LAS VEGAS — Fernando Verdasco was straining against a leg-press machine as he raised 710 pounds, yet his strength and conditioning coach, Gil Reyes, was making the most noise. Reyes bellowed in two languages as Verdasco, a Spanish tennis star, raised the massive load 14 times before Reyes finally shouted at him to stop.
“He’s a beast,” Reyes said last month. “I stopped him because I didn’t want him to break down. If he totally maxed out today, there’s a good chance it would throw him off stride tomorrow or the next day.”
Reyes, an American who speaks in the tones and rhythms of an evangelist, was Andre Agassi’s trainer and protector for nearly 20 years. He is now a company man: one of three pillars of the unusual player-development program created and financed by Adidas.
The other pillars are Sven Groeneveld, a veteran Dutch coach who started the program in 2006, and Darren Cahill, an Australian coach who with Reyes helped Agassi keep scaling the heights into his mid-30s.
Groeneveld is based in Amsterdam, and Reyes and Cahill in Las Vegas, the program’s training base. Reyes still works out of his private gym decorated with Agassi’s eight Grand Slam singles trophies and 1996 Olympic gold medal. Agassi remains a frequent visitor and is also an occasional hitting partner and counselor for the players.
But the program’s scope is broader, with Groeneveld and Cahill traveling to tournaments worldwide to offer on-site assistance with Groeneveld’s assistant Mats Merkel.
The executive who devised and supervises the operation is Jim Latham, an American expatriate and former Duke tennis player who saw the program as a way to protect his company’s investment in increasingly young athletes who sometimes lacked structure and expert advice.
“It’s a compact, mobile tennis academy,” said Latham, the head of global sports marketing for tennis at Adidas.
It is also a delicate diplomatic mission in a cutthroat, territorial sport unaccustomed to coaches spreading the wealth of their knowledge democratically or to manufacturers striving to be more than suppliers of apparel and juicy contracts.
“It’s a given that we had to have elite-level coaches,” Latham said. “But the other given for me was that it had to be people who were great communicators, who could go into it with all these people and make them feel included, rather than ‘my way or the highway.’ ”
Manufacturers’ teams are the foundation of sports like Formula One auto racing. But the Adidas developmental team remains unique in tennis, and though it is not without detractors who question its part-time approach, it is playing an increasingly visible role in the sport and has been involved in some big hits as well as misses.
The hits include Ana Ivanovic’s victory at the 2008 French Open and rise to No. 1, and Verdasco’s surprise run to last year’s Australian Open semifinals and rise into the top 10. The team, Groeneveld in particular, also provided counsel and support to Caroline Wozniacki, a Danish teenager coached primarily by her father who broke into the top four last year after reaching the United States Open singles final.
The misses include players like Evgeny Korolev, Anna Chakvetadze, Marcos Baghdatis and Sania Mirza, whose rankings and singles careers have not prospered. Ivanovic also dropped out of the top 10 after a mediocre 2009 season but spent the off-season working primarily with Groeneveld.
National tennis federations have long been involved in developing talent and providing coaching at the professional level. Some private academies have done the same.
But no other company has yet plunged in, and what also makes Adidas’s program unusual is that it does not attempt to be full service, but rather a consultancy business card design.
Latham said Adidas had contracts with about 75 players, more than 40 of whom are in the singles draws at the Australian Open beginning Monday. Luminaries like Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Justine Henin have not sought help, but Latham estimated that 30 to 35 players have had some contact like seeking a quick tip from Groeneveld or training in Las Vegas, which requires an invitation from Latham.
Working with multiple players reduces a coach’s vulnerability and dependency.
“These guys can give unsugarcoated advice,” Latham said of his team.
But the Adidas principals emphasized that their input should be supplemental and that they wanted top players to have full-time coaches.
“This is not about a threat, this is not about better than, or instead of, it’s a matter of one plus one maybe might equal three,” Latham said.
But Verdasco and Ivanovic thrived under the system when they were without full-time coaches. Patrick Mouratoglou, who owns a prominent academy in France, said that he tried to play a similar role to many players but that he felt it undermined their relationships with their personal coaches. He now focuses on one or two players.
“I don’t doubt the quality or competence of Sven or any member of the team,” he said. “I just think the system is flawed. I stopped doing it. At first, you feel good because everyone loves you, and you give a bit to everyone, and everybody wants you on their court giving input. It’s a drug. If you need affection, it’s amazing. If you want results, it doesn’t work.”
Cahill said that he was sensitive to personal coaches’ concerns but that the benefits of exchanging thoughts and challenging preconceptions outweighed the negatives.
He had other options. Early last year, he trained on a trial basis with Roger Federer in Dubai. But Cahill, who has two children and increasingly strong ties to Las Vegas, said he was not prepared to handle the travel commitment Federer required. Instead, Cahill joined Adidas last March while continuing to do television commentary for ESPN and to work with Agassi’s foundation in Las Vegas.
Latham said the team’s existence has helped Adidas recruit several players, including Daniela Hantuchova, a 26-year-old Slovak who trained with Cahill and Reyes in the off-season. But Latham and Baghdatis failed to reach an agreement, and Baghdatis is no longer under contract.
Verdasco, 26, who won a warm-up event Saturday in Australia, is definitely still with the program: exchanging embraces and fist bumps with Reyes during intense training sessions. He is seeking a second home in Las Vegas to be closer to Reyes and his weights.
Reyes prefers to work one on one, so visitors are limited to three at a time. From the outside, his gym looks like a suburban home. It is in a gated community on a road named after Agassi, who built a house next door for his parents as well as a practice court. The carpeted weight room is filled with machines Reyes designed and built himself for Agassi because nothing tennis specific enough existed.
“If this is the future, I don’t really know,” Verdasco said of the Adidas program. “But of course it really helped me a lot, because I really found Gil that I have this strong connection with. Maybe if Adidas took another guy, maybe I wouldn’t have that same connection, and maybe I wouldn’t like it as much.”
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