Raphael's story
Raphael started tennis mostly because of his mother, who used to play tennis at a good level in Switzerland, so he was often with her courtside. He began playing when he was 2. sometimes even alone hitting balls against the garage wall. He played both tennis and football, two sports in which he excelled and at the age of 13, he chose tennis over football, because he couldn’t do both at a high level. Mostly, because in tennis you had a ranking and you saw where you were, while in football it was more of a team thing, so it was more difficult to see where you were standing, so he chose tennis and the sport has been a huge part of his life until today.
In 1993, he was No.2 in Switzerland in the 14 & under age group. He had quite a lot of success as a young tennis player in the juniors. And then due to a bit of a psychological issue that had to do with one of my coaches, he lost a lot of confidence and decided to leave for the US and pursue his studies. He received a scholarship to study Sports Management at Flager College in Florida.
Raphael gained some confidence back before leaving for the United States, thanks to an important person and coach from his home club in Switzerland, Robin Fiorina, who helped him to get back to a good level. This allowed him to play college tennis for 4 years and he then started working as a tennis coach at the Van Der Meer Tennis Academy in South Carolina.
“I met a lot of good, inspiring coaches who have helped me. In 1992, I started training at the National Tennis Centre in Switzerland with a French coach, George Deniau, a Davis Cup captain for France and Switzerland, coach of players such as Jakob Hlasek and Guy Forget, ATP top 10 players. He was amazing. I was with him for about a year until he had some disagreements with the Swiss Federation. A new coach was hired and this coach did not work for me. One of the mistakes we made with my parents at that time was that I stayed there too long. Obviously, it was the National training Centre with the best players training there, so it was one of these places which you don’t leave. You only leave this place if you get kicked out. So I stayed for more time than I should have and this coach really hurt me. This is when I saw the real impact of psychology on the sport. It really took my confidence way down.”
“There was a moment during that time when I felt physically shorter. We used to have school in the morning and training in the afternoon; when I changed from my school clothes to my tennis clothes, I felt physically like 10 inches smaller. It was such a strong feeling and I had never experienced it before. It took me a lot of time to get back to believing in myself and made me realize how powerful the mind is.”
