Ryan Harrison Q&A: On confidence, competition, and engagement

INDIAN WELLS, Calif.—Fresh off a first-round win at Indian Wells—and an engagement to Lauren McHale, the sister of WTA No. 62 Christina McHale—Ryan Harrison talks about finding his form, getting inspiration from the younger Americans, and why he decided to pop the question.

You come in off a pretty tough season with injuries and your ranking dropping. Do you feel this is the start of a turnaround?

[The 2015] season, the beginning wasn't bad at all. I picked up 300, 400 points in the first four months of the year, it had me top 30 in the YTD standings. Then you tear two ankle ligaments and you're out for two months. And not only are you out for two months, you lose momentum...

Then once I was healthy, I lost two matches 7-6 in the third in the summer series, and picked up no points there. And it starts to look like a tough stretch. I didn't feel like my level was that far off, just had some tough losses and some tough luck. But that happens, people don't really care what happened with your ranking or why it dropped. It's on you to stay humble, keep working, and stay motivated. And I feel like if I keep putting myself in positions to win, I will execute whenever I have chances.

You had a good week in Acapulco and seem to be playing pretty well here. [Harrison qualified for the main draw before defeating Dusan Lajovic in the first round.] Do you feel you're starting to pick up some momentum again?

Yeah, every match hasn't been perfect but I've won some tough matches. I've fought through some nerves and some shaky points at times and I've gotten wins. I had a productive week in Acapulco; I lost 7-6 in the third [to Ilya Marchenko, in the round of 16] in a match I definitely could have won to make it an even better week, but just as you have the ups you also have the tough moments. Maybe the younger me would have let that shake me a little more rather than coming here and qualifying and winning a round against a good player.

Qualifying is tough—to get through and win matches that you feel you should win, it's not always easy. Can build confidence that way. I think I've done a good job of putting myself in a position that I can relax and play some tennis that I'm capable of.

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Do you feel this confidence is going to help you, and where are you looking to get to from here?

I feel like right now I'm starting to pick up a big confidence high. I've won a lot of matches recently and I feel like my confidence in big moments is starting to feel like it's high. It's tough to speculate on where I'm going to be in a couple of months. I know what I'm capable of doing. I know I'm capable of getting to Top 50 in the world because I've done it. I know I'm capable of getting Top 20 wins because I've got them. To say I think they're all going to happen right now—obviously I think they're going to happen, but I can't say for sure where I'm going to be.

My immediate goal is to compete every match like it's a Grand Slam final. And treat every match with the same sort of focus and intensity. And I believe if I do that, my results will start to come, and I'll do a better job of winning matches when I'm not playing well because that's a big thing for me. When you're playing well, it is easy to get wins. But when you're not playing well, you've got to find a way.

Recently there have been a lot of younger Americans coming up behind you. Does that make you feel more pressure or does it take it off?

It took it off me. And it also helped my mindset, with looking at the way they were viewing every single match and opportunity. I have the luxury of spending a lot of time with Frances [Tiafoe] and Taylor [Fritz] recently, and the way they look at each each tournament and match as an opportunity to prove themselves, an opportunity to go get it, kind of recaptured a little bit of that feeling that I felt when I was coming up the first time, when everything is in front of you, there's no reason to be so nervous, no reason to freak ot.

I felt too much of that. I bet if they tested my blood pressure, I was dangerously close to a heart attack in a lot of matches that I played, just obsessing over each moment and making it bigger than it was. And these guys have a great outlook. They're out there to play their best tennis, they haven't been around long enough or haven't felt enough defeat to know what that trap feels like.

So when I'm taking to them a lot, and hitting with them a lot, kind of that youthful ignorance that just says, I'm going to go get it—it's awesome. I'd like to try to implement that in my game.

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You had the benefit of some pretty good mentoring when you were coming up from [Andy] Roddick and other players. Is that something you enjoy now being able to do with some of the younger guys?

I'm not quite old enough to do that with me. Between me and Andy and Mardy there's 10 or  years, between me and Taylor there's five, so there's a close enough gap where I'm still enough of their rival. I played [Tiafoe in Memphis] and had to save two match points and eventually won. I told them right there—because Taylor was obviously on the up and up that week, he made the final and then quarters of Acapulco—I said look, Frances and Taylor, Taylor's gotten a little bit ahead in the ranking jump recently, but I said a few weeks ago, I think is pretty darn close.

I think them being around is great for American tennis, they're able to not only push each other but not one of them is taking the full load or pressure. They both feel that healthy jealously at times of each other, and it's going to help them.

Just talk a little bit about your coaching set-up at the moment and what you're working on.

I was lucky. Mardy Fish is now with the USTA—he's not every week, but he was someone who reached out to me.

He's got a lot of experience and we're also friends, and he said he wanted to help put me in a really successful position. And he wanted to view himself not as the everyday guy, but kind of the orchestrator. So with that plan in mind, we started looking for a guy who could be an every-week guy.

We needed someone who was high energy, high positive energy, because my tendency is to get a little negative at times, and I need someone who is not going to get negative...He came to me with this younger guy, Rikus de Villiers, who I've been traveling with all year. Played a really high level at Fresno State, really interested in starting his coaching career. And Mardy Fish felt with the experience he had and the experience David Nainkin and the other USTA coaches had, they could really help develop him into a guy who's going to be not just an assistant coach, but someone I can really trust and rely on.

Mardy is still in touch with him and me on a daily basis.

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Congratulations on getting engaged. Talk a little bit about why you felt this was the right time and whether it's a big change.

Thank you very much. [Lauren and I have] been together almost three years; we started first being friends when I was about 14 so I've known her almost 9 or 10 [years].

So I always told her when we started dating that she knew what she was signing up for. And everyone can see from a career standpoint, there's a couple of years haven't gone the way I've wanted them to. But she's always been the most supportive and the most driving force behind me. From a personal standpoint, I love her and I really just knew that she culd be the one for me, and you just add in the career and the way that she has been so supportive and so solid through the ups and downs.

I knew that not only was our relationship built around the fact that we love each other, but it was also built around the fact that we're there to help each other excel in our own personal desires.

So that was a big thing, to know that it wasn't just about our relationship but also how we made each other better people as well. So I had no hesitation it was the right decision.

She's probably pretty familiar with tennis, being the sister of a pro player. What difference does that make?

She was also an all-American herself. She played at the University of North Carolina, they were a very good team, a top five team. And like you said, the experience of having traveled the tour with her sister, you don't have to explain the moment to her. She knows this was a big win for me... she knows Indian Wells, it's right there behind the Grand Slams in level of importance. And then when it's a tough day, tough practice day, she knows—give me some space, let me cool off. It's unspoken, but she knows all the right things to say, and when I am a little out of line, she's not shy [about] telling me I need to calm down.

So we have that healthy respect for each other and her experience on the tour with her sister before me helped it become something where right away she was part of my team.

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Your brother, [Christian], is part of a group of up-and-coming players. Talk about where he is right now, with all the injuries.

The injuries are behind him. He's playing tournaments again. He is searching that first run of wins in a row that will give him the confidence he needs to believe he's still got it. Because I know he does, and people around him know, that he's playing at a level he's capable of. He practices with those young guys like Michael Mmoh and Andrey Rublev and those sort of young guys that come through [Nick] Bollettieri's [academy] on a regular basis. And he's right there on a practice standpoint with them every day.

We're all giving him the support that he needs. It's been more than two years since he felt that success of having a really successful tournament.

We're excited for that to happen... it's going to be a special moment.