When Günter Bresnik speaks, one should listen. Ion Tiriac once ennobled the Austrian championship coach with the words that he was “the only person in the world who knows something about tennis”. In an interview with the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Bresnik gave another sample.
“A good coach doesn’t give the player what the player wants. But what he needs,” Bresnik explained at the French Open, underlining at the same time the great relationship of trust between him and Thiem, which he began to promote at the age of eight. “I never tipped him off if it turned out to be wrong. That’s why we share a basic trust.”
The relationship between coach and student in tennis may seem funny: the player as boss who hires or dismisses the coach… Bresnik uses an interesting comparison for this: “The trainer is in a dependency relationship. But when the player tells the coach what the coach has to do, it’s like when the patient tells the doctor how to treat him. I’ve never been at the mercy of a gambler.” One advantage for him: economic independence right from the start.
Even though he had travelled a lot at the beginning of his coaching career (“I had to learn”), Bresnik is now taking himself out, also for family reasons. No problem for Thiem. “It would be bad if he depended on me. A good car doesn’t always have to have a mechanic around.”
With 57 years Bresnik surprises only little – neither to euphoric, nor in worse times, in which many demand that Thiem look for a new coach. “If he wins something, everyone is upset. And if he loses early, they say he’s a dud anyway. I taught him these mechanisms early on. That doesn’t irritate him anymore.” Neither is monotony an issue in training. “I wouldn’t have a problem until I was standing on the court and I didn’t know what else to practice with him.”
In a world where everyone communicates and there is more talk than is good, Bresnik’s attitude seems wonderful. “I’m sometimes amazed at how much certain coaches talk to their players. I think: “Talk is silver, silence is golden,” he says. “I stand up, shut up, and when I see something really important, I wait for the right time to tell the player. That could be on the drive to the hotel or on the flight home.”
Read the complete interview with Günter Bresnik in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung here!