Robert Lansdorp: A Personal Portrait Part 2

Mental toughness is one of Robert Lansdorp’s constant teaching themes and a common denominator in all four of his Grand Slam champions.

Of the four, Davenport is the least athletic, Sampras the most athletic. Austin had good movement, a steely will and the can’t-miss groundstrokes to overcome her shaky serve. Davenport has great hand-eye coordination and is one of the best ball-strikers ever, but is limited by a lack of quickness and lateral mobility.

Three of the four — Austin, Davenport and Sharapova — built their game around Lansdorp’s bulletproof groundstrokes. And all four — most of all Austin — were known on the tour as never-quit-and-always-die-hard competitors who never tanked a point, much less a match, no matter how tired or hurt they might be, no matter how meaningless or insignificant the match.

"They’re all fighters and scrappers, every one of them from Tracy to Sharapova," according to Elliot Teltscher, another top 10 player and a high performance coach Lansdorp also developed. "Robert instilled that, or at least he brought it out of them."

Austin had no idea until very recently that the genesis of Lansdorp’s obsession with mental toughness lies in an early childhood spent dealing with Japanese…