The next meeting, the next day, started with the obligatory question and, as such, impossible to avoid.
– Did you think what I told you?
– Yes, I need this to live.
– You are the first person who does not want to take money from me.
William Vilas he wanted to try one last advance on the tennis courts. He had to define who was going to be his coach, and the “Poet” felt comfortable with that. Ariel Ruizwith whom he had done several weeks of preseason.
It was the year 1990 and tennis showed the first sketches of its current physiognomy: power, speed, short points. The best Argentine tennis player in history had not competed for a while and decided to try his luck in some Challengers and ATP tournaments. In those days, Ruiz was a former player who had retired young and was part of the academy that he had Modesto Vazquez in KDT.
“We were going to start a preseason in January and one day ‘Tito’ told me that Vilas was going to come to do a two-month preseason. He was my idol”recalls the coach from Mexico, where he has lived for three years, when he took over the management of the Potosí Sports Clubone of the most important in Aztec tennis and home to the traditional San Luis Potosí Challenger that is played at Easter.
Vázquez marked the national hero who occupied the field of the coach of only 25 years. “We hit very good vibes the first day, he behaved very kind, very nice. After training for a few hours, he left. The next day he asked to go to my court, because he had liked how I worked”tells him Ambit after a long day of competition for his pupil in Monterrey.
Ruiz left tennis at the age of 19 because it was impossible for him to travel. After his retirement, he was an assistant at Ferro’s academy, where he later met the former Davis Cup captain. From there he began a story of world travel, rock, jet set and, fundamentally, a lot of tennis.
A life linked to Vilas and music
– Do you like rock?
– Yes I love it
– Tonight such a band plays in such a place at ten o’clock at night. We meet at eight o’clock at the pizzeria across the street with friends. We eat something and then we cross paths. Do you want to come?
Thus ended the second day of practice for the Mar del Plata native, which included a dinner, a recital and the chance to meet Pappo. The complicity with his coach was innate. After some trips to Europe, the winner of four Grand Slam tournaments formally proposed that they work together, something that Ruiz did not hesitate. Music was the ideal link to sustain the relationship.
“He was 25 years old and he touched the sky with his hands. So I became friends with him. He united us a lot, in addition to tennis, outside the court, something that is very important. If you don’t have affinity outside, it’s very difficult “enlarge.
Between 1991 and 1992 – when he retired although he never announced it – Vilas played a handful of Challenger tournaments and two ATP tournaments in Atlanta and Bordeaux, with only four wins. His last three matches were played once he had turned 40.
What can be corrected to one of the ten best players in history? “After a year and a half without competing, at his age, it was not so easy to come back. And he caught the time when the punches appeared, the fastest tennis. He knows a lot about tennis, but it is very difficult to correct oneself. Obviously I didn’t look at the technique, more than anything it was the tactics and having it full “details.
ariel ruiz shakira.jpeg
Courtesy Ariel Ruiz
The trips
In Vilas’s mind everything was organized. All that remained was to inform his new coach of the next steps.
– Where are we going?
– We’re leaving in two weeks for New York. Do you have a visa and passport?
Ruiz didn’t have time to organize much of anything, but Vilas had assured him that he was in charge of everything. The promise was literal. “I had to renew everything. But with a letter from him everything was done in a while. He wrote me a letter in his own handwriting for the French consul and they gave me everything on the same day”He explains between laughs.
The duo was based on Manhattan and in Paris, places where the winner of 62 ATP titles had houses. There they shared a lot of time between practices, music, movies and other art manifestations. On his first day in New York, the now director saw MTV for the first time and discovered the grunge movement that had emerged in Seattle. A huge culture shock, in his own words.
For that time, Vilas was, in its most exact expression, a rock star. Or rather house, because months before he had made his debut as a singer with the album “1990”, which meant a launch pad for that genre in the country. But he was also famous because of his fame and popular idolatry, something that “Willy” did not escape. According to Ruiz, “The photos never bothered him, the autographs, he loved being recognized. He always handled fame very well. He never complained, on the contrary, you approached and he stayed talking ”.
Parallel to his latest dances on brick dust, the man from Mar del Plata, who had already published two poetry books, retraced the path of hard rock with Dr. Silva, founded together with Julio Sáez, then guitarist and current manager of “Indio” Solari. This formation fell in another way in vernacular music. “I think they didn’t take him seriously because he came from a different suit. He had another head, far ahead of everything. I think there was a very big prejudice,” explains Ruiz.
The post Vilas era
– Guillermo, plays Metallica in New Jersey
– Do you want to go see them?
– Yes! Do you get tickets?
– Wait for me
The conversation on the phone, friendly, sincere, with questions from both families, lasted about 20 minutes. No more time was necessary.
– I fixed everything for you
– Who did you speak with?
– With Lars Ulrich, the drummer
Vilas had a relationship with the musician through Torben Ulrich, a legendary tennis figure of the 70s and father of the founder of Metallica. Ruiz’s life was so dizzying. Through the “Poet” he met all the members of the heavy metal band and even gave him a baseball cap. Stevie Ray Vaughn to the bassist, played with Lars Ulrich and with Mark Knopfler, leader of Dire Straits, and trained dozens of celebrities. Once his stage as coach was over, the national emblem itself suggested that he work with him at the Racket, which in those years was named after the man from Mar del Plata.
“Suddenly I find myself teaching models, Claudia and Dalma Maradona, Ricardo Darín’s wife. Two years in a row I taught Shakira when she came to Argentina to play. She was a fan of tennis, she played several hours a day, even the same day she sang ”evokes for this medium.
Ruiz assures that after a very difficult childhood, tennis sheltered him. “Luckily I grew up in a club. Sport is very important for children., elaborate. Despite the fact that “I burned when I was very young”, she never separated herself from this discipline. That is why he came to travel the world with his direction. For seven seasons she trained Peruvian Bianca Botto, whom she left on the brink of the WTA Top 100. The adventure took him to California for four years and then he went to China to train a young man on the recommendation of Guillermo Cañas.
Back in Buenos Aires, he joined Andrés Schneiter’s team and trained Juan Ignacio Londero and, mainly, Federico Coria. But he was looking for a resounding change for his career. Then came the opportunity to lead the Potosino Sports Club, where he emigrated in July 2019. The former tennis player acknowledges that at first it was difficult for him to adapt but that today his reality is very different and that even he could stay and live there.
Gone are the days of traveling with Vilas, whom he considers one of his best friends. “I lived in his house and spent 15 Christmases with him. I am very grateful to Guillermo”, gets excited. The epilogue of a rock story is in charge of a national letter. La Renga once asked herself: “Where is life taking me?”
Source: Ambito
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