Black Tennis Pros

Entry #1 - Thursday, April 17
Entry #2 - Wedneday, April 23
Entry #3 - Thursday, April 24
Entry #4 - Friday, April 25 (and #5)

Entry # 6 - Sunday, April 27

Today I asked the team to play every point and I thought all the players did a wonderful job of doing that.

Vania played great and it was really nice to see Ahsha win her match against Vesnina. Ahsha served unbelievably well and I think it was amazing that she was able to keep her serve on that level for the whole match. That kind of serving is a high level for anyone and is Grand Slam material.

The doubles match was a lot of fun and it was nice to see Liezel and Vania pull off a win. All of the girls were into it and it was a good show from a fan’s and coach’s point of view.

We found out this morning about 10:15 a.m. at practice that Kuznetsova and Chakvetadze were not going to play singles and instead Zvonareva and Vesnina were playing. I was not too surprised as I had a feeling yesterday that it might happen.

It has been an amazing experience the past five years leading the U.S. team and this is now my last tie as U.S. Fed Cup Captain.

Looking back, one tie that stands out for me is when we played Belgium in 2006 because a lot of the staff and I got sick with some kind of bug. It affected about 13 of 20 people on the trip and it was the sickest I had been in a long time. Luckily, however, most of the players were fine.

And in the past five years I have coached so many different players. I have had a little bit of everyone on my teams from the Grand Slam champions like Venus, Serena and Lindsay to the young ones. And I have had the pleasure of watching so many players, like Vania and Madison, grow up.

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