By Mike McIntyre
There have been a number of Canadian tennis players who have started 2019 off with a bang and it's not the typical names we've been accustomed to seeing in the headlines. On the women's side 18 year old Bianca Andreescu has carved out an impressive 18-2 record to start the season and crack the top 100 in the world for the first time in her young career. For the men meanwhile, 23 year old Brayden Schnur is making his own move in the rankings with a finalist result at the Newport Beach Challenger and is now - even more impressively - into the finals of the New York Open, a level 250 ATP event. I caught up with Schnur just a couple of weeks before the start of his impressive run. Here are some of the highlights from our conversation that reveal a player who is ready to take the next step forward in his emerging career.
Assessment of 2018:
2018 was a roller coaster for me results wise. I had a lot of really good results, I think I was in like 4 or 5 semifinals of challengers, along with a final and then I also had a bunch of runs where I lost 3-4 weeks in a row first round. It’s really tough mentally those kind of years, just because you’re always on a high or on a low. Coming out of 2018 I think I finished the year great, I had 2-3 weeks back-to-back-to-back where I was playing really great and I could feel the momentum again. In October/November I was playing really good tennis and I knew the result would come. Coming into 2019 I think a big lesson that I learned in 2018 was to not put so much pressure on myself when I’m not winning matches and to not get as upset. I don’t take losing really well so I think coming into 2019 I really wanted to emphasize not taking those loses so hard. Obviously always working hard to find out why I lost a match but not to...dwell on it so much.
Feeling more at ease as a tennis pro:
Yeah for sure. My first year and a half I was playing mostly Futures I guess and I feel like playing Futures and then playing Challengers are two completely different Tours almost. I think that first year and a half I wouldn’t even count it as being a pro just because, last year I played a full schedule. In 2019 I can kind of schedule around the tournaments that I like. I have a much better idea of where I like to play, what conditions I like to play in, obviously the travelling times and all that stuff that goes with it.
On living and training in Montreal:
When I’m back in Montreal I’m training full day schedule, six days a week training. I enjoy being in one place for more than 5-6 days at a time. So when I’m there it really feels like home. Montreal is home base. I’ve brushed up on my French. I wouldn’t go as far as cheering for the Montreal Canadiens. I’m a Leafs fan.
How often he gets back home to Pickering:
Not too often to be honest. I have a younger sister who goes to school in Ottawa and my parents still live in Pickering. I’m living in Montreal so my parents actually commute more to visit me and my sister in Ottawa and Montreal rather than us going home. Just because it’s easier for me and them as well. With tennis it’s kind of hard for me to practice when I’m there in Toronto, there’s not many players and obviously living in Pickering makes it hard because clubs are so spread out, Toronto is such a huge city
Goals for this season:
It’s hard to put a number on things just because you never know. You have these expectations and obviously you want to play a certain level and have a certain ranking but I feel it’s really hard in tennis to put a timeline on somethings. Just because there’s so many things that can not go your way, like injuries obviously or conditions that week, or sometimes you have a bad draw. I would love to win a Challenger and also get a main draw ATP level win. I’m focusing on my game, more than the results and knowing that when my game is put in place the results will come.
The added pressure trying to qualify for a Slam:
It’s definitely the most pressure. You can feel it as you get closer and closer to the match. When the matches start you can feel the tension climbing in the locker room, all the guys are just a little on edge. It’s tough at times to manage all of those emotions because everyone wants to do well at the Slams so badly. I was extremely nervous at times and I just didn’t handle the moment as well as I would have liked to. It comes down to the fact that it’s a learning curve.
The financial challenges for those outside the top 100:
It’s extremely tough I’m not gonna lie. I think that the ATP and ITF have a lot of work to be done in tennis in order to make the players happy. I think the prize money today where it stands is extremely - it pays well at the top and it’s kind of like a pyramid. It pays huge at the top and as you go down there’s a huge drop and I think that needs to improve. Like I said on Twitter, we need the top guys to voice their opinions in order for the ATP and ITF to be heard. If they don’t say anything then nothing is gonna get changed but the hard part is that they’re getting paid well so why would they complain? I’m fortunate enough to have Tennis Canada support me and help me out with a coach. If that wasn’t the case I’d be losing money every year. Even at 190 in the rankings I would be losing money. To have a coach who can travel with you – it costs a lot of money. On top of taking care of your own expenses and your coaches expenses. I don’t think that anyone ranked 150-200 in their sport should be losing money.
Playing internationally for his country and the recent Davis Cup tie vs Slovakia:
I was invited but I kind of sat down and talked to Frank (Dancevic) and my coach was also in the conversation with us and just kind of looking forward with what was best for me and my schedule. Just because I wasn’t going to play if I went to Slovakia, I was going to be a hitting partner/if anyone gets hurt kind of guy. Second in line after Peter. Looking at my schedule and everything it was decided for my game that it would be better for me to stick to the plan to play Cleveland and Dallas which are two hard court challengers vs just coming from Australia, flying to LA, being there for ten days and then flying out to Europe to play on clay for another ten days. It didn’t make the most sense. Frank politely asked me what I wanted to do and I wasn’t going to lie to him. The Davis Cup is something I’m always up for doing and I love playing for Canada and if anyone got hurt out of those top three – Denis, Felix or Peter – I told Frank that I’ll be on the next plane out there to Slovakia on the next plane.”
The Team Canada vibe:
Yeah for the most part I think we’re really friendly. We get along extremely well, we practice a bunch, we do things off court, grab dinner just as friends all the time and it’s a great group of guys. Obviously I think that having the success of Denis and Milos, and Felix doing extremely well right now, it kind of pushes us, even though they’re younger, it pushes us to do better and expect more of ourselves which you find is what happens with countries that get these groups of players that come up on the rise. I think that obviously Milos was the first once to do all of this, he was the leader and kind of set the tone for everyone else moving forward.
Hobbies and interests away from the game:
I like to watch a lot of movies – I’m a big Netflix guy – watch a lot of movies on the road. Every now and then I’ll pick up a book just to kind of mellow out and read. Some people think that it’s weird but that’s the life of a tennis player. There’s a lot of down time on the road and often times you don’t get to go out and explore all the time so it’s what are you going to do in your room. I really enjoy watching tennis at the ATP level or the Challenger level even just online, I’m constantly watching my opponents or guys I’m going to be playing. I’ll get dinner, go out to dinner a lot with coaches and other players kind of in small groups which is always fun. But it’s pretty quiet on the road, it’s a pretty quiet life.
What would you be studying or doing if not for tennis?
I’m trying to think of that a lot and I really don’t know. I don’t know where I can see myself. I’ve tried to think of what I would do after tennis but that’s so far away and so impossible to think of anything outside of tennis because I’ve spend so much time in the sport. If I wasn’t playing tennis I think I would be an athlete of some sort. I’m too competitive not to be, so I think it would have been a sport or something – possibly soccer, I played a lot of soccer when I was young. I studied communications – so maybe commentating is something I could see myself doing some day, I feel like I see the game really well so maybe that’s in the future, you know, knock on wood. That’s kind of what I would pursue.
The longevity and talent of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic:
They just have an edge, they really do. These guys are unbelievable. I watched Nadal in Australia play an exhibition match and obviously it’s an exhibition match but it’s the week before the Aussie Open starts, and I watched him play and I thought to myself there’s no way he makes it out of the first week of the Slam - he was playing awful. He was getting killed by Kyrgios, barely getting games against Kyrgios and all of a sudden the guy can turn it on like nothing else. It seems like the way those top guys can turn it on so fast and find their games is just something else.
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