'I think I have to be strict with him' - Stefanos Tsitsipas strides for stricter partnership after re-hiring father as coach

Stefanos Tsitsipas has returned to being coached by his father, Apostolos Tsitsipas, but is taking a different approach to avoid a similar scenario from when the last two worked together. A year ago, the two split after the Greek tennis player suffered a surprise defeat against Kei Nishikori in the Canadian Open.

There was a heated confrontation between father and son, which led to Tsitsipas removing his father from his team. During the match, Tsitsipas criticised his father's coaching as well as asking him to leave his box.

The then number 11 in the world was disappointed with his father at the time, as he said: “I need and I deserve a coach that listens to me and hears my feedback as a player. My father hasn’t been very smart or very good at handling those situations.”

His last coach was Goran Ivanisevic, who used to coach 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic. The Croatian was not shy about speaking his mind about Tsitsipas, with him calling his current form a 'disaster', with the former World number three now down to 30th in the world. The pair lasted less than two months.

Now with his father back, Tsitsipas is hopeful of regaining his form and pushing back up the rankings.

'It was a very difficult ending'

The father and son relationship turned ugly in last year's Canadian Open, leading to their split and some time to work things out. Tsitsipas reveals that their sudden ending was 'unexpected' and that he didn't 'recognise himself' by the end.

“It was a very difficult ending, the way it ended last year with him,” Tsitsipas said to Ziggo Sport on Sunday.

“He managed to get me to a point that I honestly didn’t even recognise myself, the way it ended and the way I reacted to this relationship, partnership that we formed over the last couple of years, the way it ended was very obnoxious and unexpected that it would happen in that way, in that fashion.

Looking back on it, the Greek said that he regrets and would not want to repeat many of the things which occurred in that period, and has worked on changing that by talking and spending time with him, not as his coach but as his father.

“But there are a lot of things that I regret from it," he said. "There are a lot of things that I wouldn’t want to repeat because even my behaviour and my reaction to it wasn’t very mature or wasn’t very me.

“He (Apostolos) definitely made me lose my control, my inner control as well. But we’ve talked a lot. Since then, we’ve spent a lot of weeks together. He’s been on a tour occasionally here and there, not as my coach, but as my father.”

Tsitsipas aims for more power in partnership

Tsitsipas is doing everything in his power not to have a repeat of last year. Despite the two moving on from the alteration, the two-time Grand Slam finalist cited changes in the dynamics of their partnership.

He aims to do this by being the dominant one, as he said: “I think I have to be strict with him. Sometimes I feel like he wants to do too many things on his own,” he explains.

“I’m trying to recalibrate that and make him understand that it’s also certain things need to happen the way I want them to happen. I think this relationship deserves way more than the way we’ve been treating it in the past.”

The pair will start over where they left off: in Toronto at the Canadian Open. He will play either Christopher O'Connell or Chun-Hsin Tseng in his opening game.