Medvedev’s main man: How coach Gilles Cervara found his rightful place in tennis

Gilles Cervara was introduced to a brand-new world in his teenage years. At age 15, he saw a friend playing tennis and was immediately hooked, ready to dive into the game wholeheartedly. Dedicated but late to the party, Cervara was unable to make up for lost time as a competitive player. But he would make his mark as a coach, to say the least.

Cervara paid his dues as a young coach in France for nearly a decade, waiting for the opportunity to realize his potential. That opportunity came in the form of one of the most unorthodox specimens the game has ever seen: a Russian with raw and severely undefined talent. Daniil Medvedev was a project, but in many ways, he was a hidden gem looking for the right voice to lead him to the top.

Cervara became the man behind one of the best players in the world, and on the latest Inside-In Podcast, he discussed his unbreakable bond and unique relationship with the major champion.

So much of life is being in the right place at the right time, and many people define luck as the moment that preparation meets opportunity. For Cervara, he was fortunate when that lanky young Russian needed a coach to travel with him as he starting his professional journey. He knew Medvedev and realized that they could forge a solid professional relationship.

“I think we had a good connection, a good connection as a person, and good connection in the work on court,” Cervara recalls. The coach acknowledged that tennis wisdom and strategy is vital in this type of relationship, but there is a human part that goes beyond the game itself.

“To find the best part of everyone, to dig inside the person and to help him to find the resources and to improve as a person, I think is an important key in our job," he says.

Coaching any player can be stressful, let alone somebody with the personality of Daniil Medvedev. He is immensely talented, insanely competitive, and can be brilliant in figuring out ways to strategically break down and defeat his opponents. But nothing about what Medvedev does or how he does it on the tennis court is viewed as “traditional” or “normal.”

His style is his style, and nobody can or will emulate what the Russian does with his racket. Cervara realized early on that Medvedev was his own man (in many ways), and that coaching him in a strict and uniform fashion would be detrimental to both of their careers.

“I felt that this guy needed a lot of freedom,” Cevara explains. “I couldn’t say, 'OK, Daniil, you do this like I want.' It was lost to do it like this. Because I was able to listen to him, to be sensitive as a person, I didn’t coach him like this.”

Medvedev’s trajectory with Cervara at the helm speaks for itself. In 2019 he broke into the Top 5, the same season Cervara was honored by his peers as the ATP’s top coach. The 2021 US Open was the moment that their lives were changed forever, as Medvedev defeated Novak Djokovic to claim his first major title. It was the two-week run of a lifetime, one that kept Djokovic from completing the calendar slam while etching the Russian’s name in the history books for all of eternity.

“I remember the beginning of the match wondering, 'Would Daniil be able to face Novak?' Because I remembered in Australia the same year, he was destroyed by Novak,” Cervara says of that historic 2021 Sunday in New York.

“After a few games I felt that he was in the right feeling, right game, right energy,” Cervara continues. “When he won the match, it’s tough to describe. It’s like I saw my 20 years in tennis in one second.”

Cervara’s story is one of persistence and perseverance, and it proves that it’s never too late to find your passion in anything. Also in this episode, you can hear the coach discuss how he manages Medvedev’s emotions, why he’s constantly scouting and studying Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, and how his love for hockey and collecting NHL team hats knows no bounds.

Cervara was an outsider who became one of the most respected minds in tennis. He has the knowledge, the communications skills, and the attitude that many players would love to have in their camp. Medvedev is still yearning to improve on the path to greatness, and he’s certainly got the right man to lead him there.