Programme 88 - Best of 2018 Interviews Vol.2

We continue our look-back on the story of 2018 with some of our favourite interviews from the year. Picking up the story in Toronto, the sixth ATP masters 1000 of the year but of course there’d been a lot of water under the bridge since Rome – Rafael Nadal winning his 11th French Open and Novak Djokovic confirming that he was well and truly back by taking his fourth Wimbledon and after that Djokovic started as the favourite in Toronto but came up against a red-hot young Greek, Stefanos Tsitsipas who beat him in three sets and afterwards Jill Craybas spoke with his coach and father Apostolos. Onto Cincinnati where all the talk was about Novak Djokovic and a career golden masters and shortly after the Serb clinched victory, he spoke with Paul King. And the plaudits would keep coming for Djokovic after he followed up that success with his third US Open triumph to tie the great Pete Sampras on 14 career grand slams. He would march onto the penultimate ATP Masters 1000 of the year in Shanghai. And it was in China that Lee Goodall went off the beaten track to find out a little more about one of the year’s biggest climbers, Georgia’s Nikoloz Basilashvili, who had just won his second title of the year in Beijing, which was also just the second of his career. One reason behind that improvement is coach Jan de Witt, formerly with Frenchman Gilles Simon and now enjoying working with the only Georgian at the top of the game. Having beaten Denis Shapovalov, Basilashvili would lose to Shanghai semi finalist Sascha Zverev .. but in the end everyone would bow to Djokovic who beat Borna Coric in the final.. and so we arrived in Paris for the final masters of the year with Djokovic eying the world number 1 ranking. But trumping even that in the headlines was big news in the Grigor Dimitrov camp. Andre Agassi, formerly with Novak of course, was back, this time alongside the struggling Dimitrov and his coach Dani Vallverdu kindly took time out to Seb Lauzier. And if achieving potential is the benchmark for success, one man well ahead of the curve so far is 19-year-old Australian Alex de Minaur. Newcomer of the year in the ATP Awards, he also finished runner-up in the Next Gen finals and closer to home became the Australian number 1 – which is what he was mainly reflecting on when he spoke with Lee Goodall. And from one young man, we finish this week with another… Sascha Zverev’s year would finish in the best possible way, achieving the unthinkable for many in beating Novak Djokovic to win his first Nitto ATP Finals.. shortly we’ll hear the reaction we got straight afterwards from close friend Marcelo Melo and fitness coach Jez Green.