By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Sunday March 9, 2025
Indian Wells, California – Stefanos Tsitsipas was enjoying poorly and never discovering methods to channel the advances he was making on the follow court docket into his matches. He needed to do one thing about it – so he did.
After his title in Dubai final month – his first on a hardcourt since 2023 – he posted a quote on social media: “They mentioned my sport was sinking so I bought myself a ship.”
Extra: Tsitsipas Talks About New Racquet After Dubai Triumph
Requested to elaborate on that assertion on Sunday, he talked about his struggles to reporters within the BNP Paribas Open major press room.
“The previous couple of months weren’t superb for me,” he instructed reporters after his 6-3, 6-3 takeout of Matteo Berrettini on Sunday at Indian Wells. “I did not have any large outcomes or victories that I might say that I am headed in the direction of course with my sport. So I really feel like that caption form of was a abstract of the previous couple of months.”
Tsitsipas is all the time fast to put up a humorous quote on his X account, so a few of the issues he says may be taken with a grain of salt, however this one rings true for the Greek. He was out of types along with his sport, and struggling to search out his footing once more after dropping out of the Prime 10.
“I similar to slightly little bit of that humor like that. Does not damage,” he mentioned.
It’s no secret that Tsitsipas has not too long ago began utilizing a brand new racquet. With out naming names – it’s nonetheless a blacked-out body he touts – he pointed to the explanations for the change with out truly mentioning the change throughout his press convention.
“I used to be looking for methods to enhance,” he mentioned. “I really feel like a few of my opponents that I bought to play have been overpowering me and doing issues significantly better than me when it got here to enjoying larger tennis. My complete profession I have been recognized to have the ability to play large tennis nevertheless it wasn’t sufficiently big, and I felt like I needed to do one thing about it.”
Reportedly his new racquet has a 16” x 20” string sample, which provides him each extra spin potential and extra energy. Some reporters say that Tsitsipas’ groundstrokes have been shut to five MPH greater than they have been previous to the shift.
On Sunday Tsitsipas was assertive from begin to end. He dropped simply eight factors on serve and cleaned up most factors with serve-plus-one. He’s clearly a extra assured participant than he was a month in the past, earlier than the brand new racquet and the brand new strings.
“It felt like I wasn’t in a position to exit on the court docket and actually do this to the extent that I used to be doing it in follow,” Tsitsipas mentioned. “I used to be enjoying follow units, and I used to be enjoying very well. I used to be profitable quite a lot of the follow units towards good opponents. It is simply that it did not click on when it got here to the match, and I needed to wait slightly longer for that.
“With a number of extra adjustments that I added to my sport I felt prefer it added quite a lot of confidence stepping out onto the tennis court docket.”
#Felt