Isner emerges from funk
Doubles win helps open path to Miami Open title.
John Isner had time to kill. After a first-round loss to Ryan Harrison in Acapulco, Mexico, in late February, Isner was hanging his head. He had lost his first match in four of the five tour events he had entered in 2018, even falling in the first round at the Australian Open to 78th-ranked Matthew Ebden.
“I was losing so early in events, and when that happens your confidence gets shaken,” said Isner, 32, who had won 12 ATP tournaments in his career but had never advanced beyond the quarterfinals at a major. “I didn’t have the feeling of making it deep into a tournament, and when you lose early, you have five, six, seven days to think about it.”
He did not need to arrive in Indian Wells, Calif., for his next tournament until the following week, so Isner made a three-day stop in Los Angeles to work with Justin Gimelstob, one of his three coaches. Gimelstob, a former tour player who also works as a television commentator, had accompanied Isner for three years until family issues forced him to curtail his travel.
“I have tremendous belief in him, I always have,” Gimelstob said. “People always oversimplify John because they think he’s all serve, and he should be able to win that way.”
Isner and Gimelstob did not make any major changes in those three days. Instead, they focused on adjusting small things like Isner’s footwork on the forehand, the position of his outside leg on the backhand return, and his racket position on the volley. They even tweaked the toss on his serve, even though the 6-foot-10 Isner has hit a staggering 8,800 aces in his 11-year career.
By the time Isner arrived at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, he thought he was ready to win. Instead, he fell to Gaël Monfils, 6-7 (5), 7-6 (3), 7-5, in his first match. Isner even held a match point with Monfils serving at 4-5 in the third set.
Yet again, he had time off to wonder what had gone wrong. But he was also in the doubles event with fellow American Jack Sock, giving him a reason to stick around and someone to practice with
and to hang around with at day’s end. They beat Bob and Mike Bryan in the final.
“We just kept it loose, and I was able to stay in match mode,” Isner said. “It helped so much to win the tournament. I was able to get that winning feeling back.”
When Isner arrived at the Miami Open two weeks ago, he was feeling physically fortified but still a little shaken mentally and emotionally. He and David Macpherson, his day-to-day coach, dissected past matches during nightly dinners, and Isner confessed to having some inner demons that were preventing him from closing out contests.
“People think when you’re struggling and not winning matches it’s because you’re not working hard,” said Isner, who said that he gained a new perspective on his tennis, and his life, when he married longtime girlfriend Madison McKinley in December. “That’s the biggest misnomer in tennis. All of us work hard. I know I do. But I also needed to put in some mental work with my coaches. I had to be a little bit vulnerable in hashing out what I’m feeling in the big moments and what was preventing me from playing my best in those moments. I had to get it out of my system.”
The result was a more relaxed and free-flowing Isner, a player who cracked groundstrokes with new aplomb and roared through the Miami Open draw, upsetting second-seeded Marin Cilic, fifth-seeded Juan Martin del Potro and fourth-seeded Alexander Zverev to capture the first Masters 1000 title of his career.
Two weeks shy of his 33rd birthday, Isner is the oldest first-time Masters 1000 champion. The victory also catapulted him to a career-high ranking of No. 9 and gave him the largest payday, at almost $1.5 million.
Over the weekend, Isner and the United States took on Belgium in the Davis Cup quarterfinals in Nashville, Tenn., trying for a win that would put the team into the semifinals in September against either Croatia or Kazakhstan. Isner and Sam Querrey won matches Friday to give the Americans a 2-0 lead in the quarterfinals, with Isner beating Joris De Loore 6-3, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (8), 6-4.
The last time the Americans reached the semifinals was in 2012, when they lost to Spain. It has been 11 years since the United States, behind Andy Roddick, James Blake and the Bryan brothers, won its last Davis Cup.
Jim Courier, the U.S. Davis Cup captain, went into the weekend planning to play Isner and Querrey, his two highest-ranked players, in singles, and then make a doubles decision among any number of combinations at the last minute. Courier was particularly encouraged by what he saw from Isner in Miami.
“I was equally impressed by the velocity on his backhand and the quality of his forehand return,” said Courier, who is in his eighth year as the American captain. “In the past, he used to hang his head when things weren’t going right. He just needed to see some positives and the benefits of his hard work.”
The American Davis Cup players are close friends — practicing, playing doubles, even trash-talking through spirited poker games together.
Gimelstob said that sense of camaraderie and teamwork, as well as managing expectations, might have helped propel Isner to a new height in singles. “John knows that it’s not supposed to be easy and you have to expect adversity,” he said. “Tennis is not like team sports where you can pass the ball. In an individual sport, you have to be the center, the point guard, the forward and the shooting guard, all in one. He’s always been second-guessed throughout his career as to whether he can be more than just a server. Now he knows he can be.”
‘People think when you’re struggling and not winning matches it’s because you’re not working hard. That’s the biggest misnomer in tennis. All of us work hard.’ John Isner
Miami Open winner