Time to Say Uncle
from...www.tennis.com/pro-game/2014/06/time-say-uncle/51730/
It wasn’t so long ago that Mary Carillo, while commenting on U.S. television, could make the words “Uncle Toni” sound like something of a joke. What kind of tennis pro brought his uncle along to coach him at a Grand Slam? That would be Rafael Nadal, of course, a teenager from a small island who, at the time, was challenging Roger Federer for the French Open title. In those days, Federer’s coach was the legendary Australian champion Tony Roche. Uncle Toni vs. Tony Roche: It was hard to disagree with Carillo that this didn’t sound like a fair fight.
Rafa, Carillo, and the rest of us have come a long way since then. And so has the man now universally known as “Uncle Toni”—Toni Nadal, it seems, is uncle to us all. But no one says his name like it’s a joke anymore. On Sunday, Rafa was widely praised for winning his 14th Grand Slam title. What went unmentioned was that his uncle had won his 14th Grand Slam title as a coach. We spend a lot of time wondering whether Rafa could one day be considered the greatest player of all time. But we might want to start asking another question: Is Toni Nadal already the greatest coach of all time?
Toni, an even more hard-bitten realist than his nephew, would almost certainly demur. And he wouldn’t be wrong to do so: If it’s difficult to compare tennis players from different eras, it may be even tougher to compare coaches. At least the players have always had the same objective, to win. The job of tennis coach has evolved drastically through the decades, and the version that we know now hardly existed before the 1970s.
Take, for example, the most famous tennis coach of all, Australia’s Harry Hopman [at right, in 1931]. He worked in the amateur era, when Davis Cup, rather than the Grand Slams, was the ultimate prize. This made him closer to a team-sport manager than a one-on-one coach. He created a dynasty of Australian players that dominated the Cup for more than a decade, and he brought his magic touch with him when he moved to Long Island in the 1970s and inspired John McEnroe, Vitas Gerulaitis, and Peter Fleming. You can’t beat Hopman for quantity of players, but he wasn’t directly involved with one of them for his entire career the way Toni Nadal has been with Rafa.
Nick Bollettieri straddled the line between eras. Like Hopman, he has tried to get the best out of as many players as possible at his academy, but, like modern coaches, he has also gone on the road with his star pupils, like Monica Seles, Andre Agassi, and Boris Becker. Again, Nick has the numbers, but he’s not solely responsible for the achievements of any one champion.
Then there are the parents: Jimmy Evert, Gloria Connors, Karolj Seles, Melanie Molitor, Mike Agassi, Richard and Oracene Williams, Judy Murray, and dozens of others. They typically lay the foundations for their child’s success, before handing off the day-to-day coaching duties at some point. Pete Fischer played a similar role with Pete Sampras, as did Robert Lansdorp with Tracy Austin and Maria Sharapova, and Jelena Gencic with Novak Djokovic. Perhaps because Toni isn’t Rafa’s father, the two of them have been able to keep their familial/working relationship going for more than two decades.
Finally, there are the professional coaches, those who take already formed talents and guide them to Grand Slam titles: Lennart Bergelin with Bjorn Borg; Paul Annacone with Pete Sampras and Roger Federer; Roche with Ivan Lendl, Pat Rafter, and Federer; Dennis Ralston with Chris Evert; Tony Pickard with Stefan Edberg; Heinz Gunthardt with Steffi Graf; Nancy Lieberman (and others) with Martina Navratilova; Lendl with Andy Murray.
From what I can tell, the only one of these coaches who approaches Toni Nadal’s 14 Slam titles is, yes, Tony Roche. He won them with Lendl, Rafter, and Federer during his prime years from 2005 to 2007. But Roche didn’t have anything like the type of impact on any of his players that Toni Nadal has had on his.