball; I can see it big!" Pato looked at me as if I was crazy.


My opponents had always pushed me, and I saw I could make them from now on because I could see the ball. Consequently, I could take the initiative and open the court, then do some damage and see if I could break serves.



[I'd like you to please forgive my digression. I think these observations about how ESV developed his serve might help explain ESV's statements from now on and why he ended up playing well on the hard outdoors, and to illustrate the point and demonstrate that there was a significant disparity between the balls used in the tournaments being played at the time. Emilio (laughing and not complaining) describes the balls used on the outdoor hard courts of his time as small bullets.]



HDLP - When you served, you did it with many parabolas [he's exaggerating]. How did you do it? You used your legs well; you rotated your hips and shoulders well. No matter what anyone says, you invented the kick serve out wide [Horacio continues exaggerating], and everyone else did it.



ESV - It's amusing because I remember serving very straight when I started, without good direction. In my generation of juniors in Spain, David de Miguel played the most elegantly and hurt us all the most. David was the most gifted among us; he was spectacular and had good drop shots and lobs.



There was also Jordi Bardou, who I couldn't hurt at all with my game. He had an alarming ease; it was impossible to beat the inertia of his racket.



I tried to play doubles with Sergio Casal in '84 [Emilio was born in 1965], and I could not serve to get to the net in doubles. We played against Chris Lewis and Wally Masur. It was a thrashing. It was a scandalous thrashing. Sergio was three years older than me, and we stopped playing together. For starters, because I was losing all my serves. And I was already 150th in the world. I became 50th in the world in 1984. I lost in the fourth round against Connors* at Roland Garros, but I didn't have a serve.


*Emilio started using his backhand slice for the first time in an official match against Connors because of the pressure Connors put on him. Jimbo eliminated Martín Jaite in the third round and warned Emilio that the American would take the Spanish player's time away in his forthcoming match with Jimmy.



In one practice, I looked at Jordi and thought: "Why does he serve so easily"? I was dying of envy! I thought about how I hit with a lot of force, and the ball came out straight, and Jordi went like this [this gesture that he doesn't explain verbally]

, and his ball came out at 124 mph, and he got countless aces.


I played in the final of the Spanish championship with Bardou, and he taught me a lesson! I walked around all smug, the mega crack [laughs], the new Spanish hero, and so on.



Pato Alvarez always showed me footage of Steve Denton, Curren, and Lendl. And he would say to me: "Look, how do they release the hand? But I didn't see it, so I copied Bardou's serve while doing buckets! And I did this [the gesture he doesn't explain and refers to with the demonstrative pronoun: this]. So, from then on, I had more angles and doubled the speed of my serve. If you can serve practically flat, sliced, and topspin with almost the same movement and the same toss, your opponent will have serious problems reading your serve.


This serve did that when I was both on the advantage and deuce sides. I had a serve on the deuce side that went to the other box, and I need to figure out how to explain it often to people when I show it. I could see the net and the sideline, and I had practically no room because the other player faced that way, but I knew that if my ball bounced in that little square next to the short line near the net, it would go out wide.

From then on, my career changed. In my third and fourth years as a professional, I was a competitive player on clay, particularly on clay, where I played with lively balls and in conditions as fast as possible [altitude: Kitzbühel, Gstaad & Madrid, five titles].


HDLP - Please wait a minute. I saw your wrist very loose when you served, but you gripped the racquet tightly with your hand.



ESV - I had just changed my grip. I started to play with a more open grip, more continental. The shots then don't come naturally. You need to feel your new grip and, therefore, the ball. Horacio, when I make a speech, I have a ballpoint pen that I constantly squeeze in my hands. Wasn't there a side of the racquet that became your hand over time?



Do you remember Lendl? Lendl, when he was about to serve, it seemed that the racket's handle was a can of mussels, and he was turning his hand and squeezing the can to open it. He would lay the racquet flat, like Raonic. My prestige was like a piece of a tree, but I needed it to feel the ball well. By the way, I still play with it. I tried to find another racquet, but it didn't work. I need a leather grip and gut to feel the ball even today, especially for serving.



On critical points, you have a considerable advantage if you have a shot that you can hit without having to think about it, and it pushes the opponent or gives you a point. You are playing against Stich or Sampras's second serves, and there is no way to get good returns with their second serves. The angles that Stich opened and the places in the service box where he could place his ball were astounding. When I played in 1994 against Sampras in Indian Wells, there was no way to return his second serve!


HDLP - Tell me about your forehand.



ESV - I used to wait for the ball, maybe a little too long, although I would back up quickly to give myself time if I had to respond to a good hitter, and I would recover my position quickly. I had a heavy forehand, not a fast one, suitable for opening the court. As time passed, I got to transfer the weight very well, and then I could get winners. In our time, tennis changed. Borg caused a meaningful change in the history of modern tennis. Before Borg, we have Connors, Segura, McMillan, or Gene Mayer, all two-handed, flat, or sliced. Gildemeister sliced an incredible number of balls. But no player has had Borg's impact on our sport. Over 90% of players use the two-handed topspin backhand repeatedly.



Lendl, Mcenroe, and Connors played with such depth that it was no longer possible to always walk to the ball. They started to receive the ball, as Vilas and Connors had done before, but not to that extent. We started to put our weight on the back foot.


Lendl begins to play a bit further back but more aggressively. Lendl does not hit at the moment of the ball's fall but at the climax after the ball bounces. It already forced the players to adapt.



When we have tennis players without mirrors because they make tremendous differences, tennis changes a lot. We are about to see how much Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic have changed tennis; we have already seen something. Now, it is played much faster. It is played on the back foot because, faced with such speed, it gives you security and time.





I saw Djokovic and Federer playing in the Grand Slam Cup; they looked like twins. They are searching for time. I shift my weight to the backfoot to receive the ball and transfer the weight forward.

 

[Frankc]

Just amazing detail and candid thoughts from one of my favorite players to watch - the USO 5 setter with Mac is an astounding match in the NYC heat...
Thank you for posting...

 

[sandy mayer]

The picture I get here is that Emilio Sanchez developed a good all round game but no real weapons, and that his success was built predominately on determination and stamina. I find it hard to believe he was as ordinary as this given his results: highest ranking 7, 15 ATP titles, and quarter finalist in Roland Garros and the US Open. Is this really correct?

 

[Dane_is_Finnish_OJ]

The picture I get here is that Emilio Sanchez developed a good all round game but no real weapons, and that his success was built predominately on determination and stamina. I find it hard to believe he was as ordinary as this given his results: highest ranking 7, 15 ATP titles, and quarter finalist in Roland Garros and the US Open. Is this really correct?

He had a really good volley and was fast. Very nice forehand and just never missed. Almost always sliced his backhand, watched him a lot back in the '80s where he was always a contender on clay.

 

[I get cramps]

It is open to debate.

I would like to finish with the transcription and translation.

After losing to Mcenroe in the “famous?” five-setter they played in the fourth round of the Australian Open, Emilio underwent a crisis and decided to retire. That defeat hurt him severely. He told his coach Pato Alvarez on the plane trip back from Melbourne that he didn't see how it would be possible for him to win a slam.

Emilio's backhand slice hurt Muster; their head-to-head is 5-4, Mecir (3-3). And his slice also made Bruguera's life difficult until 1991. It was a slice with a very short swing*. If you have time, you can watch the Barcelona native win the first set of the Rome tournament final on YouTube (you can see the ball clearly) by 6-3 serving & volleying with his first serves. He serves with quite a lot of kick, and his backhand volley is good. Against Mancini and on clay, he doesn't use the deep, weightless slice he is known for, but a slice that skids a lot. I don't know if the correct verb in English would be “bites.” He is not known for how he executed this last stroke. The hand and tip of the racquet did not move at all; he went through the ball and used his legs very well.

Emilio could win points with his forehand because he was comfortable if he had to lean on his backfoot, receive the incoming ball, never take it on the rise, “put the ball to sleep,” so to speak, and hit with disguise and weight then. Even if he opened the court with the third ball after serving himself, he kept advancing on the court thanks to his great wheels and forehands, which helped him hit the ball cleanly, displacing his opponent and closing the plays at the net.

Emilio started his career as a pro hitting all his backhands with topspin, but his grip was almost continental when he hit with top, and in the exchanges this made him lose court having to back up because he could not hit with depth against the top players. That grip did not give him enough strength to hit with top, and he required too long a takeback when he needed topspin. He could fake a slice to his opponent with his wrist and hit with topspin at the end. He would also hit passings that were a mix of flat and topspin.

He did not see a way, as Corretja could do years later, by changing heights to recover ground and be closer to the baseline. Emilio played much closer to the baseline than almost all his Spanish successors.

On the fast courts of his day, he lost more meters on the backhand side than on clay against players who did not necessarily have great shots. Emilio did not have a backhand lob either, but he had a very good offensive forehand lob, which was very well measured, which he perfected by playing so many times and doubles tournaments.

*He explains in a lot of detail why it should be done that way and the correct mechanics of the backhand slice: defensive or offensive.

As I commented, I would need more time to transcribe and translate Emilio's interview so that I can record it for you.

IMHO, if we assess a player inch for inch, Emilio had a very good serve. Although he is listed at 5' 11”, he is 5' 9” at best.

Oh, and his overhead was top-drawer: the only match I can remember where he missed an overhead was at the Australian Open in '92 against McEnroe.