By Chris Oddo | Wednesday October 5, 2016

Former ATP World No. 6 Jose Higueras joins the Tennis Now Podcast to talk about his role as the USTA’s Director of Coaching. Since taking the job in 2008, Higueras has worked hard to instill a winning philosophy among the Federation, its coaches and its players. Since he began his tenure there has been a lot more emphasis on clay-court tennis and a culture of “earned opportunity,” one that has fostered a more competitive environment for American players, has developed and started to thrive.

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“Everybody is pushing each other,” Higueras said. “It’s very good camaraderie.”

But Higueras says the toughest part for America’s young players will be taking the next step. “It’s a big jump from the juniors to the pros,” he adds. “It’s very competitive… but I think we are in a good place, to be honest. And the whole idea is to try to keep sustaining that.”

A former coach of Michael Chang, Carlos Moya, Roger Federer and so many others, Higueras says he took the USTA job because he wanted to take on the challenge of affecting more than one or two players. He says it was extremely tough from the beginning, but as time has gone on things have fallen into place.

“Putting together a teaching and coaching philosophy,” was Higueras’ first mission. “Just to have a little more unanimity on how we do things—obviously respecting everybody’s individuality—but just to create a culture where we all agree on the basic things and try to bring the country together more and more,” he explains.

Higueras originally said the plan would take ten to fifteen years to get up to speed, and eight years into the job things have progressed quite nicely. The U.S. has a lot of young players in the pipeline and the culture of competition appears to be a driving force.

“It wasn’t easy,” Higueras says. “Especially at the beginning. Slowly but surely I can happily say that we are at a point where the country is working more and more together. The relationship with the coaches in general in the country is fantastic. And we feel that we have helped put together a big tennis family. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to say that once I took the job in the first year or two.”