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Bianca Andreescu is set to get back to competition in less than two weeks, after an absence of nearly nine months.
And as she embarks on yet another comeback, at a WTA 250 tournament in Rabat, Morocco the week before Roland Garros, she has returned to the familiar once again in terms of her team.
UPDATE: Andreescu never made the date in Rabat this week.
The 23-year-old will be working with longtime hitting partner J.T. Nishimura and conditioning coach Clément Golliet as she looks to try once more to get back to where she should be.
Andreescu spoke to Tennis Canada’s “Match Point” podcast this week, outlining who she has had with her during the last three months. She has been training to get back on Tour after a back issue, reported as a stress fracture but for which there are few details, kept her off the court since a first-round loss to Camila Giorgi at the Omnium Banque Nationale in Montreal last August.
(You can listen to the podcast here; there are no details on how she finally got her back healthy and how she plans to manage it. But it’s nice to hear her voice again. And there is fresh information about her team setup).
Team Bibi a revolving door for a couple of years
Team Bianca 2024 is a long, long way from the experienced, top-shelf team she had in late 2021 and through 2022 and part of 2023.
She had Sven Groeneveld, who has worked with numerous players on both the WTA and ATP Tours. She had Nishimura as a hitting partner. Physical trainer Abdul Sillah, who had worked with Serena Williaims and Naomi Osaka, was there for some six months before the drama hit.
And then, Groeneveld quit.
Christophe Lambert, who had worked with Andreescu as a junior but in recent years worked with the New Zealand federation, stepped in as her new coach.
It was a big step up in level for Lambert to be on the road coaching one of the world’s best. And so it was certainly an opportunity for Andreescu to take more ownership of her career and her game.
By last spring, she lost another key piece as Jean-François Bruyère – who formerly worked with Victoria Azarenka and was an expert at keeping the atmosphere light around the team – first said he had to take a break to stay homem then showed up at Wimbledon with his old charge, Azarenka. (He’s still Team Vika).
It worked out well for Bruyère; by August Andreescu was off the Tour.
Nishimura promoted; Golliet back
It wasn’t news that Andreescu and coach Lambert had parted ways; Open Court spoke to Lambert in January in Australia and the Frenchman wasn’t sure when Andreescu planned to return – April was his best guess – and about whether he would be back when she was.
The two met up briefly at Indian Wells in March; Andreescu was there as a “tournament ambassador” and Lambert was at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden working with another player, a young Chinese junior.
The upgrading of Nishimura, a 28-year-old former college player with the University of California Golden Bears, to coach could certain mean Andreescu wants to run her own show, even more than with Lambert.
(We recommend that he doesn’t try to teach her his … rather unique forehand).
Nishimura has no professional coaching experience. That probably means that he comes at a very … reasonable rate. But as Andreescu points out during the podcast, he knows her well.
“I took a full 360 with my team. My coach now is my hitting partner the last three years, J.T. Nishimura. He’s been great. He’s taking a leadership role and I am as well. Because now I feel like I’m really paying attention to what I want to do, and he’s very receptive to that,” Andreescu said on the podcast.
“He’s learned a lot over the last three years. He knows me inside and out, and he just turned 28 last week. I like that young blood on the team.”
One thing Nishimura never experienced or witnessed firsthand was Andreescu at her best, back in 2019 when she won Indian Wells, the Canadian event and the US Open.
That’s when she was playing her best tennis – the most creative, the most energetic, the most oblivious – and took the WTA Tour by storm.
With all the injury breaks in recent years, it’s been a stop-start battle of trying to get back into the competitive swing and – just when she’d be getting into the beat and finding her game – she’d be out with injury again.
It’s a nuanced, varied, crafty game that requires total confidence to execute. And the level on the WTA Tour has risen every year since those glorious moments in 2019. She’ll be tested in every way.
“I feel like Ive had a lot of success in the past with playing on the clay. And I really want to get back to that, because I feel like my game style can really, really do damage on it with my variety – which I want to start implementing a bit more of. I think that’s another thing I kind of got away from,” Andreescu told the podcast. “I think I can do well. I just have to stay locked in, that’s all.”
As for Golliet, he has worked as a strength and conditioning coach for Tennis Canada for about a decade. But he also runs his own shop.
“I’ve known him since I was 14. We worked together very well in 2018, 2019, 2020. So it’s me, him and J.T., for now,” Andreescu said.
A year ago this week …
Was it really a year ago that Andreescu was in Rome, playing the WTA 1000 and grinding on the clay
It was.
Andreescu had made some solid inroads, after falling outside the top 50. She was ranked No. 31 and seeded No. 24 when she arrived in Rome, after losing a tough three-setter to Wang Xiyu in her opening match in Madrid.
That she was already back – just three weeks or so after her dramatic ankle injury in Miami – was already a victory. The worst part of it, beyond the pain, was that it was the first real tournament in which she really looked like “vintage” Andreescu.
In Rome, the Canadian had to wait out a rain delay (this was a daily occurrence in Rome last year). And by the time she finally got on court on the Grand Stand to play Marketa Vondrousova, it was late at night. The match was played in gloomy, dank conditions before only friends and family.
It was a tough, tough loss.
Andreescu did bounce back to make the third round at Roland Garros, a run that included wins over Victoria Azarenka and Emma Navarro.
When Andreescu returns in Morocco, she’ll be playing that event for the first time.
She will have to strike the perfect balance between putting in all the work she needs to do, to get her game back. But she’ll also have to be mindful of her health history – both physical and mental – while she juggles every aspect of being a pro tennis player.
The other option the week before Roland Garros is a 500-level event in Strasbourg she played back in 2021. But that one will have a stronger field, so Rabat seems like a good re-entry point.
“I haven’t had a full healthy year on tour. My focus now has been to lock in physically so I do my best to prevent as much as I can,” Andreescu said. “That’s been basically the focus, and obviously my game too.”
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