Another factor is having a hitting partner – a role almost exclusively filled by men.<\/p>\n
While the biggest stars often travel with both a coach and a hitting partner, many players on tour cannot afford to bring both to every event. As a result, they opt for a coach they believe can fill both roles.<\/p>\n
Given that women compete against other women, why is a male hitting partner considered essential? Perhaps it’s not just the extra power and top spin on their shots, but the confidence they exude.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes we laugh that you can have male hitting partners and their ego is so big – they come and just think they know everything,” Zaniewska, 34, said.<\/p>\n
“When you’re top 100 or top 50, so much is about the mental game and believing in yourself and projecting confidence.<\/p>\n
“On that level it helps, because if you have a player that does not feel that you’re confident and [that] you believe in them and yourself – because it goes together – then they’re going to feel it very quick.”<\/p>\n
A high level of self-belief is something Martinez has been able to transfer to Andreeva.<\/p>\n
“She understands me more than anyone could,” the Russian teenager said 12 months before her triumph at Roland Garros.<\/p>\n
“She’s been through this. She’s also a woman. She’s played so many matches on tour, she’s so experienced. She’s a Grand Slam champion.”<\/p>\n
Zaniewska believes female coaches can sometimes be judged unfairly because they express confidence differently.<\/p>\n
“It’s not that females are more insecure, I wouldn’t say that,” Zaniewska said.<\/p>\n
“We just think more, so we’re more conscious of things. We really want to make sure that we figure it out before we give advice to someone.<\/p>\n
“That can portray a sense of insecurity sometimes.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another factor is having a hitting partner – a role almost exclusively filled by men. While the biggest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":721067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-721066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/721067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}