“Not Just Vanilla”: Darren Cahill shares how Novak Djokovic’s honest advice in 2022 changed Jannik Sinner’s game

Darren Cahill, Jannik Sinner's coach, shared how Novak Djokovic’s words helped him improve in the past. The 38-year-old faced the 23-year-old in the semifinal of the French Open on Thursday, which did not go his way.

Sinner came out on top in straight sets with a score of 6-4, 7-5, 7-6 in a match that lasted over three hours. It was the ninth meeting between the two players, where Sinner now leads 5-4. He has now won their previous four meetings.

Things were not the same when they started to face each other back in 2021, where Djokovic dominated the first five meetings, winning four of them. One of them was the quarterfinal at Wimbledon in 2022, where he emerged victorious in a five-set thriller despite losing the first two sets with a score of 5-7, 2-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2.

Sinner’s coach, Cahill, spoke to TNT Sports before the semifinal on Friday and shared how Djokovic’s words helped him become a better player. He stated that listening to words directly from a player who has won 24 Grand Slams in his illustrious career helped Sinner have a real ‘perspective’ about where he needed to improve to become one of the best players in the world.

“Novak was one of the guys that I just went up to and straight asked him after Novak beat Jannik at Wimbledon in five sets,” said Cahill. “And a lot of the best players will say “Yeah, he’s a great player, he’s gonna be good. He does everything really well. Keep working hard, all the sort of vanilla stuff, but not Novak. Novak kind of broke his game down where, hey, listen, he needs more variation and needs to improve that serve, he needs to come to the net a little bit more, and he really helped us. Not that we didn’t know where the improvements were going to come from, but more for the fact that Jannik hearing it from Novak gave him a real perspective as to where he needed to improve. So Novak was really helpful to us three years ago in making sure that we’ve made those changes in his game.”