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 Finding the right words to comfort a player after a loss is one of
the tougher parts of a coach's job, so 37-year-old Liu had to get
creative last year as Zhang suffered a crisis of confidence that
pushed her to the brink of quitting.
Zhang slumped to her 14th successive first-round exit at the grand
slams at the French Open last year, a record among active players in
the women's top 300, and her ranking, which peaked at 30 in
mid-2014, plummeted towards the 200s.
As loss piled on loss, Liu used boxing metaphors, the wisdom of
Michael Jordan and the lessons from his own low points as a Tour
battler who never broke the top 1,000 to garnish his motivational
speeches.
Zhang wondered if her coach was "cheating" her into persevering but
Liu never had any doubt she would turn it round.
"I told Shuai that she was totally different from other Chinese
girls," Liu told Reuters at Melbourne Park on Tuesday.
"I said 'one day you will have huge success at the grand slams'. I
just felt that for some people who have easy wins in the first or
second round, they might not go much farther.
"But if you are always having to battle through the tough times and
you never give up, you'll be a big, big success.
"If you give up there will be no chance to see the bright days. This
is what I told her every time that we lost.
"It's like boxing, if someone hits you, don't fall down. Just try
standing. Maybe there will be a second where you have an opening and
'bang!' Just hit."
That opening came in the most unlikely of circumstances, when Zhang
was drawn to play the world number two Simona Halep in the first
round, having grafted through qualifying as the world's 133rd-ranked
player.
"Everyone (in China) said: '15 first-round exits coming soon'.
Nobody believed in her. Maybe only her parents, me and her fitness
coach," Liu said.
Zhang, from the northern Chinese port of Tianjin, had virtually
resolved that Melbourne Park would be her last grand slam, so she
brought her parents with her to watch her play.
In the lead-up, she and Liu bought lottery tickets with a $15
million jackpot with friends on the Chinese social media platform
WeChat.
"But I told Shuai, 'this isn't a great way to get rich. But
tomorrow's match will take you 50 percent on the way to getting
rich, to getting famous'," said Liu.
"'So tomorrow, show your best. It doesn't matter. Even if we lose,
we have nothing to lose. If you make it, this won't just make the
national news, this will be all over the world. It's going to be
big."
Zhang beat Halep 6-4 6-3 to snap the first-round losing streak and
promptly burst into tears.
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NO FLUKE
She proved it was no fluke by upsetting seasoned grand slam
performer Alize Cornet in the following round.
Her next win over American Varvara Lepchenko made her only the
fourth Chinese woman to reach the last 16 at a grand slam after
twice grand slam champion Li Na, Zheng Jie and Peng Shuai.
The 27-year-old put down injury-hit Madison Keys on Monday to set up
a quarter-final against Sydney-born Briton Johanna Konta, a
47th-ranked opponent enjoying her own fairytale run.
"Nobody could have predicted Zhang would make the quarters here,"
said Liu.
Not the media, not the senior mandarins at the Chinese Tennis
Association or the high-profile foreign coaches who wrote her off
when she trained with the national academy in Beijing.
"They would point to Zhang and say this one has no chance.
"'She doesn't have the talent'. But I felt Zhang had the mental
side, the psychology," Liu said.
"They were talking about her physical talent, her explosiveness or
her reaction times.
"There are many players in China who have these qualities but they
lack the spirit."
Keeping things calm for Zhang is now Liu's priority. It is virtually
impossible with the buzz her run has created in China.
"The first day when we came here for qualifying nobody talked about
us. There were no interviews, nobody cared," he said. "Now, I've had
to tell lots of Chinese media to keep calm, please don't give her
any extra pressure.
"For sure, I don't want to limit her, I just want her to be free to
play her best tennis at such a great stadium."
(Editing by Martyn Herman)
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