E27: Leading Champions with Frank Dancevic

Hi there, Brian. Here, the summer's been a time to have a few non investment topics and speakers on the podcast, including this one. But don't fret. Coming soon, we're back to investments on the Unlimited podcast. Stay tuned. This podcast is brought to you by Gensler Wealth. We're not talking about investing today, so no disclaimer needed. Although since we'll be talking tennis, I will say you are going to love this one, but don't fault me if you don't. Today on the unlimited podcast we speak with former professional tennis player and current Canadian Davis cup team coach, Frank Danjevic. We talk about what's required to be at the top of your game, coaching or leading high performing team members, and what it's like facing Nadal and Djokovic. Let's go. Foreign. Welcome everyone to the latest episode of the unlimited podcast. I always say at the beginning I feel like that I'm really excited for our guests today. I'm really, really excited, extra excited for the guests we have today because as many listeners know, I'm a huge tennis fan and we are really, really lucky to have with us Frank Dick, who is the retired professional tennis player but also the current coach of the Canadian Davis cup team. And this is really exciting. We get to talk tennis and hear about his career and what's happening with the Davis cup and maybe he'll give us some secrets of successful folks and successful athletes and top performing athletes. So I'll give you a little bit of an intro to Frank and then we'll get rolling here. So Frank, as I said, retired Canadian professional tennis player. He first became the country's top singles player according to ATP rankings in February of 2003 as an 18 year old. And he remained so from January of 2006 until June of 2010, achieving a career high singles ranking of number 65 in the world. He's been the captain of Canada's Davis cup team since 2017 and in 2022 the Canadian team, including top ranked Canadian tennis players like Felix OJ Eliasim, Vasak Pospasil, Dennis Shapovalov, among others, they won and became world champions. And he'll tell us a little bit more about what the Davis cup is. For those who don't know and literally we're catching Frank hours before he departs to Italy to join the team there to compete at the current stage of the Davis Cup. So busy guy and important for our country here. So Frank, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.

Really, really appreciate, thank you Brian, it's a pleasure. And, you know, I think it's. We see the inside part of the story on the team, but it's, you know, it's, it's. I, I love sharing the stories as well with the public and with people, so they have a little bit of an idea of, of what Davis cup is really about and, and what we have to go through as a team and what, you know, I can even give stories about myself when I first started, how I was as a player back in the day, so.

Well, that's. I appreciate that. And that's actually an amazing place to start. We'd love to hear sort of your story, how you became a professional tennis player and then ultimately the coach of, of the team here. It's pretty, Pretty amazing.

Sure. Well, you know, tennis for me started at a very young age. I was seven. Seven years old, eight years old. I live really close to a tennis club, White Oaks Tennis Club in Niagara Falls, and so very convenient for me to just start a junior program there. And at a young age, I felt like I was very good. I was ahead of the game. Um, you know, I was beating kids that were two, three years older than me already at nine, 10 years old. And I went on to try playing competitively at the provincial level, which I succeeded. I won quite a few provincial tournaments, then went on to the national stage, where I ended up winning the national championships under 14 and quite a few national titles after that. I felt like I was meant to be a tennis player at that age at 15, 16. And I started just seeing how far I could take it. And I decided that one day I wanted to pursue my career and be a professional tennis player. And at 16, 17 years old, I started playing more ITF events, international events, where my partner and I, Giovanni Lepenti, we won junior Wimbledon. I had a junior career of top 20 in the world. And I started my pro career pretty early at around, you know, 17, 18 years old, where I had early success. I won a few Challenger events at 18, so I was sort of destined to take that path and to try to be a professional player, which, you know, it was definitely a journey of a lot of ups and downs, but in the end, they're very good memories. And I stayed on Tour for 14 years playing professionally, with my highest ranking being 65 and the Davis cup being a big part of it. Uh, you know, my, my Davis cup journey started in 2003.

Can you, can you just, as a quick break, can you just explain to folks what the Davis cup is? Cause I'M not sure. Everyone might know.

Sure. So the Davis cup is the world championships of tennis, basically. You could, you could put it that way. It's the biggest team competition in the world, actually, of any sport. We have the most countries competing for the championship, with 157 countries playing this year. And to reach the final stages of where we're at, it takes a long time, it takes many years and many qualifying stages to reach the top 32 countries in the world, even. And going back to when I first started playing Davis cup, we were ranked between 16 in the world and 32 in the world. We were always in that range. And it was a huge deal for Canada to get into the top 16 teams. For us to actually make what we call the world group, the top 16 teams was a huge achievement. And I'll start with one story that got me sort of hooked to the team and hooked, hooked to the Davis cup competition. It was always a dream for me to play for Canada to play Davis Cup. And back in the day, I was 18 years old. The players were Daniel Nestor, Frederick Niemeyer. Our captain was Grant Connell, you might know the name. He was a great Canadian tennis player, number one in the world, who was a great doubles player back in the day. He was our captain at the time. And we were playing Brazil, who were a very. They had a lot of depth on their team. They had Gustavo Querten, who was French Open champion, Fabio Seretta, who was a top 50 player. And we played them in Calgary at the Saddle Dump. Okay, we're with big underdogs. And this, this match, or we call it a tie, we call it a tie when, when two teams are competing against each other. So this tie was being played at the Saddle Dome in Calgary, and the winner was. Was making it into the world group of Davis Cup. To make a long story short, we were tied going into the fifth day and back back then, the matches were a lot longer. They're three to five set matches. There was a lot of tennis being played in one weekend. So you would play two on Friday, three out of five sets. Then there would be a doubles played on Saturday and 2, 3 out of 5 set matches played on Sunday. So you'd have. Yeah, you had to be in peak shape to be playing Davis cup at that time. And so Daniel played two very long matches, singles and doubles. We were going into the final day being tied at 2 all into basically the final match. Uh, so the night before Saturday night, I was, I wasn't actually expecting to play because I was I was there as a hitting partner just to get the experience to hang out with the guys, see how they're practicing, seeing what the pros are doing. And I get a phone call from our captain at midnight the night before saying, frank, where the hell are you, man? I want to put you for the fifth match tomorrow to play against Brazil. And so I was out at a karaoke bar with my friends and, you know, my family. And so I, you know, I, I leave the place, I go back to my hotel. I was a little bit of a panic mode because I wasn't actually expecting to play in the fifth day, but I ordered late room service and they put me to play that fifth match against Fabio Serretta, who was ranked 45 in the world. I was ranked 450 at the time, as a junior, okay, on the ATP circuit. And I went there and I tell you what, going out on court is a lot different feeling than sitting on the bench and cheering for the guys. I was so, I mean, I just loved being out there. I was pumping my fist every second. I was using the crowd at about 4,000 people. The more people that watched me that day than I had my whole junior career. And I just embraced that moment and I played the match of my life and ended up winning that match. Canada qualified for the World Group in the first, for the first time in a decade. And after that match, I still have, I have goosebumps right now thinking about it, but, you know, had my teammates run on a court, they lifted me up like a superstar. You know, I, I actually Air Canada upgraded me to business class, which was a big deal back.

Well, that's the hardest thing to do if all you have to do is, you know, the Canadian Davis cup there to get that.

It was, you know, that experience as an 18 year old kid, feeling that rush of excitement and the thrill to be able to get Canada into the World group to help my team out, to, to be sort of a national hero in that moment. Arriving in at Pearson Airport, newspaper, you know, you got CBC, TSN, all these newspapers and TVs waiting for you once you get out of the baggage claim was quite an experience for me. And so this for me was incredible. And I told myself at that moment, I said, look, this is what I want to do. I want to be part of Davis cup for the rest of my career. As long as I can be part of this team. This is, this was just, this is way too, too much fun. And so I went, I ended up playing for, I would say, 16, 17, years I played for Canada. I played 25 ties in total for Canada over the years, because usually you play two, three, two to three ties a year, depending on how well we're doing. And so that was it. In 2017, I ended up retiring from tennis professionally, and I got asked to be the Davis cup captain going forward. And for me, that's an honor to be part of the team and to take that position as captain was, was a true honor for me. And I, and I, I took the job on the spot. I said, look, this is, you know, this is a way for me to be part of this going forward. And luckily now we have so much depth on the team. We have great players who are, you know, top 30 in the world, top 20 in the world, top 10 in the world with Felix. And it just gives us that much more depth to go deeper in the event. And, you know, 2019, we had a magical run. We made finals. Canada wasn't expecting that. We were not expecting to go that deep. Vasek and Denis basically took the team to the finals. They played incredible tennis and Felix stepped in for the final match. We came a little bit short, but we tasted that we were so close to the victory and we could do this. So in 2022, the guys regrouped and we went for it. We said, look, we're going to try to go for the title and win this whole thing. And, you know, the stars aligned. I mean, we had a lot of ups and downs through the event, but eventually, you know, things went our way and we ended up winning the whole thing. So it was, it was quite a privilege being part of that whole, being part of the team and being part of that whole process to, you know, winning the whole event.

Yeah, amazing. Sounds amazing. I want to chat with you a little bit more as we get deeper into the conversation about actually leading and coaching also, like, super high performing athletes. But I want to talk a little bit more about your, you know, the start of your career. But first of all, I have to pause for a second because I see your nickname is Frank the Tank. And I'm assuming that's not because you do a lot of streaking in the quad, you know, from old school, or maybe you do, I don't know. But I gotta know. Our listeners need to know what's. Where's Frank the Tank come from? What's. What's that?

You know, it's interesting. I don't know exactly what. When it started, but it definitely started in Davis cup. And I really, I believe it was this match versus granulars that I played in. And it was 2015, I believe we were playing Spain in Vancouver and I played versus Granulars who was also. I was the underdog. I was ranked, I believe I was ranked in the top hundred at that time, but granules was ranked top 30 in the world. And I always loved, like Davis cup was the thing for me when I went out on court playing Davis Cup, I just, I was 100%, 10% in the match and I, I used every bit of energy from anybody around I could to. To win those matches. And that match was another magical match for me. I played the match of my Life. I won 626261 against top 30 player. Oh, wow. The crowd was chanting Frank the Tank the whole time. They even made T shirts written Frank the tank 616162. And all the, like, half the crowd was wearing them. So somebody ended up printing out a couple hundred T shirts in the crowd and everybody was wearing these, these T shirts. So that's sort of where the story started. Right? Right.

Fantastic. Hilarious. One of the themes that I talk a lot about on this podcast with all different guests is sort of characteristics or habits of successful people. I've always been amazed at what it takes for a elite athlete to, you know, train every day and, and be at their best. Can you give a little bit of a picture for our listeners what it was like as a singles player or whatever, what you had to do every day, training to just really be your best and come out and bring your best on the court?

Sure. Tell you what, being a professional athlete, it's a very difficult thing to do. There are many, many aspects of being a professional athlete that have to come together for you to perform at the ultimate level and to keep performing throughout the year. And that's the thing about being a professional is you need to keep that level. And ultimately your mind and your body have to be in sync throughout the year and throughout the years, actually, it's not just one year. You have to have everything, you know, keep everything rolling from year to year to year. And this is very difficult. It's very difficult to find that balance of, you know, being a human, we're not robots. To where we're just training, training, training. Your mind needs to be able to focus in on tasks when you're playing matches, but then you need to relax as well on court. When you're in the point, you're focused super hard for 20, 30 seconds. Your intensity is very high. And as soon as that point's over, you need to check out, relax, relax the body, slow the breathing, and reset for the next point that's coming up. And this has to be done over and over again and on a bigger scale. It's the same thing on tour. You know, you have intense weeks where you're playing tournaments, and there's always a period of two, three days where you need to relax and reset the body and reset your mind to refocus for the week after. And what I tell people all the time, and parents especially, and kids, is what makes tennis the most difficult is rebounding after losses, because you will lose 90% of weeks you play. Unless you're Novak or Roger or Rafa, you're gonna lose most of the weeks you play tennis. And it's how you react to those losses. Sometimes it's going to be in the first round, most of the time, first or second round. But a lot of times, even if you're losing in the quarters or the semis or the finals, you're losing. And you have to figure out a way to pinpoint, of course, how you can improve what you did good, what you can do better, but essentially figure out a way to reset your mind and your body for the next week coming. Because to reach a high level in tennis, you need to play a lot of tournaments. You need to be on the road a lot. It's very lonely, especially starting out. Most people don't have the finances to finance a whole team like the top guys have. They have their families with them, they have coaches, they have physios, they have psychologists. They have this whole team that travels together essentially like a family. And once you get to this stage, it can be easier from that point of view. But in reality, 95% of players are on their own trying to break through pretty much their whole careers. Some do break through, but it's getting into that sort of circle of tennis life where you have to figure out a good balance of having the tennis side, but also the side where you can keep going and keep the long longevity going through your career. And this is tough. This many players, they burn out after a couple years. They just, you know, either they burn out financially or they burn out with the pressures where they can't handle, you know, just losing over and over again and having to find. Find that will to figure out what's going on and to eventually break through on tour, right?

Yeah, Yeah. I can't remember who had the quote and I can picture his face, but I can't remember the player's name. But basically, every single Person who plays any tournament except for one loses.

So it's, it's difficult. You know, it really is difficult after you lose a match because it's disappointing. And most of the time you've put a lot of work before that event to do well. And this is another thing that is very important for young tennis players and young athletes to remember. You can't put all your eggs in one basket after training. So the mistake I made early in my career is I would work really hard for a few months and I would think, okay, now I put all the work in. I did everything I could do. You know, I had the pressure from the agents, from the coaches, from the parent, from my parents, from everybody. Okay, now you're going to perform because you've put the work in. It doesn't work like that. Just because you put the work in doesn't mean you're going to do well on the tour leading up to working so hard. And so it's demoralizing. It really is demoralizing because it's suffering. Working off the court is suffering and it's a lot harder than playing matches. You're suffering a lot more in practice, you're working out in the gym. You're really giving your 110% to be better than those other guys and you go on tour and you lose. And so to rebound from that can be challenging in the mind. So instead of looking at it, you know, as a short term success, it's more of a long term sort of goal that you need to sort of put in your mind. And this is what I've, what I changed later in my career was, okay, I'm going to do my training sequences throughout the year, but I'm not putting that pressure on myself to have an amazing, you know, few weeks after I put all that work in. It helped me, it helped my game. But it's a long term thing to be able to help me. You know, eventually I'm going to have my breakthrough, whether it's now, whether it's in a few months, whether it's next year. If I keep doing the right things and I keep putting the dated day to day work in, my time will come and when the opportunity does present itself, I will be ready for it. So this is more of a long term mentality that helped me succeed as a professional on tour.

Right. As you know, I run a wealth and investment firm. So you said like the key phrases of investing, don't put all your eggs in one basket and think long term. So even though we're not talking about investing here. You know, we can use that. We can tie it, tie the two worlds together a little bit.

Any.

Well, it's funny mentioned some of the, you know, tennis is a tough game and, and, and some folks are on their own. You know, Nick Kyrgios, Andre Agassi, they've all said, you know, it's an extremely lonely sport. You're out there alone. There's not many sports like tennis where you're literally, especially in singles, I mean, you're on your own, you can't talk to your coach, your opponent is, you know, a hundred feet away from you, whatever. Like you're really on your own out there. Agassi says he used to talk to himself like crazy and look like a madman on the court. Can you take us into that world? When you're in the middle of a match and there's no one there but yourself and things are going bad or things are going well, and how do you sort of push through all that?

Sure. It's, again, you have to, you know, it's always searching for solutions. And you're not only thinking about yourself on court, you're thinking about your opponent and you're thinking about what is he feeling right now, what are his strengths, what are his weaknesses. Every situation, you're trying to read the game, you're trying to read what he has done earlier in the match, you're trying to pick up patterns. So you're not only thinking about yourself, you're thinking about the other guy. What's difficult about. There's lots of difficult things about tennis, but what's really difficult about tennis is, unlike team sports, where you're not having a great day, you're having a little tweak, you're having a little injury, you can be subbed in. Hockey players, for example, they're, they're not having a great day. Well, they're off the ice and they sub them in with somebody else. And when they're a hundred percent ready, they get thrown in for a few minutes and they play again. Here, you don't have that choice. You're out there for three hours, no matter what. You're dealing with the heat, you're dealing with injuries. You don't have that luxury of slipping mentally for a few minutes because you don't have a teammate to back you. So if you slip, if your mind slips for a few minutes and you get broken at four all in the third set, you're losing that match, my friend.

Right?

So this is what makes, what makes it very Difficult at a high level. These guys are so dialed in mentally, guys like Novak. It's just. It's incredible how focused these guys are in these big moments and being able to sustain that level for so many years, it's fascinating to me. But this is what sort of separates tennis from the other sports from a mental perspective, is you have no time to relax on court. The higher the level gets, you know, the less errors you're able to make in a match.

Yeah, amazing. So you're coaching Davis Cup. There's singles, there's doubles. You've obviously played doubles a ton. What. How does that differ? Singles where you're by yourself. Doubles where you have a partner. Not like you're having huge conversations with each other while you're playing. But how. How does that change the dynamic doubles?

It's amazing. But also you have that little bit of a team aspect, so you have somebody to back you if you're not having a great day. He's going to back you. He's going to take, you know, a lot of the. He's going to take a lot of those balls. He's going to take a little bit, that little bit of that confidence, and he can boost your energy. And this is where, you know, doubles is a huge energy game. You need the energy to be a good doubles player. And it's a huge factor in Davis cup as well, is raising the energy of the team. Always, always keeping that energy high. That's one of the points I bring up all the time to the guys. Guys, keep the energy high. Show the other team that we're in this. I don't want to see any negativity. I want you guys to fire each other up and keep that energy really, really high between. Between the two players. Because ultimately, with good energy and with the guys keeping themselves motivated and keeping that positive energy throughout the match, we have a lot better chances of winning than, you know, once there's some negativity in that doubles team, the one guy can pull the other guy down and there can be a downward spiral. Spiral. So this is one of the main focuses for us. For doubles, definitely.

Right. Okay. Well, actually, and glad you mentioned sort of some of your coaching and leading approaches, how easy is it to make a transition from player to coach or captain and maybe talk about maybe some other ways that you lead and sort of motivate your team to the victory that you had?

Sure. Well, for me, it was quite natural and easy sort of transition, I have to say, because I got very fortunate to have a great position right after my career, in fact, I was still playing a little bit of doubles in 2017 when I got called to do this job. So I was sort of, sort of transitioned into a great spot into Davis cup captain. And that's. I would say that's very rare in the. In the tennis world to just go from player to Davis cup captain. So for me, it was, like I said, it was an honor, and it was great transition. I also did some work with players on tour. I coached Vashik Hospital. I traveled with him for a few years on tour. So for me, it was quite natural because I was part of the tour. I already knew most of the coaches, most of the players, and I understood how the tour worked. And there are little things that you can't teach, right? How to just set up the day with practices, how to organize everything with the other coaches, with the other players, how the tournaments work, how, you know, little tricks on when to get practices, how to get practices, how to get more court time. There's many tricks that I know from years and years of traveling that you can't just teach the average club pro or somebody, right, who's coming into the game. You really have to be part of the tour for a long time to understand these things. And for me, I was able to gain the respect of the players because I was on the Tour. I did play the Tour, and most of my teammates that now I'm coaching, I was part of the team for a very long time. And so they respect the fact that I was in that position at one point, and I understand the game from the inside as well as a player. And when I do say something, that word really goes a long way in a match. If I do mention something in a match to a player, they listen and they really soak in that information. So for me, I feel like that's a really important factor in coaching. You have to gain the respect of the players. And so if an average Joe comes off the street and tries to tell a top pro, hey, listen, you got to do this and that, he's going to look at him and say, hey, man, like, you know, right? He's going to look at him in a way saying, same as you, into business, you have some guy coming out saying, hey, listen, you got to do this, you got to do that. Why don't you try this? Why don't you do that? Well, you know, the ins and outs and. And you just might catch one little phrase that doesn't make sense, and all of a sudden there's like a Red flag that pops up and you lose his trust. Right. So, so this is where it's very sensitive. These players at the top level, it's very sensitive information that you can give them and information that they have to realize that makes sense. Right. And so this is why it's, it's, it's to have this position. You see most of the Davis cup captains or most of the high level, most players, they, they hire coaches that played at their level or at a high professional level because they can connect with them in a way that it's difficult with just, just anybody telling them information. Right.

Yeah. So you've given us a little bit of some of the, you know, how you approach leading, you know, the podcast here that we have is listened to by a whole variety of folks. You mentioned business, for sure. We have business leaders listening and common thread is people are managing, you know, hopefully high performing or high, high performance teams and talent. Any other top tips you would say for anyone, whether it's in the sports world or the business world or the philanthropic world, doesn't matter if you're going to be leading and managing really high performing people, players, professionals. Any tips as to how to get the best out of your team?

Sure. Well, two things I would, as a team, for me, it's very important to have good chemistry with the guys. That's number one. I don't want any negative energy with the players. If they have any issues, we talk it out on the spot, always. We don't let any negative energy build up in the team. This is huge for me and I mention it to them all the time and I just say, look, listen guys, anything you have, any issues you have, talk to me. Let's get it off your chest right away. We can talk it out. But it's really tough to manage a team when there's things building up inside and unknowns.

Right.

So this is, this is very important for me and, and I've been lucky in that way for the most part. We'd, we've, you know, the guys get along really good and they're really good, they're really good together as teammates and they come together when we have good, good moments and tough moments. So this has been, this has been a very big thing for us in the team. From a professional side of things, as a professional tennis player, I would say the most important thing is two things. Good balance. And generally in your life not to be just so focused on one thing. Just have good balance, it's really important. And consistency where you're doing Your routines, you're doing your routines for mental health, for your physical, for everything. Consistency is very important factor. And this is where, this is what sort of separates the, the top guys from the other guy, from the rest of the rest of the pack is just, they're very consistent in what they do from a day to day basis. You know, they, they really take time to do all of their routines they need to do for their tennis, for their mental health even. And, and this is, rest included is part of training. I, I put rest as part of training because it's just, it's part of a tennis player lifestyle. So just having that consistency and not breaking the consistencies and not having those slumps where if you have a bad week or you have a bad tour where you're just taking, you know, three weeks completely out of tennis or doing something completely different to your ordinary routine. So consistency throughout the years, I would say is one of the main keys and, you know, for the Davis cup team is just keeping that, keeping that energy good between everybody and the staff and the players. So two tips.

Good lessons, good lessons. Before we wrap up shortly, I want to ask you about a couple more, maybe memories or experiences. So I think in the, you mentioned Djokovic and his focus. I think you've played Djokovic in the past. I think you played Nadal. Correct me if I'm wrong, you know, these now are, you know, some of the top guys ever. Any memories or what's, what's, what was that experience like playing those guys? I know it was a little while back, but how was that?

Sure, I played Rafael. That was, you know, I played Nadal. I played Novak twice and I played Rafa Novak. He was just, yeah, I played him at the Masters in Toronto. And, and yeah, he's just the guy's, he's just good. I mean, it's, it's. Yeah, it was, I believe it was three and four, the match. You know, I remember breaking. He was serving for the match at 5:3 in the second set, and I remember breaking him back at 5:4 and saying, okay, you know, I'm back in the match now. You know, I can take this maybe to a tiebreaker on the second set and see where it goes. And he just. I hit three or four bomb first serves at 130 miles an hour. And he was there. He was there and just hit some incredible deep returns and ended up breaking me at 64 and, and won the match. And I remember sitting after the match and saying, how did those serves come back? And he Just that ability. He has that ability to just read the opponents at the right time. So obviously he read me. He had a pattern on me from earlier in the match and he was just there where, when the, when the match was, you know, close, when in those tight moments, he knew what was going to happen and where I was going to serve. So that was quite an experience. Just to feel that from a top player. I think he was at the time he was ranked top three or four. It was sort of young. He was coming up. And I played Rafael in Montreal, the quarterfinals of the Masters, and actually won the first set there, six four. And this was an incredible match. I was playing really good tennis. You know, I had some really good wins under my belt leading up to that match. And 6, 4 in the first set and I could feel physically that I was starting to. I was starting to get tired physically in the second set and I just couldn't handle, I couldn't physically, I couldn't handle his pace. I was already tired from playing a lot of matches leading up. So I feel like that was a factor. If I played him fresh in the first or second round, maybe I would have actually won that match. I would've had a chance because I was playing really well. But physically he got to me and I have that one hand backhand like Roger. So he was just spinning it up to my back, making it very difficult on me to win points in the second and third set. And so he had an advantage once. I lost a little bit of that physical stamina in the second set. He sort of just took control of the match and. And I lost. I believe it was 6:3 on the third set. But look, they're great memories. They were in Canada. I played, you know, in front of a 20,000 people in Montreal. It was, it was a match for me that I remember my whole life. So it was, it was amazing moment for me in my career.

Amazing. I have a one handed backhand too, but I, I would never say, like you just said, I have a one handed backhand like, like Roger. Because that, you know, the association for me doesn't work for you. It does wrong.

I think Roger's is obviously a lot better than mine. But I was compare having, you know, having that one hand backhand and you know how Rafa always gets to Roger with that. He's open always one hand backhand with those high spins. So he was trying to just break down my backhand basically with his lefty forehand. So it was, it was definitely tough dealing with those spins.

Let's put it that way. Any. Any other sort of super amazing memories from your time? Obviously, winning Davis cup last year was probably one of the highs of life, but any. Any other memories to share that you think would be interesting?

You know, I think it's. I had a really long career, so there was lots of. Lots, definitely lots of memories. But the Davis cup victory is up there at the top of the list. Even though I wasn't a player, just being part of the team and being captain, that's definitely top of the list. Yeah, those memories playing the top players like Rafa, those are great memories for me. And, you know, just, I guess winning, winning that Davis cup title, winning that Davis cup match in 2003, the Davis cup championship, those are. Those are top two. And I played Andy Roddick one time in the semifinals of a, you know, 250when I was coming up as well, when I was 20 years old. That was a big one for me. He was top four in the world. So I would put most matches that I played the top players and beat, you know, a couple of top five guys. And the Davis cup definitely at the top of the list for. For. For me and my career. Good.

No, great. Good. Okay, so, last question. This one's an interesting one because this is what we usually we ask. I ask all my guests the same last question. And this is a question where if you asked me, I would probably say, I'll tell you my answer, then I'll tell you the question, but I'd probably say maybe a musician or a tennis player. And the question is as follows. Okay, so our theme here is unlimited. We're a wealth management firm, but we're independent, and we can sort of help clients in any way that they need. We can look at any investment. So we. We have a little tagline, you know, your wealth unlimited. And the podcast is called Unlimited. So I always ask my guests, well, if you weren't doing what you were doing, if your life wasn't the way, you know, the journey that you took, and you could do anything else in life because, you know, the world is an unlimited place and you can choose something else, what would it be? Now, as I say, I would have said maybe a professional tennis player. So you are allowed to say a wealth management professional if you want, because then we could, like, switch, you know, positions. But curious. If you weren't. If. If your last, you know, sort of your life and career wasn't tennis, is there something else you think you might have been doing?

Well, sure. I actually have a huge passion for fishing. So definitely I would do something along those lines. That's some. That's one of my passions off the court. And when I get any free time now, it's difficult because I have two little kids, so I'm trying to manage time appropriately and keep the wife happy. So if I wasn't playing tennis, I believe that I would definitely pursue a career in fishing. Now, where that would take me, I don't know, but somewhere in the fishing industry, whether I would be some captain, you know, Frank on Lake Ontario, I don't know, or somewhere on the sea or having, you know, something to do with. With the outdoors and fishing, definitely I would. I would be in that world if it wasn't for tennis.

So. Okay. Amazing Captain Frank the Tank. All right, Frank, look, really appreciate your time today. As I said at the beginning, I know you're heading off to Italy any. Any second now. Wish you and the team all the best and bring it home again for us this year. And just thanks again for your time. Really interesting speaking with you.

All right, thanks, Brian.

Okay.

The unlimited podcast is hosted and produced by Brian Ginsler and is edited and mixed by myself, David McMillan. This podcast is not to be taken as investment advice. If you like what you heard, don't forget to rate the podcast and follow us on social media. Inslerwealth. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

Sam.