For U.S. players, the fed cup captain is also a tennis mom

Not a good sign, Rinaldi knew, especially so close to Vickery’s first match at the French Open. Rinaldi drew Vickery near, wrapped an arm around her shoulder and gave her some advice: Walk tall. Keep your head up.

“Just giving a little confidence boost,” she said, walking off the court to continue checking on each of the 18 American women who made it into the singles draw at Roland Garros.

Officially, Rinaldi, 50, is the captain of the U.S. team for the Fed Cup, the annual yearlong competition in women’s tennis. But in Paris and throughout the tennis calendar, she has another role: a supporting mentor and guide for each American woman in the field. Her players consider her to be the mother figure of U.S. women’s tennis.

“I’m there for anything these players might find helpful,” she said, speaking softly.

Gripping a racket in her left hand, eyeing every stroke behind aviator sunglasses, Rinaldi was doing on this recent morning what she has done every day during the first week of the French Open: pushing, prodding, watching, comforting.

“That’s it, that’s the way,” she told Danielle Collins, a two-time NCAA singles champion who came to France ranked No. 42, after Collins finished hitting a series of forehand drives.

“Nice, very nice depth.”

Before the week was out, the struggling Vickery had heeded Rinaldi’s advice. She lost 6-3, 6-3 to fellow American Madison Keys, a contender for this year’s title, but she didn’t give in. She walked tall, with her head up.

Rinaldi keeps a low profile. Hardly a household name, she is a former prodigy who became Fed Cup captain before last season. Short, with broad shoulders and a blond ponytail, she grants few interviews.

Although she is a ubiquitous presence, she prefers to watch her players from a far corner of the stands, often amid fans unaware of who she is.

Rinaldi says she is most comfortable this way — in her words, “very much behind the scenes.”

She says little about her exalted place in the tennis coaching firmament.

In Rinaldi’s first year as captain, with CoCo Vandeweghe winning the biggest matches, the Americans claimed the Fed Cup for the first time since 2000, clinching the title against Belarus in November.

Rinaldi had already been guiding many of the most talented American women for 10 years as a coach with the U.S. Tennis Association. Now, for the first time, the USTA directed its new Fed Cup captain to take a more full-time role helping with the growth of rising female pros.

“She did such a great job working with all of our players, we wanted to keep her in that role,” said Martin Blackman, the USTA’s general manager for player development. “It was the perfect fit.”

On tour, each player has her own coach, but Rinaldi can afford to take a broader view. When asked, she offers strategic advice and tips on technique. She will also help run practices if individual coaches can’t be on hand. Often, she will make herself available just to listen.

“She’s a nurturer,” said Sloane Stephens, the reigning U.S. Open champion, who like so many U.S. tennis stars has known Rinaldi since her early teenage years. “You give her a hug when you see her. It’s like she’s the tennis mom that you wish every tennis mom was like.”

For Rinaldi, each day of the French Open has been a dawn-to-dusk marathon.

The first day, last Sunday, was typical. After working with Vickery and Collins, Rinaldi went to the players’ cafeteria, where she checked in with Stephens about her coming match.

From there, she drove to a practice court near Roland Garros, where she watched Vandeweghe and Bethanie Mattek-Sands, who was about to make her first appearance in a Grand Slam event after injuring a knee last summer at Wimbledon.

Then Rinaldi drove to another practice court to watch Grace Min, a little-known veteran who is ranked No. 197. Min’s regular coach couldn’t make it to Paris, and Rinaldi was taking his place. She left Min after an hour and drove back to Roland Garros in time to watch Jennifer Brady, a 23-year-old who starred at UCLA.

“C’mon, Bunch! Way to be aggressive, Bunch!” Rinaldi chanted, using Brady’s nickname derived from the 1970s TV sitcom.

“Excuse me,” said a fan, “are you that player’s mom?”

“No, I’m not,” Rinaldi replied, a smile spreading across her face. “But I do get that a lot.”

The day stretched into evening, but Rinaldi was not finished. Surrounded by other USTA coaches, she settled in the stands and cheered on Christina McHale, 26.

It wasn’t until McHale’s match was stopped because of darkness that Rinaldi headed back to her hotel. But she was available all night for text messaging with U.S. players around the world.

“I’m a full-service coach,” Rinaldi said. “They’re in all different time zones, so I have to be ready.”

She will always have a soft spot for Roland Garros. The 1981 French Open was her first Grand Slam tournament. She won her first four matches, defeating a pair of seeded players along the way. She ended up in the quarterfinals, where she lost to Hana Mandlikova, one of the era’s greats.

Rinaldi was just 14.

“So young then, I just had no clue,” said Rinaldi, who is married and has a son in college. “I remember playing a match, and one of the linesmen kept making errors. So me, I just walk up to the chair umpire and say: ‘Look, he has missed three or four calls. Could we have him removed?’ I was too young to know you don’t do that kind of thing. But you know what, they did it.”

Many hailed her as the next Chris Evert. Hopes intensified when she made it to the semifinals of Wimbledon in 1985, losing to Evert. Rinaldi never fulfilled the outsize expectations, but in a lengthy career that lasted until the late 1990s, she won 277 singles matches and was ranked as high as No. 7.

“My career was tough in different stages,” she said, sitting outside Court Philippe Chatrier. “When I started, I was so young I was just oblivious to all the things being said. All the pressure. Then as I got older, there were awkward times as a teen. Injury. A comeback. I try to take from those experiences and use them now.”

As Rinaldi spoke about the devotion she has to her job and the players, like Serena Williams, Stephens and Min, whom she helps in big ways and small, her eyes moistened and her voice broke. Not every American woman made it out of the first round this week, but the 18 in the main draw were the country’s most in 15 years.

“I believe in all of these girls,” Rinaldi said. “I see them working hard day to day. I see their coaches working. And when you see the results, it is just great. I am beyond honored to be around them, for them to let me in just a little bit and help. They’re my passion.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.