"He didn't want anything else to do in life, just tennis"- Apostolos Tsitsipas on his sons love for tennis

It was an emotional scene on Court Rainier III after Stefanos Tsitsipas clinched his second consecutive Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters title on Sunday as he immediately went to his box to embrace his parents.

Tsitsipas’ father, Apostolos Tsitsipas, is one of his coaches. After his son’s victory in the Principality, Apostolos told a story of a memory from around Stefanos’ 11th birthday. He said:

“I remember we were in the North of France in Normandy, and he won a masters. He asked to participate in a junior French tour, and he won the masters of four tournaments. He was one of eight best players and he won the masters. I remember the night before we flew back to Greece, he was not sleeping. He was super excited and he came to me and asked me if he could play only tennis and [not] do anything else in his life, because he feels really great [on] the tennis court.”

As a high school teacher at the time, Apostolos knew exactly what his son told him realizing that he wants to be a professional tennis player. He further said:

“I believe one day telling the opinion like this, it's exactly what they have inside them. So my difficulty actually was to manage to bring the best out of him from this dream and this will he had to play tennis.”

His family plays a very big role in his life his father further explained:

“During his career, it's very important [for] the parents to be around, because it's a very hard life, traveling. It's really hard week after week traveling. At some point he starts losing [and that is] orientation of what's happening in life. But if the family is around — like it's proved this week, when all the family is here, because we now live in the South of France — for him [it] was much more comfortable, it feels like home. That gives him extra strength, I believe.”