Surfer's Insights from Turin's Tennis Crucible
Kanoa Igarashi steps from Olympic waves into the Nitto ATP Finals' round-robin grind, where indoor hard courts test mental resets as fiercely as any swell, arming him with strategies for surfing's next big rides.
In the humming intensity of Turin's Pala Alpitour, where baseline exchanges crackled under bright lights and the crowd's murmurs built with each prolonged rally, Kanoa Igarashi discovered tennis's raw psychological core. The 28-year-old Japanese surfer, whose silver medal from the Tokyo Olympics still gleams in his competitive memory, arrived fresh from the Paris Masters and plunged into the Nitto ATP Finals as an ATP content creator. This whirlwind immersion revealed how the season's elite handle the cumulative strain of a grueling campaign, their tactical adjustments on the fast indoor surface echoing the adaptive instincts required in surfing's unpredictable conditions.
Bridging sports through shared pressures
Igarashi, based in Lisbon, has swiftly embraced tennis as a wellspring of inspiration, attending both the Paris Masters and the Nitto ATP Finals to connect with the sport's top talents. He described to ATPTour.com how these interactions illuminated universal athletic pursuits, from soccer fields to basketball courts, all converging on the drive to excel despite diverse challenges. The conversations uncovered parallels in preparation, blending on-court drills with off-field mental tools that sharpen focus amid chaos.
“Tennis has always been that sport where it's the most physical and mentally the most difficult sport in the world,” Igarashi said. “As a sportsperson, I look at a lot of tennis players as inspiration, and I draw a lot of ideas from them. But it was my first experience coming into a tournament last week in Paris, and then all of the sudden, I'm here in Turin, so it was a crazy few weeks in the little tennis part of my brain.”
Players shared techniques for navigating the round-robin format's relentless pace, where a single crosscourt lob could shift momentum in a group-stage decider, much like positioning for the ideal wave entry. These exchanges fueled Igarashi's realization that elite performance hinges on consistent resets, whether recovering from a missed point or a stalled ride.
Daily notes from the pros' playbook
Each evening, as the arena emptied and the echo of down-the-line winners faded, Igarashi retreated with a notebook, jotting insights from pros adapting to the grippy hard courts that rewarded precise footwork and aggressive inside-out forehands. He recounted how athletes posed questions about his routines, prompting discussions on breathing exercises and fresh viewpoints that reshaped his approach to competition. These moments accelerated his growth, transforming spectator curiosity into actionable strategies for the surfing circuit ahead.
The Nitto ATP Finals' compressed schedule, demanding quick tactical pivots like one–two combinations to break serves under ranking pressures, mirrored the endurance tests of a surfing heat. Igarashi, representing Indian Wells as a member of the Tennis Creator Network launched by the ATP and TikTok at the event, found himself at the nexus of this high-stakes world. Learn more about the pioneering initiative here.
“It’s crazy. Just building a relationship with some of these guys and having a good conversation with some of these athletes, it's really made me realise that it's crazy the similarities between sports,” Igarashi reflected. “At the end of the day, we're trying to become the best no matter what you're playing: soccer, basketball, tennis, or my sport, surfing. There's so many different ways to do your sport, but the goal is the same.”
“I went home every day, taking notes off of some of the guys. [They] told me and said, ‘Hey, have you ever trained like this or have you ever done this kind of breathing exercises? Have you ever looked at your sport in this way?’” he added. “[There are] different perspective, different angles, and I felt like I grew a lot as an athlete and in my own sport. So to say, some of these last few weeks, things that I'll take with me for my upcoming season.”
Resetting with Auger-Aliassime's philosophy
Amid the finals' tension, where late-season qualifiers pushed through tiebreakers on the true-bouncing surface, Igarashi struck up a memorable dialogue with Felix Auger-Aliassime, who secured his Turin berth in the campaign's closing days. They delved into managing pressure through breath control, emphasizing renewal after every point or wave to stay primed for the next challenge. This philosophical alignment, vital in both arenas, turned their talk into a rich exchange of techniques tailored to individual sports yet rooted in shared mental discipline.
The Canadian's insights on point-by-point composure resonated deeply, highlighting how tennis demands immediate compartmentalization—slicing underspin backhands to buy time after errors, akin to Igarashi's wave resets. As group matches unfolded with crowds swelling at key moments, like a clutch inside-in forehand sealing a berth, Igarashi absorbed how these pros sustain poise in the face of year-long accumulation.
“Tennis is about resetting after each point, whether you win or lose, and being fresh for the next point. Same with surfing. We catch waves, and you're supposed to reset after each wave and make sure that you're physically and mentally reset going into the next ride,” Igarashi said. “We were talking about some breathing stuff and were sharing techniques and the ways we dealt with in our own way. He's very philosophical. I am too. Especially with the sport that I'm in, you really have to be. So it was cool.”
These Turin encounters equipped the surfer with a sharper toolkit, blending tennis's tactical precision with surfing's fluid demands to navigate future events. As he departs the courts for the ocean, the mental pivots gleaned here promise to elevate his rides, bridging disciplines in pursuit of that elusive peak performance.
