Barcelona, Jan 23 (EFE).- Spanish tennis recalled the figure of Colombian William ‘Pato’ Álvarez, one of the most influential coaches of this discipline in Spain, where he was the mentor, among others, of players such as Emilio Sánchez Vicario. Álvarez, who died last Saturday in Barcelona at the age of 87, has been praised by some of the players he coached in the 1980s, when he valued the figure of the coach in Spanish tennis. “You marked my life from a young age, you helped me find my best self, you taught me to have a passion for competing, to give my best without looking around. You leave a very important legacy in the world of tennis, I will take care that follow in time and remember, DEP”, wrote Emilio Sánchez Vicario on the social network Twitter. Sánchez Vicario was one of the pupils of ‘Pato’ Álvarez, who trained outstanding Spanish tennis rackets such as Sergio Casal, Joan Balcells, Jordi Burillo, Julián Alonso, Juan Viloca and Tomás Carbonell. The latter recalls in statements to Efe that he was the first to “demonstrate” in Spain that the figure of tennis coach could be “a trade.” “Before his arrival in Spain, there was no coach figure as it is known now. The best tennis players only received classes at the clubs,” says Carbonell, with whom he spent three years. In the 1980s, Álvarez was the technical manager of the Royal Spanish Tennis Federation and was in charge of choosing the best Spanish tennis players whom he accompanied in the main tournaments on the circuit, explains Carbonell. “From the Spanish tennis family we regret his loss and express our deepest condolences to family and friends. Rest in peace,” the federation said on its social networks. According to Tomàs Carbonell, Álvarez’s distinctive fact was that he lived by and for tennis 365 days a year: “Mondays, Fridays or Sundays did not exist for him”. Before beginning his career as a coach in Spain in the 1970s, he was a prominent tennis player in Colombia and defended his country in the Davis Cup. In addition to training Spanish players, prominent tennis players on the international scene such as Andy Murray, Grigor Dimitrov and Juan Mónaco passed through his hands. Court 4 of the Sánchez-Casal Academy in Prat del Llobregat (Barcelona) receives his name with an inscription that highlights that he is the “creator of the current Spanish tennis training system”. In this sense, Carbonell concludes that current Spanish tennis coaches “have adopted” some of the techniques that he applied at the time. A coach is leaving who planted one of the seeds of what years later was called the ‘Armada’ of Spanish tennis and which resulted in successes such as the six Davis Cup salad bowls that the country treasures (2000, 2004, 2008, 2009 , 2011 and 2019). EFE. vmc/jl
