You just don’t know what to expect when Anastasija Sevastova is there. She definitely has a hard time staying away from tennis. And every time she returns, it’s like she has more in the tank than we had expected. The 35-year-old is still pulling off miracles on the WTA Tour. This time, it was Jessica Pegula who had to bear the brunt in the National Bank Open, getting ousted in 3 sets.

But another formidable challenge awaits the Latvian in the form of Naomi Osaka. The Japanese has had a resurgence since changing her coach about a week ago. Meanwhile, Sevastova gets ready for the clash with her usual routine planned, and her coach, who has been with her since 2013. In fact, she also has her own coach story to tell, something right out of a hockey fable. Basically, it is a story where tennis won, and so did Anastasija Sevastova.

Who constitutes the coaching team of Anastasija Sevastova?

Sevastova walked away from tennis in 2013, citing recurring injuries and illnesses that cut her promising career short. Or so it seemed. She was just 23 at the time. Walking away from her career as a player, the Latvian focused on coaching and joined the Better Tennis Academy in Vienna. And this is where she would meet Ronald Schmidt. The Austrian coach had earned his fame by coaching Thomas Muster to return to the circuit at the age of 43. And what do you know? He would play a similar role in his partner’s life.

Two years after the heartbreaking retirement, Sevastova made a grand return to tennis, ready to fight again. And we saw a new Anastasija Sevastova, someone who was better, faster, and reached the US Open semi-final for the first time in her career in 2018. This was after she reached her first-ever quarter-finals a year ago. In fact, with Schmidt in her corner, she won 4 WTA titles after her comeback.

Incidentally, Sevastova had beaten Osaka before, in 2018, en route to reaching the Finals of the Beijing Open. The 2018 US Open run included scalps of World No. 7 Elina Svitolina and key favorite Sloane Stephens (No. 3) in the quarter-finals. That would see her set up a clash with Serena Williams. “Hopefully she can handle the moment and enjoy the moment,” Schmidt had told the New York Times in September 2018. “I told her 10 minutes ago that there really is no difference between a quarterfinal and a semifinal. You don’t get a trophy if you win the quarters or the semis, so it’s pretty much the same situation as against Sloane.”

Schmidt has always been the anchor in Sevastova’s life, which we will get to learn more about later. But besides him, there was also Marco Mirnegg, her hitting partner. Speaking about him to USOpen.org in September 2018, she went, “He was [ranked] 200 in the world…He’s serving pretty big. Returning his serve was always challenging, so I think it helped me here.”

Even though Williams would get the better of her in the 2018 US Open, her training would come to fruition later. In 2020, she would inflict the American’s first-ever singles defeat in the Fed Cup. She has been at it, pushing her limits and earning some major victories along the way. And she definitely had her partner coach to help her find the way.

How Anastasija Sevastova found her way back to tennis

Talking to the New York Times, Schmidt insisted that the decision to come back to tennis was all Sevastova and had little to do with him. “It was not my intention to bring her back,” Schmidt had admitted. “I never said to her, ‘Let’s try again.’ It had to come from her, and it was important that she was the one who decided it, not anybody else.” And it worked exactly how he wanted.

One day in 2014, when they were visiting her home city, Liepaja, she would make the pivotal decision. “She got very serious,” Schmidt said. “And she told me she wanted to try tennis again, to compete and see how far she could get.” For Anastasija Sevastova, it was baby steps to start with. She didn’t expect how it would start a fairytale run.

She had modest goals. “Play top 100. Enjoy the game,” was her confession after she had just gotten the upset win over Sloane Stephens. But she would not only the top 100. She reached a career high of #11 in October 2018. In fact, she stayed in the Top 50 for 4 consecutive years from 2016 to 2019. Right now, she is 386 in the world. But we know how fast she can change that. All we know is we have an intense battle on the cards on Saturday.