Holger Rune says that before he suffered his serious injury in the fall last year, his team had a “brutal and direct” talk with him which served as an eye-opener in relation to his occasional lacklustre approach. <\/p>\n
“When I was playing in Tokyo the week before Shanghai, I had a very important conversation with my whole team. In a way, a pretty brutal and straightforward conversation, where people were pretty honest with me. It was hard to hear in that moment, but I really appreciate it because something changed from then”<\/b>, says Rune<\/a> in a talk with the American tennis legend Andy Roddick<\/a> on the podcast “Served”<\/p>\n In the podcast, Rune explains that his team members gave him an eye-opener when he was told that he needs to do better in matches where things aren’t going his way, and where he’s having a hard time and feeling uncomfortable.<\/p>\n “We talked about that if I want to fulfill my potential, I have to do these things. If I don’t want to do them, that’s fair enough, but then we have to start talking to each other differently. In that moment, I understood the seriousness of these types of matches and the effort I have to give every time.”<\/b><\/p>\n During the talk, Rune highlights an example from the tournament in Tokyo where he was eliminated in the quarter final by the unseeded American Jenson Brooksby<\/a>, currently ranked as No. 48 in the world.<\/p>\n Rune says that he could have done better on that occasion. “Brooksby is a difficult player, but I didn’t make a proper effort either”. I don’t want to take anything away from his victory, but it was an example of me not delivering a 10 out of 10 effort”<\/b>, says Rune.<\/p>\n The difficult talk in Tokyo apparently had a positive effect on Rune’s performances.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Shanghai, Rune reached the quarter-final before bowing out against French outsider Valentin Vacherot<\/a>, who went on to win the tournament.<\/p>\n