UKG Asia Pacific is sponsoring Australian tennis athlete Alexei Popyrin for the Australian summer! It’s important for the UKG team to support Australian athletes at one of the most iconic sporting events in the country - the Australian Open.
Alexei is the second-highest Australian male player in tennis, ranked 23rd in the world, and born and bred in Sydney. We got a chance to chat with Alexei and learnt more about his growth mindset, resilience, and building trust with his team.
UKG: In your Montreal Masters victory, you faced multiple top 10 opponents, demonstrating not just skill but mental resilience under intense pressure. How do you approach adapting to such high-stakes environments, and has this mindset evolved over your career?
Alexei: When I was getting ready for that Montreal final, I was looking back at all the hard work that we put in as a team. Constantly, day in and day out, we put in the hard work. And I think if you do that, your mentality on the court kind of shows that you can get through anything.
The practices are really hard and I’m doing pre-season right now so I can tell you that it’s not easy. All the hard work that goes into it evolves and lets your mind get stronger.
UKG: Following your breakthrough in Montreal, you mentioned how confidence impacts your performance. How do you maintain or rebuild that self-belief during challenging times, especially after difficult seasons and tournaments?
Alexei: Leading up to Montreal, it was probably not a great season. I was ranked 60th in the world. I fell down 20 ranking spots. If I didn’t win a match in Montreal or in Cincinnati, I would have fallen down to around 90th in the world. And all that is in the back of your head while you’re preparing, but you can’t let that affect you.
Confidence was low going into Montreal, and I had lost two first rounds in the previous ATP tournaments. So, it really wasn’t the best, but we kept working and I think that’s the most important thing.
You’re going to go up and down in confidence, but at the end of the day, you have to keep working and keep that consistency throughout your journey and that’s what we did.
We all believed that at one point during the year, we’d have a breakthrough result. From then on, it’s not relaxing once you have that breakthrough result. It’s just keep doing what you’ve been doing and keep the consistency going, which we have been doing since Montreal.
UKG: You've credited much of your recent success to your coaches and support staff, who redefined your training and game strategy. How do you foster trust and collaboration within your team to ensure alignment on goals and consistent improvement?
Alexei: I think trust definitely happens over time. I think with any kind of collaboration, trust only gets better over time. I hire the people around me and I work with the people around me who have been there before.
X [Xavier Malisse] and Nev [Neville Godwin] have both played and coached at a high level and for me that was really important when I was looking at trying to hire my team. I really wanted that experience of my coaches having being there and done it themselves before. So that’s where a lot of the trust came from. It came from the start because they were there, and we built an immediate rapport.
My fitness coach he’s been on the road before with a different player before and I saw how they worked together, and I really liked it. That kind of trust built on from when he came onto the team, he clicked straight away, and it worked really well.
With my physio, he wasn’t into tennis much and he didn’t know much about tennis, but you could see the hunger in his eyes. He wanted to improve and learn everyday working with me. Now I can’t imagine travelling without him. He travels 40 plus weeks a year with me, and he keeps my body fresh.
Honestly, I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without him or the whole team.
UKG: Thanks, Alexei, for chatting with us. The entire U Krew team and UKG community will be cheering you on at the Australian Open – good luck!