The Story of 2006/2007 - The PHANTOM Years!

The phantom Years are the dark mystery side of magic; a ghost impossible to touch. Guillermo Coria spent two years fighting phantoms; ghosts of lost matches on the largest of stages, a phantom in his service motion that he could not solve to correct, a phantom in his confidence that he could not identify reasons for, and of course, a phantom to his fans, as he literally went an entire year without match play, with phantom attempts to return always ended with a haunting string of small injuries.

Still, Coria hits the ball like a form of culture. To all who have seen this proud and courageous fighter battle against all odds, win or lose, his art and his armor display a spirit that is tireless and regal.

So where is the King Coria story in 2007? Here's the report.

After ending 2005 losing an unfathomable-- but moreso excruciating-- 9 of 11 matches, Guille split early in 2006 with his coach of the last year, Jose Perlas.

In truth, while Coria never placed a hint of blame on his coach of 2005, some say that Perlas unfortunately tried to do with Guille’s game what many of his opponents would hope: Coria always beat his opponents by attacking from the backcourt like a boxer while feverishly retrieving his opponent’s attempts to gain control of the rally until they were ground down from the sheer futility.

Perlas tried to “help” Coria improve by ending points earlier and coming to net. While well-meaning, his opponents, of course, WANTED to end the point earlier...and so they did, usually to their own benefit.

As Guille would be passed, often from not realizing the approach was too short in the court to barrel in behind, or just at a poor angle to successfully apply any pressure, he became less sure about what to do in constructing a point.

The Master Chess Player was having the board moved beneath his feet.

Looking over at his coach, Perlas would simply nod, “Keep trying” …but once the structural uncertainty sunk in, so did the double faults. (It later came to light that Perlas had instructed Coria not to work on his second serve, while adjusting to a new service motion to keep pressure off his shoulder, which had required surgery after the French Open in 2004.)

Certainly double faulting comes from the player and not the coach, but going in the wrong direction with his game when he needed a boost in security caused a real tremor in the service department, developing a major case of –what is called – the ‘yips’; a psychological fear of missing resulting in double faults.

His double faults began to climb even by the time he won his last Tournament title to date, Umag in 2005. But he went through a series of matches with over 20 double faults...an equivalent of 5 games handed to opponents just from an inability to put the ball in play to start the point. And yet he still won many of those matches, dramatically.

But after a stirring run at the US Open, Coria’s titanic 5-set struggle against Ginepri in the QF ended in a tragic disappointment, 7-5 in the 5th, with 2 consecutive double faults by Coria closing the door on his final Grand Slam of the year.

This was devastating. But Coria later said a loss to Karol Beck in the Davis Cup only a few weeks later was really what put the blade to his heart. Beck was the kind of guy Guille would be hard pressed to lose a set to, much less an entire match. Yet that very thing happened in an environment where he cared immensely, playing for his country.

Disheartened and with increasing nervousness and irritability on court, Coria lost 9 of his last 11 matches of the season in 2005, his worst stretch of losses since becoming a professional tennis player. Yet his earlier results were so good he still ended in the top 10 for the year.

The wall of certainty that Coria came to represent to his opponents at the back of the court had been replaced with someone seemingly both beatable and fragile.

Rock bottom came early in 2006. And then throughout 2006! But one fall at a time…

The not-long-ago best clay court player in the world lost two matches in a row in straight sets on clay to Qualifiers who would normally go on court hoping to get just a few games from El Mago. But the magic had become invisible even to its practitioner.

Coria’s father, Oscar, was so shocked by what he saw from his superstar son’s deteriorated play in February 2006, he angrily warned the press that the joy some seem to take at this 'fall' would be short-lived and that Guille will have the last laugh.

A Spanish-speaking but American-based coach –the former top ten player, José Higueras– came to the attention of Oscar Coria through channels connected not only to Guillermo Vilas but Gil Reyes, the strength and conditioning coach of Andre Agassi, who has long expressed an interest in Guillermo’s talent. The two met in California and saw they were sympatico.

But while some inspiring results and magical miracles did happen – (Guille came back from a 1-6 1-5 deficit to up-end Paul-Henri Mathieu of France, even while double-faulting throughout the 3 sets of play), Coria was not displaying the rebound he was hoping for.

Indeed, in truly (one of the) more humiliating tussles of 2006, Coria got a rematch against hapless Ruben Ramirez-Hidalgo of Spain, who had beaten Coria on clay right in front of his home crowd in Buenos Aires in February by scores of 7-5 6-2.

At the time, near-mental breakdown had been sighted as the only possible excuse, and an execution-style dismantling of Ramirez-Hidalgo would be normally expected from a full-firing Coria.

But now almost 3 months to the day, Ramirez-Hidalgo pounded Guille even worse than before with a 6-3 6-2 dismissal in the same tournament where Coria had managed to be the finalist only a year prior.

With equally unthinkable first round clay court losses to names like Gremelmayr, Djokovic, Acasuso, and Vik, not to mention a mind-numbing 6-2 6-0 battering at the hands of Nicholas Almagro, Coria wisely took time off and skipped the French Open and Wimbledon all together to collect himself and reassess his priorities and passion.

He picked up another coach during the time off, and was very excited to work with Argentina's Horacio de la Pela. Ignoring another first round return-to-the-tour loss, Guille did well to make his only semifinal of 2006 in Amersfoort, where he had to retire in the semifinal round. A host of injuries, pulls, and strains were accompanying the double faults, but Coria being the fighter he is, was fighting himself too and trying to find a love for the game he had lost.

So he entered the US Open with hopes of just making a start, after losing 3 matches in a row, 2 of which were by early match retirement. And despite being one of the only players practicing even during the long rain breaks in New York during a blustery US Open, Guille slipped in the second game of his first round match on a small patch of damp ground, and despite a forceful start, tried in vain to play a few more games before putting the towel over his face and looking over to his cheering section of friends, coach and wife Carla, who could only look back with their eyes: It’s been that kind of a year. Let’s move on.

He retired after playing only 5 games against 374th ranked Ryan Sweeting.

But that’s not the end of 2006. It was a poetic embodiment of futility for the year right there in Flushing Meadows, but hoping to send off the year on some kind of high note from somewhere, Coria did what most top pros egos never allow themselves to do, and that is go to a ‘Challenger’ event, like those Guille would play before he was ranked even in the top 50. But to gain confidence, you must start somewhere.

He tried hard against 187th ranked Razvan Sabau of Romania, but lost in 3 sets in the first round of the Szczecin Challenger. Now THAT was it. Likewise, his time under coach de la Pena was gone. And so was 2006.

But King Coria is thusly named because he is greater than his circumstances and thoughtful in the face of the deepest adversity.

He has gained much, he says, from such a difficult and disappointing time. He learned who his friends are, but also how to live for the precious things of life and not just about what happens on a tennis court. He became more comfortable in his own skin and saw enormous support from loyal fans and in fact, turned his general popularity around remarkably with tennis fans who had once had quite a bad attitude toward him. They had seen him serve and serve and serve and fight with dignity even while all his weapons deserted him over and over again.

Whatever they had missed seeing in the spirit of Guillermo Coria before, who could not find something to love in the earnest refusal to bow before a year of heartbreak and bewilderment, as Coria did in 2006.

Guille had stumble after stumble throughout 2007 and ended up going an entire year witout match play. Small injuries and uncertainties continued to plague the Man of Magic, who was not able to unlock the key to a spell he has in part cast himself, but which life itself seems determined to have him "play through it" to enter his own future renewed.

"For a guy with no ranking, I am playing pretty well," Guille has joked. In October of 2007, he began the long walk back and his not won a match in challenger events. But he is willing to pay whatever dues are necessary because his time will come.

He is by nature one of the greats.

With "King Coria", Guille inspired music in 2006! (Click the sleeve to listen) and click here to read the TennisWeek.com article about it!

“I hope to return as a player even better than I was at my highest point,” Coria has told us. With a hand full of tricks and a wand to dazzle the future, the climb back to the top will no doubt bring him higher than all his previous heights because there is more to the man now than there ever was before.

While he has spent a few years as a king without a Castle, perhaps Guillermo Coria’s Phantom Years have taught him that the Castle is not something outside that a King seeks to find, but rather the Castle is a foundation that the King has built within himself. And in finding this, the invisible will become visible, and the Phantom finally seized and conquered.

With 2008 approaching, a whole new canvas is appearing like magic for this great tennis artist! So the next chapter begins...