Michael Joyce and Jessie Pegula, an American Tennis Player ranked 165th in the World, Traveling in Canada

Joyce coaches the likes of Maria Sharapova, Victoria Azarenka and Johanna Konta. He also spent a season with Eugenie Bouchard, who is now back in the top 100.

Joyce is short and right-handed, with a powerful, textbook power-baseline game. His forehand is sparer and more textbook than those of Agassi or Lendl.

How he got started

Michael Joyce has spent the last eight weeks traveling with Jessie Pegula, an up-and-coming American tennis player ranked 165th in the world. They’re in Quebec for the Coupe Banque Nationale, a WTA tournament that Joyce believes Pegula has a shot at winning.

Joyce is a former ATP professional who reached his highest ranking of No. 64 during his career. He’s also a coach, most famously training Maria Sharapova for seven years and helping her achieve a three-grand-slam singles title and the top spot in the world.

Joyce has been a coach for more than 30 years. He teaches his players to rely on their own instincts, not just to play the game but to live it—and that’s the hardest part. The whirlwind of travel and sponsorship obligations that accompany a professional career can pull players away from the sport they love, and Joyce says he has seen this happen to many of his students. He’s also learned a few things about managing those relationships.

His first tournament

On a sunny Sunday afternoon, Michael Joyce climbs into his father’s station wagon. He is 12 years old, his face freckled and full, his hair a shock of strawberry blonde.

The car rolls down the highway, his mother and sister in the back seat, chatty, contented. He’s heading to a tournament in southern California, and he is nervous.

Afterward, as Joyce drives back to the family home in Boca Raton, Florida, he plays a tape of the match for Jenna. She doesn’t recognize him on the screen.

After a long private coaching career that included helping Maria Sharapova win two of her Grand Slam titles and tenures with other top WTA players, including Victoria Azarenka, Johanna Konta, and Eugenie Bouchard, Joyce now works for the USTA Player and Coach Development department. He uses the skills he has honed working with these champions to help young American players at the beginning of their professional careers.

His first win

When Joyce won his first tournament, he threw his arms out in triumph, his shoulders hunching forward. It was a moment that crystallized a lesson he had learned as a youngster: He had to stand up for himself. His self-worth couldn’t be based on wins or losses, and he could not please everyone.

Tennis is an isolating sport, with no teammates to mask weaknesses or hide ineptness. It’s a game in which players are forced to confront their limitations and reevaluate every facet of their craft on a weekly basis.

The routine is invigorating to Joyce, who sees his life through the lens of tennis and enjoys the process of distilling his ambitions into its simple binaries. He’s not afraid of sink-or-swim moments, whether as a player or coach. He’s spent the past few years coaching Pegula, taking her from # 900 to #120 in a short time frame. He’s also coached a few other top WTA players, including Maria Sharapova for six seasons.

His first loss

Joyce has an eidetic memory for names, tournaments, events and personal slights. He recalls a time when a movie director at a party dismissed his world singles ranking with a curt “keep trying.” And he remembers the moment that made the difference: when he lost in the final of the boys’ 18 National Tennis Championship in Kalamazoo to Thomas Enqvist, then ranked in the top twenty and a future star.

Visit them at hutchinson ,staffing ,jacks ,tennis

At a hotel in Lake Nona, Joyce is wearing a Johnny Cash T-shirt and basketball shorts, a departure from the suits worn by his peers. He estimates that he travels to fifteen professional tournaments a year in addition to his regular work with Krueger and other young players. He believes that the travel is worth it to help young Americans get started in the sport. He feels that his life would be meaningless without it. Tennis is who he is. It is the only thing he’s ever been serious about.