By Chris Oddo | Thursday March 7, 2019
Olga Savchuk gives her thoughts on the state of Ukrainian tennis and her fresh start as a broadcaster in the Tennis Now Q&A.
Tennis Now caught up with Olga Savchuk for last week’s edition of the Lucky Letcord Podcast. We chatted with the former World No.79 in singles and World No.33 in doubles about her days as a touring pro as well as her future as a commentator and coach as well as picking her brain about what makes Ukrainian women’s tennis so strong right now and why Elina Svitolina is a good bet to win a major title someday.
Scroll down for the full text of our interview below…
Tennis Now: You probably had an idea of what you wanted your retirement to be like before you ended your career last summer but now that you are actually retired has it been anything like what you imagined?
Olga Savchuk: I was planning that for over a year and I was thinking what I was going to do because I didn’t want to stop and be shocked afterwards. So I was planning to be involved in tennis definitely but I didn’t know what I was going to do, so I gave myself after I stopped at the U.S. Open like three months break and just rested and thought about everything—all the possibilities that I have. Now I am doing a bit of commentating, a bit of coaching, Fed Cup management, so I’m really happy about that. I’m quite busy.
Tennis Now: Cool. These are all things that I wanted to speak with you about. I know you take great pride in playing for your country and you did so well playing at Fed Cup, the Olympics and all the tour-level events throughout your 14-year career. You must be really thrilled right now to see that there are three women from your country inside the top 40. Things are really going well for Ukrainian women’s tennis, wouldn’t you say?
Olga Savchuk: I’m so happy about it because for me Fed Cup and Olympics takes a special place in my heart and I always love to play for my country, and now seeing that so many young girls in the Top 100, Top 200, we have a great team now and I’m really happy about it. A lot of people are asking me why it’s happening like this but I can’t explain—I think it’s just a natural flow that better players create more players.
Tennis Now: Right. We had Elina Svitolina pass Alona Bondarenko as the Ukraine’s highest-ranked player ever and honestly if you forecast ahead two, three years with Dayana Yastremska, with Marta Kostyuk, with the way Lesia Tsurenko is playing as well there could be four Ukrainian women in the Top 20 two or three years down the road.
Olga Savchuk: Yeah, I was just checking the rankings myself today and I saw that Elina is No.6, then Tsurenko is No.23 and Yastremska is 36. They are getting closer to each other and it’s just great to see. And you know I think in my days when Bondarenko was playing as well it was less social media so people in the Ukraine knew much less about tennis, and now with Elina doing so much publicity when she is back there she gives all the interviews that she is asked to do, I think she does a great job to improve the people’s knowledge about tennis in the Ukraine. So that’s why more and more young girls come and play and they all want to be like her.
Tennis Now: Let’s talk about Elina Svitolina though, because I know you have a great friendship with her. I actually listened to you commentate her match from Doha a couple of weeks ago—anybody who has a chance should go back and watch that tape if they want to learn more about Elina. You talked about her mentality and how that is really the thing that makes her stand out above the rest. Where do you think that came from?
Olga Savchuk: She comes from the family with her older brother who also played tennis—he’s my age and I remember him but didn’t remember her that well. When she started she always had a brother to look for and she told me that she always wanted to be better because all the attention was going to her brother. Growing up she just wanted to get her parents to pay attention to her as well. She developed that character that she wants to be there, she wants to be noticed. It’s amazing when I became friends with Elina I was really shocked in a good way how focused she is on every single practice she does and every single ball she plays. Either it’s going to the gym or it’s eating—everything is about being better in tennis, so all her day is like everything goes to be better in tennis, so it’s just inspiring.
Tennis Now: You said it well on your broadcast. You said she has the mind of a warrior.
Olga Savchuk: Yeah. I know she reads a lot about these things. I think she works a lot on her mentality and I know that she hates to lose and I think that’s the biggest thing about her.
Tennis Now: True or False: It’s just a matter of time before Elina Svitolina wins a major title.
Olga Savchuk: True.
Tennis Now: How come?
Olga Savchuk: She just has an unbelievable level of the game. She is the best—I would say—defender on the tour, and she has quite stable psychology for the game, so it’s just a matter of time.
Tennis Now: I tend to agree with you. I know some have been critical about the fact that she has played 26 majors and has yet to reach a semifinal, but she has reached four quarter-finals of late, and if she keeps giving herself chances one would think she’s bound to break through.
Olga Savchuk: Yes, and definitely it’s so difficult to play with all this pressure. Obviously players these day they see and read stuff about themselves—good stuff and bad stuff as well. And I think it puts a lot of pressure on them. And everybody is asking probably every interview she gives, When is she going to win it? And it’s not easy to play with this pressure and I think she does really well. Some players do it earlier, some players do it later, so I think it’s just a question of time.
Tennis Now: Here’s a question she is probably going to get a lot in the upcoming months, about her relationship with Gael Monfils. You’ve been around the tour for so long, you’ve seen it all out there. What can love potentially do for a player in a relationship like this? Can it be a positive or might it be a distraction?
Olga Savchuk: I think in general for players it could be both but for her in this case I think for both of them it’s positive because they both are at the same level, they understand each other, they know when somebody is tired when somebody needs to be more focused. It’s always easier to be in a relationship when you’re doing the same thing and you are in the same environment so I think it’s positive in their case.
Tennis Now: I was hoping you could help me unravel a little bit of a mystery about 18-year-old Dayana Yastremska who is now 36 in the world. I know you probably haven’t seen her play that much on tour but she looks to be a very explosive player with a lot of upside. She could be a Top 10 player and maybe even a future No.1. What are some of your initial takeaways on her game, and is there anything you see with Yastremska that you really like?
Olga Savchuk: I have known her for a few years already since she is a new young player coming up when I played the last few years, I heard about her and saw her a few times. But now when she recently played Fed Cup I really had a chance to see her closely in the practices and during the match as well. I’m really impressed and I never saw someone like that at the age of 18. She just plays the game, she knows what she is going to do exactly. She follows the tactics and no matter how well it’s going or isn’t she has the faith of the winner. She doesn’t get pissed. She doesn’t pay attention to the mistakes. She just keeps following her tactics, and the gameplan. She just plays the game and she is not distracted by anything.
I’m just impressed about that—how professional she is at this young age. And her game, I think is very mature as well for her age. Very powerful. Very explosive. Very quick, and she has a very good character for the tennis.
Tennis Now: It looks like she hates to lose as much as Elina Svitolina does.
Olga Savchuk: Yes, maybe that’s a Ukrainian thing.
Tennis Now: A few questions about Fed Cup: One, do you think that one day you might be in line for a captaincy, and two, are you a little worried about the state of Fed Cup given what we’ve seen happen to the Davis Cup?
Olga Savchuk: On the first question, I think I need more years of practice being around Fed Cup, because to play Fed Cup being compared to a captain or a coach it’s a completely different thing. It’s very difficult. I think I would need some more years to be around it to see how it works, to be a good coach or Captain in the future. Second question, I hope that Fed Cup is not going to change because I really like the old style of Fed Cup, I think it has history and I am a fan of history, so even if there are going to be some new changes I hope there is still going to be the same importance attached to the event.
Tennis Now: Last but not least let’s chat about your new commentary gig. I think you are doing a great job in the booth so far do you have more work planned, and what has it been like making this transition from player to commentator?
Olga Savchuk: I hope I did a good job like you are saying because I hate to hear myself and I try not to hear myself. But I got a lot of messages from players and they were saying good things about it so I was thrilled to hear it. I was always interested in TV, I did a bunch of videos of myself and my teammates during my playing years and I always liked to do it fun and I always knew that I was going to do something for TV but I didn’t know that it was going to be commentating.
I attended a few meetings that the WTA does for players during the year and one of them was broadcast, so I got interested and I talked to them and I said I’m thinking about doing it in the future when I stop my career. And when it happened I said ok I’m going to give it a try and I started with a trial match first and I think they liked it and now I’m hoping to do more events this year.
When I did the Doha event I was really happy about it and I liked it a lot. I like to speak about tennis and about the girls, because many of them are my friends and it’s really easy for me to talk about them.
Tennis Now: Like tennis, commentating is an art. Have you given much thought to what kind of commentator you want to be and what your role might be in this game?
Olga Savchuk: No, I wasn’t thinking about it yet, because I didn’t know how it would go, but now I think it’s time to think about it.
Tennis Now: Tennis fans like a little bit of silence. You can never be afraid of the silence, right? I detected that you weren’t—it’s ok to not have anything to say for a point or two, right?
Olga Savchuk: Yes, you don’t have to comment on every single point.
Tennis Now: Especially if you end up doing a three-hour match.
Olga Savchuk: Yes. I think what I can bring more it’s more about personalities of the players because I know them all. Rather than commentating about technical stuff, I think fans are also more interested about that part because they don’t know players outside of the court so I think it’s interesting to describe players from an inside perspective.