South African Wayne Ferreira, a former top six player who made the quarter-finals himself in New York in 1992, has been Tiafoe's coach since 2020. He admitted, however, that when they started their collaboration, he wasn't immediately impressed. "Food intake was terrible at the beginning. The effort on the practices and on the court wasn't good enough," Ferreira said Wednesday. "He liked a lot of candy and chocolates and cookies. He'd eat at unusual times. He missed breakfast a lot...he was, in my opinion, not really professional enough."