By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Friday June 14, 2019
Olivier Jeunehomme joins the Lucky Letcord Podcast to talk about his early days with Justine Henin and the promising tennis of Dayana Yastremska.
Last week in Paris the Lucky Letcord Podcast caught up with Olivier Jeunehomme, a former coach and longtime collaborator of Justine Henin and the current coach of rising 19-year-old Dayana Yastremska.
Jeunehomme, who originally broke in with the Belgian Tennis Federation, spent two years in collaboration with Henin and her head coach Carlos Rodriguez, and it was this relationship that eventually led him to the Justine Henin Tennis Academy. These days he is traveling the tour with one of the most talented young players on the WTA Tour--Yastremska has won three titles in nine months and is one of six teenagers in the WTA's top 100.
We talked with Jeunehomme about his time with Henin, his vision for Yastremska's future, and why now is such an exciting time for women's tennis.
To learn more about the Justine Henin Tennis Academy, Click Here.
Listen to the Podcast below, and find the full transcript after the jump:
Lucky Letcord Podcast: How about we start with you telling our listeners about your background, how you got into tennis and how things led to you coming to coach at the Justine Henin Tennis Academy.
Olivier Jeunehomme: I started tennis like a junior because my parents—more my father—had a tennis club. And progressively I decided to become a tennis coach, so I went to university and was schooled in Belgium. And then I began to work for the Belgian Tennis Federation, and that’s the place I met Justine Henin during her career, so I had the chance to do two years with her on the tour.
Then Justine created her own academy and she proposed to me to go with her on that, and with her famous coach Carlos Rodriguez from whom I learned a lot of things, so 15 years now I am in the Academy with Justine and I had the chance to work with different players there.
Most of them are women’s tennis players. I started with Irina Kromacheva, she was a World Junior champion and finalist at Wimbledon and after that I worked with Sonya Zhuk who won Wimbledon juniors, and then now I have the chance to work with Dayana Yastremska.
LLP: The players you coach have a lot of success at Wimbledon?
Olivier Jeunehomme: Maybe it comes from the fact that I’m looking a lot into technical stuff. You need a little bit more of that to make something on the grass, so maybe it comes from that—I don’t know.
LLP: We’ll talk about Dayana Yastremska in a moment because she is one heck of an interesting player who I think has so much potential but I want to circle back because you just told me you were on tour with Justine for a couple of years? Forgive me but I didn’t know about this. When were those two years and what were they like?
Olivier Jeunehomme: At that moment there was not so much technology about scouting and statistics, so I started to work with Justine’s coach about that. So I was like a scout, going to the matches to see the future opponents of Justine, work on the statistics and try to give a maximum of information to Carlos to prepare the match with Justine, so I was not full time with them on the tour but I went to a few tournament to take a maximum of information and give all this information to the coaching team—this was my job.
LLP: Incredible. We’re talking about one of the all-time greats and a Roland Garros legend in Justine, so what is it like now working with her and how are things at the Academy? I know you have some great young players—are things still growing or are you at a level that you are comfortable with?
Olivier Jeunehomme: The vision of our academy is more to stay like a small family. We don’t want to become a huge thing so the size that we are now is the size that we want but we want to continue to improve in terms of quality of what we make. So we are looking for new technology, new ideas to improve our coaching staff and things like that, but the size is what we want. And also about the school because the school is very important for us because the tennis is not the only thing, so we have different kind of projects. We have high level projects but we also have some players who want to go to the U.S. because of university because it has become really popular in Belgium now, so it’s two big projects that we try right now to develop.
LLP: Let’s talk a little bit about Dayana. Three titles in the last nine months and what an explosive, dynamic player. Tell me about how things got started with her.
Olivier Jeunehomme: I started in September with Dayana but she was working with Justine since February of last year. We try to work on different things, physically, technically, but also in terms of organization and creative vision for her development. Yes, to be honest with you it was very fast and unexpected to go so fast. For me and for Justine it’s a player with so much potential because she hits so clean and so strong on the ball but she’s also able to create many things, she just has to control this—because her power is so big and sometimes she’s losing the control—but for me it’s just a question of confidence and time, because it’s not so much time that she has been playing full-time on the tour.
Last year she was a part of the time on the WTA tour and a part of the time on the ITF tour, so it’s something new for her to be all the time with the best players in the world. And you have to take experience from that I think it’s one of the goals this year.
LLP: Coming off a title in Strasbourg and then dealing with a tough draw at Roland Garros and maybe a bit of fatigue (Yastremska lost an opening-round match to Carla Suarez Navarro in three sets), is there a lesson that can be learned there?
Olivier Jeunehomme: To be honest with you we didn’t put Strasbourg in the calendar. We wanted to have more matches because she played good, very good [on clay] but she lost first round two or three tournaments in a row. We cannot complain because she is losing against Pliskova with four match points in first round [at Madrid], after she lost against Muguruza in Rome, but a good match. So it’s part of the experience that she has to take and learn.
So we decided to go to Strasbourg because we wanted to have more matches, but I didn’t know that she was going to win the tournament. She played a very, very good match in the semi-final against Sabalenka, and after that a big battle—too big—in the final against Garcia. And then we arrived her with just one day to rest. The draw was not too easy but that’s life, that’s sport. She played Suarez Navarro, a player for whom I have a lot of respect because of her experience and on clay she is very strong because on clay [she has so much variety].
Dayana made a good first set following the play, she was very aggressive, she found angles to move Suarez Navarro, but progressively from the beginning of the second set it became more physically difficult for her. And I think Suarez Navarro understood that and tried to make the match harder and harder—at the end it was difficult for Dayana, but anyway a good experience and again a good match—I cannot say that she played bad, it’s just that it was a tough match.
LLP: We know she can play on clay and hard, but she’s also pretty good on the grass. Dayana is a Wimbledon Girls Singles runner-up. Do you think she’s ready to go on grass and what are some of the things you are working on with her in terms of playing on the grass?
Olivier Jeunehomme: We are trying to work on the adaptation that you need for the grass. So try to play a little bit to the net. All the kind of approaches for forehand, backhand, the slice… but I think she’s ready because on clay you have to build the points more and she really tried to do that during this period on the clay, so I think she’s ready to go to grass and she has confidence, even if she lost at Roland Garros in the first round I think she feels that she has improved a lot in the last month. You never know what can happen but I am pretty positive for the grass season.
LLP: At Roland Garros there are three teenagers in the round of 16—it’s the first time since 2008 at Roland Garros and 2009 at a Slam, so there are opportunities for young players. You must feel that Dayana is ready to compete at the Grand Slams, it’s just a matter of time and getting the right draw, etc…
Olivier Jeunehomme: I think it’s a great moment for tennis because there are four or five very good women are coming, very young, teenagers, and yes the career of the players is longer so you have some players who continue to play longer and you have some young players who are arriving so it’s a good reality, positive.
I really think that Dayana can make something—it’s just, like you say, a little bit of luck for the draw, and the right moment to have the confidence because it’s a big battle, the level is high and you have to be ready for the big moments. I feel that progressively it’s coming and she will have her chance.
LLP: What do you think is the difference between Dayana a year ago and Dayana today?
Olivier Jeunehomme: I think it’s a mental aspect. She believes that she can make it because she won good matches against good players and she has begun to believe in herself and her capacities. Since the beginning I was honest with her I really think she has a lot of potential and she can play amazing—I really don’t know what is the limit for her—but you need to have one or two results to show to the player that they can make it. So that was the first step, after that she begins to understand how to move a little bit more inside of the court and her way to move changed a lot and then the perception of the court changed and automatically her level grew two or three levels and that’s why now she can play at that level.
LLP: So what are your goals for the rest of the season?
Olivier Jeunehomme: We will try to get into the Top 30 at the end of the year (she’s currently 35). After we get there maybe I will tell you another goal, but right now it’s this one, but the main goal is to try to continue to improve, take experience, because I think next year can be a great year for her, because after one year of full-time only playing WTA tournaments, and seeing that she can compete with the best players, she will have more confidence in that and I think she can expect a good end of the year and more for the next season.