In the last few hours, the death of former tennis player and coach William Álvarez at the age of 87 was confirmed at his home in Barcelona, where he had lived since the 1970s. Technician of the Spanish Federation.
Álvarez was born on December 15, 1934 in the city of Medellín and had a notable sports career as a player and after his retirement from the courts as a coach in Spain.
At the beginning of his career he was 8 times national champion and South American champion in Guayaquil in 1951 and was a member of Team Colombia that debuted in the 1959 edition of the Davis Cup together with Hernando Salas.
On that occasion, Colombia faced Lebanon, whom they won 4-1, and South Africa, with whom they lost 5-0. Álvarez played 15 games in the Cup, winning five and losing 10, while Salas was only in six games leaving a balance of two wins and four losses.
During the 1960s, he participated in Grand Slams such as Roland Garros, of which he played 17, and Wimbledon 14 times. At that time there was no ATP ranking yet, but according to experts he was one of the top 20 in the world during this decade. In 1972, at the age of 38, he played the French tournament for the last time and retired as a professional tennis player.
At the time, Álvarez defeated tennis figures such as the Australian Roy Emerson, the Italian Nicola Pietrangeli and the Spanish Manolo Santana, among others.
Álvarez, who was called ‘El Pato’, He was a benchmark in Spain for his way of training and was a mentor to great Spanish tennis players such as the brothers Emilio and Javier Sánchez Vicario, Sergio Casal, Julián Alonso, Joan Balcells, Jordi Burillo, Tomás Carbonell or Juan Albert Viloca, among others.
In a profile published by Revista Semana in 1995, Rubén Alvarez, a tennis specialist for Spain’s El País at the time, said that “During the nine years that ‘El Pato’ was in charge of the School, he designed all the training methods that took Spain out of the hole it was in. We owe him that we would have gone from having simple tennis promises to being today the second world power in this sport”.
Players of the stature of Andy Murray, Juan Mónaco o Grigor Dimitrov. Always standing out for demanding maximum discipline and professionalism from all his pupils.
According to information from the newspaper Marca, court 4 of the Sánchez-Casal Academy is called Pista William ‘Pato’ Alvarez and bears a plaque with the inscription: “Creator of the current Spanish tennis training system” as a tribute to his legacy.
The Colombian Tennis Federation in a statement lamented the death of Álvarez, whom he remembered as “one of the most important tennis players in the history of sport in our country, a pioneer of Colombian professional tennis and who later became a famous coach of great world stars.
In his networks, the former Spanish tennis player, Tomás Carbonell, said goodbye to who was his coach: “Goodbye William Pato Álvarez. The most important coach in the history of Spanish tennis. 3 years at your command marked my destiny. Today I will remember all the good things, we will discuss the bad in heaven, panther”.
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