Kieran said:
Broken_Shoelace said:
Kieran said:
Broken_Shoelace said:
Fun bit of trivia, maybe our buddy El Dude can verify this as I'm totally going out on a limb here:
I think Toni Nadal is the most accomplished coach of all time. As in, he's "won" the most championships as a coach (though I think his nephew had a thing or two to do with that, but still).
Harry Hopman...
We'll limit this to the open era to avoid clusterf*cks.
If you say "all time" then you're not gonna have clusterf*cks, you're gonna have answers.
Tony Roche won 8 slams with Lendl and maybe 6 with Roger, not sure how many. Bergelin won 11 with Bjorn. But uncle Toni is unique because he took a three year old to the summit. I don't know of anybody - even all time - who has a pedigree like his, but again, when we use terms like "Greatest Coach Ever" and then "all time", we do disservice to the greats of the past when we limit the talk to just the open era.
They weren't less gifted in the old black and white days, you know...
"If you say "all time" then you're not gonna have clusterf*cks, you're gonna have answers."
And then I said "open era" because while you offered an answer, I don't trust everyone else not to turn this into a clustf*uck
Anyway, I think where Toni stands out (and by "stand out," I don't necessarily mean "better," I just mean "different") is that he took his player literally from scratch. There are coaches who are great at teaching you the basics and turning you into a good/promising player, but don't necessarily excel at taking an established player and benefit him tactically or mentally. That's where Toni is remarkable. He pretty much taught him since day one, came on tour with Rafael (meaning he was just as inexperienced as Rafa was when he originally arrived. That's actually even more remarkable, since we're not talking about a coach who was greatly familiar with the ATP tour), and played an important part in his success. He was a teacher (meaning he literally taught him how to play tennis), a coach and a mentor.
I see the point about Toni being a one player coach, but in this particular case, this actually might be MORE impressive, in many ways. Tony Roach is an incredible coach and had success with multiple players, but one of them was a prime Roger Federer who had already won majors, at the height of his powers. I mean, not to discredit Roach or anything but that's not exactly a difficult job. We're talking about maybe the most talented player to ever hold a racket playing the best tennis of his career.
And don't get me wrong, it's not like Toni was coaching a scrub either. He is coaching one of the most talented tennis players in history, but let's look at how green, unpolished and under-developed Nadal's game was when he first broke through.
To be clear, I think the impact of coaches is at times overstated. Ultimately, the player is out there on his own. A coach will not make your forehand land inside the line on break point. In tennis, it's at least 80% on the player IMO (if not more), but in that remaining 20%, Toni has been instrumental.
