This is the link from Tennis Magazine's "The Ticker"

http://tennismagazine.com/news/ticker.aspx

A 27 year old player (turning 28 this year) hiring a coach at this point in his career...a career without a relevant nor even a remotely-long-term coach for so long.

It is what it is.

For the most part, I like Cahill as a commentator as a good balance for all the other clowns we're stuck with, especially the likes of Brad Gilbert and Mary Carillo....ugh... Without him, there's less eye candy (he's still hot, IMO) and less credibility in match-calling for many of us in the US.

Well I guess Federer is damned if he does or damned if he doesn't. He was criticized for not having a coach and now he's being criticized for hiring a coach. I mean why not hire a coach? I don't see the issue. Good for Rogelio.

From the scant information in the blurb, it looks like the same arrangement Federer had with Tony Roche: a handshake deal vs. signed contract; no real defining terms of start and end dates - just an open ended arrangement.

Terp- far from being damned for doing it, Federer's "hiring" of Cahill (such as it is) has been the mantra many, many of his supporters (and I'm talking in the Tennis Media) have chanted since Federer split with Roche (Higueras just seemed to stealthly fade into oblivion) . This is exactly what PMac, Drysdale, Bodo, Tignor, Wertheim, Drucker, Cronin, et.al., have been publicly begging Federer to do, so I'd say he'll hardly be damned. In fact he'll only be praised.

There's only one downside to this, and that's if his results don't improve much - so he's got nothing to lose by trying it. That said, I'm not sure how much Cahill, or anyone, can help, given the quality of coaching Federer has already had and separated from, to date. Since he reached #1, this will be his fourth coach, following Peter Lundgren, Roche and Jose Higueras. Does anyone know exactly how these coaching relationships ended? Did Federer fire them, was it a "mutual" parting (but I'm not sure how that would work), or did they walk away from Federer?

Well, this is mildly disappointing. I've come to rather enjoy Cahill's commentary, especially since he found religion as far as Nadal goes midway through Wimbledon last year (just in time!) so that he could give him some credit on his vastly improved game; he also scaled back on his fawning over "Roger" (although he never aspired to the heights of Pat McEnroe and Carrillo in that department), which I guess he will have to brush up on again. This is nothing like when the LTA and Murray relieved us of Gilbert's presence in the booth for a couple of years.

On the bright side, we can finally stop hearing the chorus of anguished supporters pleading with Fed to get a coach.

I think this will be good for Fed...I mean who can't benefit from a good coaching relationship? I think this might be one of those good coaching relationships.

VM--I think he was responding to Tennis Guy's comment in this thread, not to the tennis world at large. Perhaps I'm overinterpreting because I had the same thought when reading the post. Terp, correct me if I'm wrong.

Federer, like any player, has room for improvement. And room to learn how to handle different things (lack of fear on the part of some other players, i.e. Murray, Rafa's continued improvement on his own serve and in court positioning on hard courts) better. Not necessarily in the physical aspect. But tennis is also a mental game, and Fed needs help in that area. I'm glad he's making the choice. Time will tell whether he'll respond any better than Roddick did with his coaches.

GH - I understand that - I just took the comment as is, no matter whom it was addressed to. What I meant is that I think Terp's correct in the "damned if he doesn't" part. I wasn't sure there'd be a "damned if he does" part of the equation for Federer in working with Cahill as opposed to staying the course with no coach. Most of the Tennis Intellegentsia has called on Federer to hire a coach, so this will make them very happy. The only reason to hire or change a coach is to improve your results, so that's the benchmark. If his results improve, meaning specifically in this case reversing Federer's current trends over multiple matches against Nadal, Murray, Simon, etc., then people will wonder why he went so long without a steady coach. If his results don't improve much, well...

A lot of others who regularly post here will have a great deal more actual insight than I would about "how", in practical application, this arrangement will help Federer. What is it Cahill can do, or bring, to him that will change Federer's results? He hired Roche to help him figure a way to "beat Nadal on clay", and did the same with Higueras, specifically targeting last year's French which was disastrous for him. I remember last year the Tennis Itellgentsia, the same ones now clamoring for Federer to hire a coach, told the world over and over Federer's 2008 form on clay was they best they'd ever seen him play on that stuff. Yet the results were still the same. I guess I'm wondering what Cahill can bring to Federer that Roche and Higueras couldn't?

Uh..well, maybe not. Evidently Mssrs. Federer & Cahill have reconsidered their tentative arrangement, and the "official" reasons are given at the link below. According to this link, Cahill objected to the extensive traveling. Which seems, well, not entirely plausible. Since Cahill has coached pros before and understands full well what a full time coaching job entails - I find this one tough to believe. Unless Cahill went into this proposistion thinking he could, what, coach Federer over the phone from Las Vegas all year?

http://tennismagazine.com/news/ticker.aspx

Interesting. When Hewitt and Cahill had their little falling out, Hewitt's parents "blamed" it on Cahill's wanting to be with his family, and that they didn't want him to bring his family and new baby everywhere, or he didn't want to bring them everywhere, or some combination like that.

Now again, "travel" comes into it. Strange, look at all the traveling Cahill does for commentating at these events. Now, it may not be at the same number of events that a player would play all year, but the commentating he does certainly already traverses the globe.

Maybe the Fed's un-coachable? Maybe Mirka doesn't want to let go of some kind of control? Maybe the Fed subconsciously doesn't really want a coach, because when he got rid of Lundgren in '03, that's when his career really took off?

Even with all the speculation, good or bad, it's better they found out sooner rather than later that it wasn't going to work. Good news for us is that Cahill will be doing commentary again. YAY!

Hate to disappoint, Tennis Guy, but I'm not so sure we'll be seeing Cahill in the booth much. While watching the beauteous Fernando Verdasco (against the equally beauteous Thomaz Bellucci, zowie!), the camera showed Cahill in the stands, and apparently Darren is Fernando's new coach. Robbie and Jason, the TC guys, didn't have any details about the arrangement, except that's official (or at least a lot more official than the Federer arrangement ever was). With all the work that Fernando puts in with Gil Reyes, I'm guessing that hunky Spaniard will be making Las Vegas his "tennis home," which means a lot less travel for Las Vegas resident Cahill, who probably wasn't real psyched about traveling all the way to Switzerland or Dubai for practice weeks. I'll miss Cahill in the booth as well, but Cahill's a terrific coach, and I really hope this arrangement helps Fernando reach his full potential. With the Big 4 firmly entrenched in the top 4 spots (granted, that might be a bit generous to Murray), breaking into the top 5 sure as hell ain't easy nowadays, but Verdasco has the talent. It'll be interesting to see the fruits of this relationship.

Rudy: An article I read recently shed some light on the new Cahill & Verdasco arrangement. I read where Cahill has been hired as a sort of Development Coach for Adidas. That's why he's living full time in Vegas, and that's why he's with Verdasco, since Fernando is sponsored by Adidas. It's the same deal Adidas cut with Gil Reyes, who is now the Trainer for Adidas - which is why Verdasco spent time with Gil last fall. From what I read, Adidas plans to send the players that want to partake in the program to Vegas and work with Cahill, even though he's not going to be their traditional Full Time Traveling Coach. The way it article read (and I could be off on this point), Cahill is going to be primarily a developer of new tour-level talent Adidas sends to him. It looks like he'll be a Robert Landsdorp-type coach for Adidas clients.

And there's an interesting sub-plot to all of this Adidas maneuvering: Novak Djokovic, as far as I know, is also sponsored by Adidas. He's probably too close to Marian Vajda to use Cahill, but you'd think he could surely benefit from some Gil Reyes conditioning. It'd be very smart of him to exercise that option.