Against All Odds- How Did They Do It? Club Independiente Tandil, Argentina

This is the second article of a 4-part series on how clubs, coaches, and parents got performance tennis right.

Strong leadership, basic training principles, and good conduct produced six players ranked inside the ATP Tour top 50, two players in the top 10, and a US Open Grand Slam men’s champion.

Can you imagine your club producing six players ranked inside the ATP Tour top 50, two players in the top 10, and a grand slam champion? And that is not counting all the other players that became professionals and US collegiate players? That is exactly what Club Independiente has done. The question that I wanted to know is- how did they do it?

Tandil is a relatively small town in Argentina, but Club Independiente is a giant in the player development business. Some of the more notable players include; Guillermo Perez-Roldan, Juan Martin Del Potro, Mariano Zabaleta, Juan Monaco, Diego Junqueira, and Maximo Gonzales. It was Guillermo Perez Roldan Sr. who started the Tandil culture that would develop not only players to the professional ranks but also coaches like Franco Davin. Roldan’s court discipline, plus strong fitness training were the two main pillars of the foundation. Marcelo Gomez, a former player of Roldan Sr., would take over as head coach of Club Independiente, and he continued the mantra of character building which became the backbone of each his players. The consistency of Marcelo Gomez for nearly thirty years at Club Independiente is an obvious factor in the development success. Another staple of the tennis academy is being on time and good court conduct.

“Throw your racquet, and we will throw you out of the club,” says Marcelo Gomez.

“When Juan Monaco was young, we did not have much money at all and we could not afford to buy balls often,” continues Gomez. “I told the boys that to play a point in tennis you only need one ball. So, they trained with one ball.”

“There are so many times that we only got one ball for practice,” Monaco remembers. “And if we lost it or the ball broke then the training was over, and we had to do physical conditioning. We all came from a small town and if you could see the club and how bad was the condition of the courts you would not believe it.”

It is not too hard to connect the dots of how self-discipline with both time and emotions, plus the effectiveness of rallying with one ball in practice produced so many good competitors. The challenge lies in having a coach with the character to implement those values and a club that fully supports the coach’s vision.

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