DURING HER FINAL months as a professional tennis player, Sandra Zaniewska didn’t know what her next chapter would be following retirement, but she knew one thing for sure: She wanted nothing to do with tennis.
For much of her playing career, people had asked her if she was interested in coaching, but she always said simply, “No chance.” It didn’t interest her, and the idea of experiencing the globetrotting drudge of the tour for someone else’s career sounded torturous.
But when her career came to an end in 2017 at the age of 25, she was asked by her friend Petra Martic if she could temporarily help her as she returned to the tour following an injury. Zaniewska didn’t have any other plans, or much money, so she figured she would help for a few weeks before officially moving on from tennis. But before long, weeks turned into months, and months turned into years, and Martic rose from a ranking just inside the top 100 to No. 14 in the world.
And Zaniewska, the once reluctant, anything-but-tennis coach, was hooked. She knew she had found her true calling.
“I loved it, and I remember thinking, ‘Wow, I was meant to do this job,'” Zaniewska told ESPN. “From that moment on, I just stayed and I didn’t even want to explore anything else, to be honest. But it really…
