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The Ukrainian has tremendous potential and Bajin has big-time experience. Dayana Yastremska has hired Sascha Bajin as her coach for 2020.

@D_Yastremska announces collaboration with highly-reputed coach Sascha Bajin!

The talented Ukrainian player, WTA#22, is showing her high ambitions for the future by hiring the coach who brought Naomi Osaka to the top.

All the best to this promising team! 🚀 #TeamTopFive pic.twitter.com/mbDdknDoiS

— Top Five Management (@TopFiveMgmt) November 21, 2019

The 19-year-old World No.22 is coming off a banner season that saw her win two titles and claim 35 wins. The Ukrainian possesses jaw-dropping power and athleticism and has the potential to get much higher in the rankings with proper guidance. She was coached by Belgium’s Olivier Jeunehomme and worked at the Justine Henin Tennis Academy previously.

Yastremska and Jeunehomme announced their split after a productive season in late September.

Bajin has previously worked with Serena Williams as a hitting partner and coached Naomi Osaka to both of her Grand Slam titles. He finished this season as the coach of Kristina Mladenovic.

“I am extremely happy, and I am very excited to start our collaboration,” Yastremska wrote on Facebook. “I am confident that he can help me in achieving my ambitions. Super excited for the beginning of our preseason preparation and I am confident that everything works out!”

The Serb is taking inspiration from the man who dealt him a difficult defeat on Thursdsay in London

By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Thursday November 14, 2019

Novak Djokovic knows a thing or two about handling a tough loss with dignity, and he proved that yet again when he took questions about Roger Federer after the Swiss had swiftly knocked him out of contention for the ATP’s year-end No.1 ranking and the Nitto ATP Finals last four on Thursday evening at the 02 Arena.

And in his answer to reporters, Djokovic helped us all understand why he has been able to have so much success in his career: He pays attention to his competition and, when he can, he takes inspiration from those that he aspires to bring down.

“Well, it motivates me,” the Serb told a reporter with a smile after he was asked how extraordinary he felt that Federer was playing at the age of 38. “I mean, it shows me it's possible.”

Djokovic, now 33, still has time to break plenty of records of his own now that Federer is closer to retirement. But let’s be honest: Federer hasn’t been able to hold Djokovic back too much in the last decade and it took a near perfect performance from the Swiss to earn his first victory against Djokovic since 2015.

But Djokovic knows that there are always two sides to any great rivalry—the losses will come and there is no avoiding that.

And despite all the intensity of the rivalry, and the bitterness of his loss on Thursday, Djokovic still had the wherewithal to praise Federer and show him the ultimate respect.

“I mean, well, I have utmost admiration for him and everything he's doing on the court,” he said. “What he has achieved over the years and what he's still showing on the court is phenomenal. I mean, he's a role model even for me that I'm one of his rivals and, you know, one of the toughest opponents I had in my career. You know, looking at his career and what he still is doing, it just inspires you.”

Djokovic wasn’t thrilled with the outcome today, but he knows he’ll have opportunities to claim more hardware and probably even finish more years at the ATP No.1.

“I have lost so many matches in my life that I know how to move on,” he said. “This is no different. I mean, I played Roger now almost 50 times. Played Rafa, I don't know, 50-plus times. So of course every loss is painful, but when you play your biggest rivals, you know, that adds a little bit of an extra flavor to that, you know, to the win or to the loss of the match. But in the end of the day, you know, we're professionals and I have been privileged to play this sport in the highest level for many years. So I think that gives me an experience on knowing how to accept things, move on, and look for another opportunity.”

The Russian admits he's still searching for momentum after a loss to Stefanos Tsitsipas in London.

Daniil Medvedev‘s debut at the Nitto ATP Finals did not go as planned, as the Russian was toppled in straight sets by Stefanos Tsitsipas, but the ATP’s win leader and 2019 US Open finalist hopes that he can find his best tennis by Wednesday when he is set to take on World No.1 Rafael Nadal in round robin play at the 02 Arena.

Medvedev, who had only played one match since winning his second Masters 1000 title at Shanghai in October, said he is having difficulty locating the level that saw him win 29 of 32 matches and reach six consecutive finals from the beginning of the US hard court summer through Shanghai.

“I'm struggling a little bit with finding back my level I had in USA and Shanghai and St. Petersburg, which is, I should say, I think normal for any sportsman,” he told reporters after his loss to Tsitsipas on Monday. “That's what is amazing about top 3, big 3 and Murray before, that even when you kind of look at them and you think, ‘okay, they are not playing as good as they can, they still win these matches.’”

Medvedev, who leads that ATP with 59 wins, owns eight Top 10 wins in 2019. He says he can take some positives from his play on Monday. “I have to say I'm positive about the way I played today,” he said. “Of course I hate to lose, so I'm really disappointed to lose, but hopefully I can make it better in the next two matches.”

He’s not worried about getting his top level back, but the World No.4 admits that he can’t just snap his fingers and make it happen.

“I lost the momentum a little bit, but [I will] try my best to get it back,” he said. “I should say I'm quite confident that at one moment I will get it back. The other question is is it going to be this tournament or the next one?”

His rematch of the 2019 US Open final with Nadal appears very tough on paper, but it must also be said that Nadal struggled mightily in his first match on Monday in London. He was blitzed by Alexander Zverev, and while he said he felt fit, he was clearly off his game. The Spaniard hit just three forehand winners against 14 for Zverev in the match.

Big thanks to @tecnifibre, the official stringer for the #NittoATPFinals this week. And also, @DaniilMedwed 👏#FightSmart🔻 pic.twitter.com/3QXeoVKsE5

— TennisNow (@Tennis_Now) November 12, 2019

Medvedev has lost both his meetings with Nadal, but he made major improvements in their second meeting. He took Nadal to five sets in the US Open final just a few weeks after winning just three games against the Spaniard in a lopsided loss at Montreal.

"I didn't have good energy enough to get the win today," Medvedev added. "But honestly, the way I was practicing last few weeks, I should say, I really lost a little bit the level I was playing, so I should say it was positive today, and I'm quite happy with the way I played regarding my last performances mostly on practices."

The Spaniard had little patience for a reporter who wanted to ask about his marriage.Rafael Nadal was not pleased to take a question about his marriage and whether or not he had ever been distracted by his relationship with his wife Xisca. Surely, he wouldn’t mind discussing the subject in a less antagonistic manner, but when a journalist asked “I’d like to know if your concentration on tennis life has been different, even if you were going out with the same girl for many, many years,” Nadal had trouble believing that he was taking a serious question.

"We move to Spanish now because that's bull****"

😮🥊 Rafael Nadal v journalist 🥊😮 pic.twitter.com/lVwuLeEgdl

— Eurosport UK (@Eurosport_UK) November 12, 2019

First, the annoyed Spaniard asked the journalist if he was indeed serious, and then, not long after, he ended the press conference by calling Bull****.

In between, Nadal had some words of wisdom.

“Doesn’t matter if you put a ring on your finger or not,” he said.

Nadal will face Daniil Medvedev in London on Wednesday as he battles Novak Djokovic for the year-end No.1 ranking in London.

The Spaniard, who fell in straight sets to Alexander Zverev on Monday, told reporters that he is not experiencing any issues with the abdominal injury that kept him out of the semifinals at the Paris Masters.

“I did not feel pain in the abdominal at all,” Nadal said after the match. “We can find reasons or excuses, but at the end of the day, [what] really matters is I need to play much better in two days after tomorrow. That's the only thing.”

Roger Federer says he pulled out of the ATP Cup for three primary reasons.
Family obligations, a crammed exhibition schedule and buddy Stan Wawrinka's departure are the primary reasons Roger Federer pulled out of the inaugural ATP Cup in Australia.

Meeting the media in London ahead of the Nitto ATP Finals, Federer said he initially played to launch his 2020 season playing the ATP in Australia.

Nadal: Confident I Can Be Very Competitive

However, his desire to spend time with this family, a busy offseason exhibition schedule and Wawrinka's withdrawal compelled the 38-year-old Swiss to reverse course. Federer is scheduled to play five South American exhibitions the week after the ATP Finals. 

Long time no see👀, Latin American friends! 👋 Can’t wait to see you soon 🙌✈️

🇨🇱 11/19 – #Santiago

🇦🇷 11/20 – #BuenosAires

🇨🇴 11/22 – #Bogota

🇲🇽 11/23 – #MexicoCity

🇪🇨 11/24 – #Quito#RFgoingLatamerer#VivaLatam#RFonDreamTour pic.twitter.com/ZfzjeIm4ud

— Roger Federer (@rogerfederer) November 4, 2019

“When we had to sign up for the ATP Cup it was shortly after Wimbledon and it was logical to play the first week,” Federer told the media in London. “The South America exhibition tour was a long time in scheduling. I couldn’t do it because of my knee, because of the children … it was going to be too much.

"South America was a priority for me. Then, when I realized Stan [Wawrinka] wasn’t going to play [the ATP Team Cup], I decided I’d rather stay with my family and make the Australian Open a priority."

The 20-time Grand Slam champion is scheduled to play rival Rafael Nadal in a South African exhibition on February 7th after the Australian Open. Federer said given his commitment to playing the 2020 Roland Garros and Tokyo Olympic Games in July, he felt "something had to give" in his calendar and that something was the ATP Cup.

“I’ve got a dream match with Rafa, and have been trying to get that date for the last two years," Federer said. "Something had to give. That was the ATP Cup. It wasn’t that level of importance for me.

"My decision was also connected to announcing I would play in the Olympics. We try to come up with a schedule for the kids. I don’t think it’s contradictory at all.”

Photo credit: US Open Facebook

The former US Open champion will feature as a guest speaker at a keynote event this week. The USTA Foundation, the national charitable arm of the USTA today announced that it has appointed 2017 US Open Champion Sloane Stephens as its National Excellence Program Ambassador. Stephens will begin her tenure at the Excellence Program College Pathway Camp on Nov. 8 at the USTA National Campus in Orlando.

Making an impact.

Sloane Stephens is the USTA Foundation's first National Excellence Program Ambassador.

Read more ➡️: https://t.co/lSiARu1V5l pic.twitter.com/wjyNV9Y3Md

— USTA (@usta) November 4, 2019

According to the USTA Stephens, who was also elected to the WTA’s Player Council this August, will help to promote the five pillars of the Excellence Program including Individual Player Grants, Coaching Education, Activations, College Preparation support and a Team component, while supporting the USTA Foundation’s overall mission, its programs, and player success stories.

The National Excellence Program aims to help underserved juniors from under-resourced populations with opportunities.

“It’s an honor to join the USTA Foundation as the National Excellence Program Ambassador. Our shared missions to change lives through tennis and education are vital to making tennis accessible and fun for many children,” the World No.23 said in a statement. “I’m looking forward to sharing my tennis story and pathway with all of our Excellence Team players. And I look forward to seeing the impact of our work.”

The French star says that dropping down to the ATP challenger circuit helped him find his game and his love for the sport.

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga had an incredible comeback season in 2019. The Frenchman powered back into the Top 30 after finishing an injury-marred 2018 (thanks to knee surgery in April of that year) at 239  in the world. He won titles in Metz and Montpellier an earned over thirty victories at the ATP level, but Tsonga told reporters that some of the most important victories and moments were earned on the Challenger Tour.

The Frenchman played three ATP Challenger events in Bordeaux, Cassis and Orleans France and says that the experience helped him reconnect with his true passion for the sport.

“The reason why I went there, as I said, was to have matches under my belt, but it was also many other things,” Tsonga said after his last match at the Paris Masters. “Playing in challenger tournaments, how shall I put it? It helped me find the reasons why I was playing tennis again. Conditions are always more difficult. There's always a battle. You meet with players who are dreaming of being great champions. And even the crowd who is attending is a different crowd.”

Tsonga reached the quarterfinals on clay in Bordeaux this spring, and in the fall he won the title at Cassis after the US Open and reached the semifinals at Orleans. Those events were perhaps more important than the titles to Tsonga. He says playing those lower-level events helped him get a fresh sense of perspective.

“It's always pleasant to play such tournaments, because then we realize that what we do is exceptional,” he said. “We get closer to the public when we play challengers, and we listen to what people say and it makes you feel good. It helps you have a different view of your career, of tennis at large, and to find pleasure again in playing tennis. There's no pressure anymore. One should not forget that it's not given to everyone to play tennis like this.”

US Open champion reveals what he finds beautiful about the game.
Paris has presented peaks and pitfalls in Rafael Nadal's glorious career.

The 12-time Roland Garros champion has ruled the red clay in Paris, but has not contested the Rolex Paris Masters final since he fell to David Nalbandian in the 2007 championship match.

More: Djokovic Pummels Tsitsipas

The City of Light illuminates what Nadal finds "beautiful" about the game.

The 33-year-old Spaniard says the adjustment tennis demands—including altering his game from the red clay of Roland Garros to the lower, faster bounce of Bercy's hard court—is one of the beautiful challenges the sport poses.

"You can't play a clay court game here if you want to have success here and you cannot play an indoor way on clay if you want to have success on clay," Nadal told the media after sweeping Stan Wawrinka to reach the quarterfinals. "And that's the beautiful thing about this sport, have the capacity to adapt yourself to the different conditions."

Traditionally, indoor hard courts have been the most demanding surface for Nadal to conquer. 

Nadal, who will regain the world No. 1 ranking on Monday regardless of Rolex Paris Masters results this week, owns a .681 career winning percentage with two titles indoors compared to an .848 career winning percent with 82 titles outdoors. 

Photo credit: Christopher Levy

The 19-time Grand Slam champion is bidding to win Paris and the ATP Finals in London for the first time. He knows he cannot afford to play the waiting game to achieve that ambitious aim.

"For me personally, of course, here I need to adjust a couple of things in the way that I serving, the way that I preparing the points, that there is not much time to hit one ball here, one ball to the other side, and then wait for the right opportunity," Nadal said. "Here, you can't wait much, and I'm trying to play with the surface, not against the surface."

Photo credit: Christopher Levy

The Canadian will make a decision about her final match in Shenzhen on Thursday.
Canada’s Bianca Andreescu will undergo medical examinations to determine the severity of the left knee injury that she suffered on Wednesday while facing Karolina Pliskova in round robin action at the Shiseido WTA Finals in Shenzhen.

"We'll see," she told reporters. "I'm getting an MRI tomorrow–hopefully it's nothing too bad."

The Canadian injured the knee when landing awkwardly during a service return in the third game of the match and elected to retire from the contest at the conclusion of the second set.

"I heard my knee crack," she said. "It kind of went inwards and putting pressure afterwards on it really bothered me. I could barely bend my knee."

'I heard my knee crack.'@BAndreescu_ speaks about her injury at the @WTAFinals pic.twitter.com/zC1UuzWgtm

— WTA (@WTA) October 30, 2019

Desperate to make a good showing at her WTA Finals debut, Andreescu said the decision to retire was not an easy one.

"At some point an athlete just has to say stop and listen to their body and that's what I did," she said. "It's disappointing because this is the last tournament of the year, you want to go all out, you're playing at one of the biggest tournaments of the year, too, so it's not easy."

But Andreescu and her team have learned the hard way to be careful with her health. When she pushed too hard in March and played the Miami Open with an aching shoulder, she ended up doing significant damage and hardly played for the next five months.

Her coach Sylvain Bruneau told reporters this tournament that the team has learned a lot from the trials and tribulations that they faced this year.

“We're going to go about scheduling differently next year than what we did this year,” he said. “The start of the year this year, it was just a match after another after another after another. I think there was a bit of probably too much volume.”

Andreescu said her team was happy that the played it safe on Wednesday.

“My team said no. It was good that I stopped,” she said.

Andreescu will reportedly decide on Thursday whether she can play her final scheduled match at Shenzhen. Given her history and the lessons learned in 2019, it seems unlikely that she’d play with no chance of reaching the semifinals. But she may just want to finish the season on her terms.

"Who knows if I can play," she said. "We'll see."

No matter what happens, we should expect to see Andreescu, when healthy, fighting for the sports biggest titles for years to come.

“It's a long season,” she said. “It's not easy day in, day out. But I love doing this, so I'm just going to keep fighting.”

The 22-time major champion talks about the WTA's rising star while in Zhuhai.

Steffi Graf has weighed in on the rapid rise of 15-year-old Coco Gauff, saying that she believes the American will provide fans with plenty of must watch tennis over the next few years.

“It's going to be incredible to follow her the next few years,” Graf told reporters while speaking at the WTA Elite Trophy, where she has served as the tournament ambassador since 2016.

Graf said she’ll refrain from giving Gauff advice through the media, adding that the rising star doesn’t seem to need much at all, given how much success she has had on the WTA Tour over the last four months.

“She's got such an effortless style and such raw talent,” Graf said. “So I don't think she will need, she needs anything, any advice, the way I'm thinking.”

Graf, a 22-time major champion, played in her first professional tournament in 1982, but did not break through to win her first major until Roland Garros in 1987. Like Gauff, she also reached the second week of Wimbledon as a 15-year-old, in 1984.

Steffi Graf, in Zhuhai, discussing Coco Gauff: 'Talk about somebody that's enjoying herself out there, you can see her intensity and incredible athleticism.
So it's going to be incredible to follow her the next few years. She's got such an effortless style and such raw talent.'

— Ravi Ubha (@raviubha) October 22, 2019

The German has yet to meet Gauff, but has come away impressed with her passion and athleticism when she has watched the American play.

“I have not met her,” Graf told reporters. “But I did see her play here and there a little bit at some of the televised matches. So it doesn't seem like she needs a whole lot of advice. … “Talk about somebody that's enjoying herself out there, you can see her intensity and incredible athleticism.”

Steffi Graf: "Coming here for 4 years now and seeing the city grow have been incredible. Every year I take a picture out of the hotel room and see the skyline within a year change so drastically. It's been fascinating to follow all the growth here."@WTA #WETZ19@StefBook pic.twitter.com/QKn4GY8X4l

— WTA Elite Trophy (@WTAEliteTrophy) October 22, 2019