Timea Bacsinszky partnered Swiss teammate Martina Hingis to win the doubles silver medal at the Rio Olympics Games.
While Hingis has been influential, Bacsinszky cites another Swiss Grand Slam champion as inspirational: Stan Wawrinka.
Watch: How Stan Became The Major Man
The 18th-ranked Swiss, who is coached by Wawrinka's former coach, Dimitri Zavialoff, says a conversation with Stan the Man at Indian Wells helped her focus on forward thinking.
During a one-hour conversation over coffee, Wawrinka offered Bacsinszky simple and powerful advice: Don't look back.
"I was coming back from an injury, and many time when at the press conferences they were asking me, Okay, what happened today?," Bacsinszky recalled. "I was like all the time for the last three months, Oh, well you know, my knee. I'm coming back from an injury and everything.
"One advice (Stan) told me is he said, Well, listen, don't use that as an excuse anymore. It's all right. It's done. Don't stick with that. Just look forward. It's okay. You lost because you were not good enough. That's it. Don't bring up the thing of your knee, that you have been injured for the last three months.
"You just look forward. He gave me like one or two small advices because he has been through a knee injury as well. I mean, it was only one hour (conversation), but it was way much than an hour for me."
Bacsinszky pointed out another connection she shares with Wawrinka.
"It's kind of funny, but you probably don't know but my coach right now, Dimitri Zavialoff, is the former coach of Stan," Bacsinszky told the media at the WTA Elite Trophy Zhuhai. "So he was the man that taught Stan to play his first backhands or first forehands.
"My coach is born in '76 so he was just 40 this year. Stan, he's from '85, so it's not a big age difference. But still, can you imagine my coach at a young age teaching someone from nowhere and getting him to top 10?
"The funny situation is that the best ranking my coach had with Stan was No. 9. Then they stopped in 2010, I think. Then I started again in 2013. My best ranking so far is No. 9."
Photo credit: lacote.ch