Previews: U.S. Open Men's Semifinals

NEW YORK—The semifinals of the U.S. Open are set. It will be Stefan Edberg (Roger Federer) vs. Goran Ivanisevic (Marin Cilic), and Boris Becker (Novak Djokovic) vs. Michael Chang (Kei Nishikori).

It’s remarkable, isn’t it? Just when it seemed that every stone had been turned over in the quest for that extra edge, that precious element that might enable a player to vault the razor-thin margin between getting grandly slammed and earning Grand Slam glory, we get this new wrinkle—the celebrity coach.

Historically, great champions have been happy to weigh in on the state of the game in their homelands, or to give casual advice to a fellow countryman, either directly or through the media. But the idea of being accountable, of making a firm commitment to a single player and making certain job-related sacrifices, rarely appealed to them. There were many reasons for this, starting with the fact that in tennis, a coach is always subservient to a player. He or she is the only boss who can be fired by his worker. This basic paradigm didn’t really work for former stars.

Early in the Open era, amateur-era star Pancho Segura played an enormous role in developing and coaching Jimmy Connors. But the groundwork for the current movement was laid by Tony Roche, and you can credit Federer for helping create the champion-coach movement by the way he engaged and worked with him.

Roche, an Australian, was a six-time Grand Slam singles finalist. After he retired from the tour, this humble, tennis-loving owner of perhaps the best volley in the sport was more than happy to spend his time in the game’s trenches. True, he worked with Ivan Lendl and Pat Rafter, but the idea of a champion coaching a champion really became a theme when he hooked up with Federer (they worked together from 2005 to 2007).

The next into the breach was Connors, who coached Andy Roddick for 19 months starting in July 2006 with so-so results; he then took another crack at the job with Maria Sharapova in 2013. That one didn’t work out so well; Connors was gone after one match during which cameras caught him grimacing and scowling as he watched Sharapova spraying balls all over the court. The farcical incident might have killed the budding champion-coaching movement in its tracks had Connors’ client been a male star.

Most of the rest you know. Lendl so empathized with the frustrations of Andy Murray that he signed to (successfully) transform the Scot into a Grand Slam champ. Lendl and Murray took the champion-coach movement to another level. Their success, as well as the obvious satisfaction both men took from their harmonious relationship, advanced the trend.

Suddenly, everyone was parroting a familiar refrain: There’s a level of knowledge and a kind of intelligence that only a former champion can bring to an aspiring one. And just as important, at the other end of the consumer-provider spectrum, all of those former champs—the Edbergs, Beckers and Changs—were beginning to think that they truly might have something unique to offer.

Just as important, they saw that they weren’t going to be asked to carry anyone’s racquet bag, or to run out to fetch a pizza. It was tacitly agreed that the job description for a champion-coach was different from that of the more conventional kind.

So let’s look at the men’s semifinals, paying heed to what the champion coaches have brought to each man’s table:

This one has “blowout” written all over it, but keep in mind that their head-to-head record is 1-1, and Nishikori won his match on hard courts (semifinals of Basel, 2011). Djokovic is playing great tennis—even crafty Murray was unable to get more than a set off him, and that was better than any of Djokovic’s previous opponents. Meanwhile Nishikori, the 5’10”, 150-pound underdog, has been winning matches but taking terrible punishment. His last two wins, against No. 5 seed Milos Raonic and No. 3 seed Stan Wawrinka, were grim, five-set wars of attrition. Does anyone else see Chang written all over these David-slays-Goliath scenarios?

But remember, Nishikori has made a living surpassing expectations with an easily underestimated game based on a combination of his quickness and ability to find angles. It’s unlikely that he’ll outlast Djokovic, who will be fresher, and who knows a thing or two about knock-down, drag-out matches—and who simply has more tools. Becker was brought into the Djokovic camp to help him face and master those critical moments when a Grand Slam championship may depend on one or two swings of the racquet. Tough as Nishikori is, it’s difficult to imagine Becker’s unique perspective will be needed in this one.

Nick Bollettieri's Thoughts:

The “Edberg effect” has been obvious in Federer’s game. In his quarterfinal win over Gael Monfils, the 17-time Grand Slam singles champion attacked the net 74 times and won an outstanding 72 percent (53 points) of those attempts. Moreover, the main reason Federer is in a position to win his 18th major on Monday night is that, absent Rafael Nadal, he was able to lock up the No. 2 seed with consistently successful aggression in the weeks leading up to this tournament. That leaves Cilic with a lot to think about, in an age when hitting the passing shot is a lost art.

As for Cilic, who’s winless in five meetings with Federer (four of them on hard courts), he appears to be playing the best tennis of his career now that he’s hooked up with former Wimbledon champ Ivanisevic. Cilic is an introspective guy with a reputation for over-thinking and over-analyzing the game. Ivanisevic, one of the all-time loose cannons of the Open era, has helped Cilic lighten up. He’s swinging much more freely now, and seems to have embraced the idea that, with his atomic serve, he doesn’t need to be great at everything else. Now that he’s made the first serve a priority, Cilic can apply tremendous pressure on a returner—but perhaps not enough to hold an aggressive Federer at bay.

Nick Bollettieri's Thoughts: