The coaches behind top tennis players agree: sleep is not a luxury.
When a professional tennis player loses a match, the next conversation usually focuses on tactics, footwork, or serve percentage. The conversation rarely starts with the previous night But information like what time the athlete went to bed, whether the sleep environment was cool enough, and whether their body actually recovered are critical pieces of information. The coaches who build and protect careers at the highest level know this and are asking these questions. Every morning, before a single ball is struck, they want to know: how did Sabalenka, or Fritz, sleep?
We sat down with three of the best in the business, Michael Russell, James Delgado, and Anton Dubrov, to understand how sleep fits into the architecture of elite performance. What they shared was direct, evidence-backed, and at times surprising.
Sleep is a training block: not a recovery afterthought
All three coaches use identical language when they talk about sleep: it is part of training, not separate from it. Anton Dubrov is the most explicit.
“I always think about sleep as one part of training. Most adaptation, everything we practice on the court, happens during sleep, especially deep sleep. The better you sleep, the better you will perform. No matter how hard you train, if you are under-recovered all the time, it is not going to help you.”
— Anton Dubrov, coach of Aryna Sabalenka