Tiafoe’s Transition from Cookie Monster to Major Contender

By Richard Pagliaro | Wednesday, September 7, 2022

Frances Tiafoe was once a cookie monster and now he’s a major number cruncher.

Tiafoe chewed up ninth-seeded Andrey Rublev 7-6(3), 7-6(0), 6-4 to become the first American man since Andy Roddick in 2006 to reach the US Open semifinals.

More: Tiafoe Tears Into US Open Semifinals

Former Top 10 pro and Tiafoe coach Wayne Ferreira, who once partnered Roger Federer at Wimbledon, has been instrumental in Tiafoe’s transition from a junk-food junkie to a fitter professional with a fierce hunger to succeed.

Speaking to the media after Tiafoe’s US Open triumph over Rublev, Ferreira said he focused on conditioning, diet and proper practice when he first began working with Tiafoe.

“It seems simple, but he liked a lot of candy and chocolates and cookies. He’d eat at unusual times,” Ferreira said of Tiafoe. “He missed breakfast a lot. Didn’t really have a good set of times on how when to eat before matches, what to eat after matches. You need a little guidance on that side, and he’s done well on that side of it. Practicing, it’s about investing and putting in the best practice you can.

“We don’t practice long, because I’d rather that he practice properly. So we try to go out there and do the best that we can for the time we are doing it. We always try to work on specifics, things to improve. It’s just being professional. He wasn’t, in my opinion, was not really professional enough.”

Times have changed and Tiafoe has transformed himself into a fitter, smarter and more mature player.

The 22nd-seeded American has shown all that—as well as his entertaining all-court game—knocking out three seeds in a row: 14th-seeded Diego Schwartzman, second-seeded Nadal and ninth-seeded Rublev.

Tiafoe has been at his best at crunch time, posting a 6-0 tiebreak record in New York while winning four of five matches in straight sets.

“We’re working very hard on him banging the serve as hard as he can. He has a great serve, can hit it really, really hard,” Ferreira said after Tiafoe torched 18 aces against three double faults in his quarterfinal win. “We were working really, really hard on it, but we are not quite there yet at all. Because 50% serve average is poor. If he could get himself up into the mid-60s where a lot of the guys are, the Kyrgioses, in the 70s, take him to a whole other level.

“That part of his game is better but it’s still something we are going to…