August 29th, 2011
Reeves Wiedeman has a great Grantland profile on Ryan Harrison. (He’s this year’s Donald “Future of American Tennis” Young.) It’s full of all the usual tennis ridiculousness. Here, for instance, is Ryan’s dad, a minor professional player who acts as his kid’s coach:
Harrison was spending 30 hours a week on the court, often waking at 6 a.m. to hit 5,000 tennis balls a day. He was homeschooled — Susie, his mom, was a high school teacher — while Pat, who had a brief professional career, handled the coaching duties. “I actually still am his main coach,” Pat told me recently. “I’m still the guy he calls when there’s six rain delays at Wimbledon. Ryan knows there’s nobody in the world that knows the game better than I do.”
Nobody? In the whole world? Not one single guy out there, anywhere, who knows the game of tennis better than Pat Harrison?
Now I don’t know Pat Harrison, so maybe he really is the smartest tennis mind on the planet.
But probably not.
No comments yet, be the first:
