By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Wednesday December 11, 2024
Michael Russell guided Taylor Fritz to major milestones in 2024, and was voted as the ATP's Coach of the Year as a result.
Photo credit: Michael Russell Instagram
Taylor Fritz had his best season to date in 2024 – and the best season of any American man in nearly two decades. So did the indefatigable man in his box, tireless taskmaster Michael Russell.
On Wednesday the tour announced that Russell has been awarded ATP Coach of the Year Honors in 2024 after helping guide Fritz to the 2024 US Open final and a career-best finish of No.4 in the ATP rankings – the highest year-end finish by an American in the ATP rankings since James Blake in 2006.
46-year-old Russell was voted as top coach by a panel of fellow ATP coaches. He joins a lofty lost of recipients that includes Darren Cahill (2023) and Marian Vajda (2018), the former coach of Novak Djokovic and Magnus Norman (2016), Stan Wawrinka’s former coach.
“I'm honored,” Russell told ATPTour.com. “I'm humbled to be selected by my fellow stellar ATP coaches. It means a lot. We all work so hard under the radar. We spend a lot of hours working for the players to be in the best position possible and to maximise their talent. So it's nice to really be recognised. And I'm very humbled and honored.”
Russell, a Detroit native who now resides in the Houston area, has coached Fritz since the end of 2021. It didn’t take long for the tandem to have success after they linked up. He guided Fritz to the Indian Wells title in 2022 – the Southern California native was the first American to win that title since 2001, and he would make his Top 10 debut later in the season, on October 10th 2022.
Since then, with the help of Russell, who works with Paul Annacone as an advisor, Fritz has continued to climb.
The American was ranked 22 at the start of 2022, and made his first year-end Top 10 finish in the same season. He cracked the Top 5 for the first time on November 11th of this year and finished at No.4 after becoming the first American to reach the title match at the ATP Finals since 2006.
“If you want to be the best player in the world, you have to eat, sleep and breathe tennis,” Russell says. “There's always a few areas where you can continue to improve, which is not only on court, but in the gym, in the dining room, and even sleep habits.
“He's continuing to work on those and really being even more professional. He is professional, but taking it to a new level, because when you start reaching the highest levels of any sport there's a lot of people behind you that want to take your position and in order to stay there you have to keep improving.”
Russell, a former ATP World No.60, retired from the sport in 2015 and started working as a high performance coach in Houston. Russell is the first American man to win the ATP Coach of the Year Award in the nine years since the tour added the distinction to its year-end awards.