Getting Out of His Own Way

Davis Cup has changed more than a few players’ lives for the better. Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, to name two, used winning experiences in the team competition to kick their individual games into higher gears. But John Isner may be the first man to do the same after suffering a weekend of humiliation while representing his country.

Less than two months ago, Isner hit what he has since called “one of the lowest points of my career” when he lost two crucial singles matches in the United States’ first-round defeat to Great Britain. One came to Andy Murray, which was understandable; the other came to 111th-ranked James Ward, in a match that Isner led two sets to love. This was much harder to understand.

Afterward, Isner wallowed in the press room for a bit—“It’s brutal,” he said. “I probably won’t sleep tonight. It’s awful”—then spent much of the evening after the tie talking with U.S. captain Jim Courier in the hallway outside their hotel rooms. Courier insisted that Isner had just turned his season around, because of the way he had competed against Murray. As hard as it may have been for him to believe then, Isner believes it now.

“In a way,” Isner said earlier this week in Miami, “that devastating Davis Cup week opened my eyes a little bit. The way I played against Andy, even though I lost, I definitely played the right way. Feel like I got all the nerves and tension out of myself in that match. I was just swinging and played pretty well.”

“I was just swinging and played pretty well”: This is usually when your best tennis happens, isn't it? Probably the most useful advice that a coach can give an accomplished player is: “Get out of your own way and do what comes naturally.” That’s what Courier and Isner mean when they say he’s now “playing the right way,” and it’s what Isner’s coach, Justin Gimelstob, has been preaching to him since the start of the season. Isner has an advantage over most players when it comes to power, and a disadvantage when it comes to movement. He’s only going to win by maximizing the former and minimizing the latter.

Since his loss to Murray in Davis Cup, Isner is 6-1, and that lone loss came to Novak Djokovic in Indian Wells. So far in Miami, Isner has beaten three players in the Top 11: Grigor Dimitrov, Milos Raonic, and Kei Nishikori. The best of those performances came on Thursday, when Isner pummeled Nishikori in a match that wasn’t as close as its not-all-that-close 6-4, 6-3 scores would indicate. Isner’s serve was as unbreakable as ever—he hasn’t failed to hold in this tournament yet—but it was his forehand that did the decisive damage.

Early on, Isner threaded a rare winning forehand pass while moving to his right; Nishikori should have known he was in trouble. After that, Isner’s timing on the forehand only got better. He pounded it on returns, from the middle of the court, from the service line, inside-out, inside-in. He ended the first set in fitting fashion, with a forehand that clipped the tape and dribbled smack onto the sideline for a winner.

“I played extremely well today,” said Isner, who ranked the performance “up there” among the best of his career. “From start to finish, I felt like I was aggressive. I hit all the right shots.”

This was the best I’d seen Isner play since he beat Roger Federer in the Americans’ 5-0 sweep of Switzerland in Davis Cup in 2012. As he did today, Isner worked himself into the zone in that match; and like today, even his weakest shot, his service return, was clicking for winners.

“When the ball was in play,” Isner said, “I just had to go for it, because he’s better than me from the baseline.”

Isner’s limitations often doom him; today he used them to his advantage. He knew the points had to be over quickly, so he didn’t waste time trying to out-rally Nishikori.

We have, of course, been here before with Isner. Despite his Davis Cup debacle and his No. 24 ranking (down from No. 10 at this event a year ago), his run of good form over the last three weeks shouldn’t surprise us. Miami is on U.S. soil, it’s on hard courts, and its matches are two-out-of-three sets. This is Isner’s bread and butter, his meal ticket, his home. Winning here, as we've seen, doesn’t mean his success will translate either (a) overseas, or (b) at Grand Slams. It doesn't even mean it will last until Wimbledon.

So for his detractors, it’s still possible to see the glass being half empty for Isner. What’s remarkable, though, is that it’s half-full again so soon after after Davis Cup. Isner has talked this week about how much he believes in his new coaching relationship with Justin Gimelstob. It sounds, from what Isner says, like opposites have connected.

“He sees the game so well, a lot better than I do,” Isner says. “He has a mind that works a lot different than mine, which can help me and is going to help me. He sees these things that maybe I don’t see...I’m just kind of more instinctual out there.”

Isner’s most important insight of 2015 was to go back to trusting his instincts on court, rather than any elaborate or strategic thought process. Those instincts aren’t going to steer him right every time, and he’s not always going to zone the way he did on Thursday against Nishikori. Isner will be 30 later this month, and the chances that he can break through to a higher plane of success now are slim. But his pendulum swing from the gloomy nadir of Davis Cup to the sunny heights of Miami in a scant seven weeks is one of those stories that makes tennis fun to follow from month to month.

Isner, for the moment, has made us wonder again just how long a guy that big can stay out of his own way.