TennisFanatic7 said:
Great tennis coach, yes, but if that was my uncle I'd have mixed feelings - thumbs up for setting the foundation for me winning 14+ grand slams but thumbs down for basically grabbing me as a kid and pretty much breeding me to be the ultimate anti-Federer, tennis monster, I don't know if that's the kind of uncle-ly love I'd be looking for.
Rafa doesn't seem to mind about the thumbs down part though.
The question is, for Mr Toni to turn another promising youngster that he isn't related to into a world dominator, he'd have to do that before we started talking about him as the greatest coach ever.....
As to the bolded, I don't know what you mean by that. Surely there was no "Federer" to speak of until Rafa was well on his path, and I don't think Rafa's a 'monster,' except that he's a monstrous talent.
Wertheim, in his book about Fed and Nadal, said something like…'a comet crossed Toni Nadal's path, and it happened to be his nephew.' I think that's true, so I don't know if you can judge him to be a great tennis coach unless he could replicate his results, within reason. (And "within reason" is fair, because, it would likely not be such a high result, just statistically.) However, there is a symbiosis between uncle and nephew that has worked 'pretty well,' and I mean that ironically. Toni admits he was tough on Rafael, but who is one of the toughest, most-disciplined guys in tennis? I do think that because Toni has known Rafa all his life, and knows his strengths and weaknesses, he was the best to bring them out. Whether he could bring that out of another charge, I don't know, though I suspect he'd do better working with a young player than an established one.
Should we talk about other "greatest coaches?"
cool:
