Coaching any player can be stressful, let alone somebody with the personality of Daniil Medvedev. He is immensely talented, insanely competitive, and can be brilliant in figuring out ways to strategically break down and defeat his opponents. But nothing about what Medvedev does or how he does it on the tennis court is viewed as “traditional” or “normal.”
His style is his style, and nobody can or will emulate what the Russian does with his racket. Cervara realized early on that Medvedev was his own man (in many ways), and that coaching him in a strict and uniform fashion would be detrimental to both of their careers.
“I felt that this guy needed a lot of freedom,” Cevara explains. “I couldn’t say, ‘OK, Daniil, you do this like I want.’ It was lost to do it like this. Because I was able to listen to him, to be sensitive as a person, I didn’t coach him like this.”
