"I Felt Like I Had To Do One thing About It" – Tsitsipas, On Ending His Dropping Methods

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 courtroom 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 recreation was sinking so I acquired 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 predominant press room.

“The previous few months weren’t wonderful for me,” he advised reporters after his 6-3, 6-3 takeout of Matteo Berrettini on Sunday at Indian Wells. “I did not have any massive outcomes or victories that I may say that I am headed in direction of a very good path with my recreation. So I really feel like that caption type of was a abstract of the previous few 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 might be taken with a grain of salt, however this one rings true for the Greek. He was out of types along with his recreation, and struggling to seek out his footing once more after dropping out of the Prime 10.

“I identical to slightly little bit of that humor like that. Would not harm,” 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 really 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 acquired to play have been overpowering me and doing issues significantly better than me when it got here to enjoying greater tennis. My whole profession I have been identified to have the ability to play massive tennis but it surely 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 larger 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 courtroom and actually try 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 rather well. I used to be successful a number of the follow units in opposition to 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 couple of extra modifications that I added to my recreation I felt prefer it added a number of confidence stepping out onto the tennis courtroom.”