Sloane Stephens beat Clara Tauson in the first round of the US Open, then walked into her post-match interview and put her own coach on blast. Not for tactics. For his hands.
She told reporters, laughing: "I honestly got so annoyed with my coach eating his fingernails. I was like, get yourself together. He was eating his nails like it was a full meal and I was like, 'What's going on?'"
The coach is Kamau Murray. The match was 6–4, 6–1 in an hour and sixteen. She saved four of five break points in the first set and went up 5–0 in the second. He chewed through the whole thing.
If you're anxious in the corner, you're telling her you don't think she's going to win.
Why this is a business story
Everybody who runs something has a corner. Your second, your ops lead, your spouse, the estimator who sits in on the big walkthroughs. And every one of them is broadcasting, whether they mean to or not.
Nerves in the corner are contagious and they are expensive. The client in the kitchen watching your project manager fidget through the number is doing the same math Sloane did: if the person who knows the most is worried, I should be worried. Discounts get given away in that silence.
This is also the quiet reason women get talked out of their pricing. You bring a number to the table you have already checked three times, and somebody on your own side flinches at it. Not a client. Your side. Then you shave 8% off a job you priced correctly.
What to actually do about it
Brief your corner before the room, not in it. Whoever is walking in with you hears the number, the floor, and the walk-away before you get out of the truck. No live improvising, no eyebrow raises.
Give the anxious person a job. Nail-biting is idle hands. Notes, measurements, running the tablet — anything that occupies the part of them that wants to fidget.
Say it out loud, like she did. Stephens made it a joke in a press conference and everyone laughed, and her coach will never do it again. You can do the same in the truck on the way home. Get yourself together. We're going to win this one.
She was down a set point's worth of pressure, saved four break points, and closed in straight sets. The player was sure. The corner should have been surer.