Darren Cahill’s life is simpler now: fewer players and egos to juggle, fewer conflicts of interest to manage. But in what remains the age of Serena Williams until proven otherwise, life is hardly without its challenges.
How to reel in an all-time great, perhaps the all-time great? And how to make Simona Halep, Cahill’s new primary responsibility, truly believe that she has what it takes to win her first Grand Slam title?
Cahill declined to talk in depth about Halep, 24. The former Australian player, now 50, has long been one of the game’s premier coaches and communicators. But he wants, at least for now, to maintain a low coaching profile, much as he did in his years working successfully with Andre Agassi a decade ago.
Cahill wants the focus to be on Halep, not on him, but there is little doubt that his role in the 2016 tennis season could be major even if Halep has had to deal with pain in her left Achilles tendon in the lead-up to the Australian Open.
“I think Darren wouldn’t put himself in this position if he didn’t see something really special in Simona’s ability, in her work ethic,” said Pam Shriver, Cahill’s colleague at ESPN.
Cahill has already had a long look. He was an adviser to Halep for much of last year, working through the Adidas coaching program that made him available to players under contract with the brand.
Cahill joined that program in 2009 after turning down the chance to work with Roger Federer after a trial period. That decision was made largely because Cahill, as the father of young children, wanted to limit his time away from his Las Vegas base.
He spent the next seven years juggling his ESPN tennis broadcast work and his waxing and waning connections with a list of players that included Andy Murray, Fernando Verdasco, Ana Ivanovic, Daniela Hantuchova and Sorana Cirstea.
But that innovative, far from friction-free program was ended by Adidas at the end of 2015. Sven Groeneveld, the veteran Dutch coach who started it, had left in 2013 and signed on as coach of Maria Sharapova.
Now Cahill and Groeneveld are dueling on the WTA Tour as coaches of Halep, ranked No. 2, and Sharapova, who is now No. 5.
“I think it took incredible guts and also a lot of foresight to put something like that in play,” Cahill said of the Adidas program. “Over the course of the seven years I was with Adidas, just about every Adidas player at some point either sat down and had a coffee to talk about tennis or came to Vegas and did some full-time training or got some full-time coaching. I think the tough thing for Adidas is it’s hard to monetize the return they got from the investment. And while a lot of the players used it, I’m not sure Adidas got the credit it probably could have gotten.”
The coaching restrictions were also problematic. Cahill was not allowed to give advice or sit in a player’s box when two Adidas players faced each other. The issue reared its head regularly, including last year at the U.S. Open, where Halep, already working closely with Cahill, had to do without his input before she faced Flavia Pennetta, another Adidas player, in the semifinals.
Pennetta pulled off the upset and went on to win her first Grand Slam singles title. “We couldn’t work against another Adidas player regardless of whether or not they were in the program,” Cahill said. “I’ve been Simona’s full-time coach basically since Wimbledon, and in Cincinnati, she played Kiki Mladenovic in the first round, Andrea Petkovic in the second round and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkov in the third. So the first three matches she played I couldn’t do any strategic talk about the way she should play against her opponent, because she was playing another Adidas player. And so it was difficult at times because for the program to work, Adidas need results. So they needed Simona to play well, but I couldn’t do my job against another Adidas player.”
That constraint is now gone, with Halep having hired Cahill as her personal coach. “He’s mine, all mine,” Halep said last week before withdrawing from a tournament in Brisbane, Australia, because of the Achilles pain.
After helping Agassi remain a factor into his mid-30s, Cahill will now do his best to dethrone Williams, another great American champion in her mid-30s.
The new arrangement with Halep also simplifies Cahill’s commentary duties, eliminating the perception of conflict of interest that existed when he commented on Adidas players.
“I think it’s easier for people to understand now,” Cahill said.
He already had stopped doing commentary on nearly all women’s matches for ESPN when he began working with Halep last March at Indian Wells, in California. “The only time I had to do a women’s match was in Cincinnati last year when Chris Evert’s father passed away,” he said.
But there still will be multitasking involved, which has become increasingly common in the television world. An example is the Tennis Channel commentator Justin Gimelstob, who also coaches the U.S. player John Isner. Such arrangements can make for rapid changes from tennis clothes to blazer and tie.
“We trialed it at the U.S. Open with ESPN, and Simona made the semis,” Cahill said. “It worked really well, and I think if it hadn’t, I would certainly have been recommending for her to grab somebody else as a full-time coach. But considering it seemed to work well, I think we can accomplish both. If there’s a problem after 12 months, we’ll sit down and discuss it.”
“While it’s not the perfect scenario for Simona during the majors,” he added, “ESPN is going to break me free for her matches and her practices. And then every other second I’ll be back with the headphones on, helping the ESPN call with the men’s tennis, so I think it will be pretty clear.”
At the moment, Cahill is more eager to talk about the men. He is impressed by the younger generation, which will be led in Melbourne by Nick Kyrgios, 20, and the less volatile teenagers Hyeon Chung, Borna Coric and Alexander Zverev.
But Cahill is also in a nostalgic mood, with his compatriot and former pupil Lleyton Hewitt preparing to play his final tournament at the Australian Open before retiring at age 34. Cahill began coaching him when Hewitt was 12, later helping him reach No. 1. They remain on good terms.
“An amazing career, and he’s had sort of an against-the-odds career as well,” Cahill said, “because not a lot of people in Tennis Australia back then really believed Lleyton was going to turn himself into a good tennis player, let alone an absolute champion. That’s kind of why he’s played his best tennis. Even when he was No. 1 in the world, it was sort of Lleyton against the world.”
For Halep, meanwhile, the top is both near and far. She is ranked No. 2 but is well behind Williams, who has built up a hefty lead on the computer. Cahill spent three weeks with Halep in Romania in the preseason, and he expects to spend more than 30 weeks with her this year.
“My kids are 14 and 11 now; they understand what I’m doing,” Cahill said. “They follow tennis. They play tennis, so for me to be on the road a few more weeks with my kids being old enough to understand what dad does, that makes it a bit easier.”
If Halep is healthy enough to play at the Australian Open, Cahill will be in the unusual position of being much more audible on men’s tennis but having potentially more effect on women’s tennis.
“I think he believes Simona has the talent to get to No. 1 and to win many majors, otherwise I don’t think he would do it,” Shriver said. “He’s not going to do it to coach someone ranked between 3 and 6 in the world.”
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