The coaching team in the club has been strengthened since September 1, 2014 by a coach who was working with top players of the WTA rankings. Vladimir Platenik (38) is going to help our young players and his wish is to help them the way he did when he had succeeded as a coach of Dominika Cibulkova in 2007 - 2009. He will participate in the preparation of the EMPIRE Tennis Academy which is also going to be a space for the development of talented foreign players.

Vladimir Platenik showed immediate interest in the cooperation with the EMPIRE Trnava Tennis Club. In his opinion, the club meets all needs of the professional tennis player struggling for further development. "It’s in the interest of the club to further improve what you can. There isn’t another club of this size in Slovakia and I believe that my experience will contribute to its further progress and the progress of the Slovak tennis," said the coach for the website tcempire.sk.

In 2007 – 2009, Vladimir Platenik was a coach of current Slovak No. 1 player Dominika Cibulkova. Thanks to the cooperation with him, she had improved WTA rankings in singles from No. 158 to No. 12. "My challenge is to help young players again, once I had helped Dominika Cibulkova and the other tennis players," said Platenik, who knows EMPIRE Trnava Tennis Club very well. He will spend some time in Trnava with the Austrian player Patricia Mayr-Achleitner, No. 85 in the WTA rankings. "We’re going to continue to work together and she will practice in Trnava, too. Next year, I will travel with her to 15 tournaments," added Platenik.
The club has similar ambitions, as a well-known Slovak coach and his arrival confirm commitment to quality growth of the training process in the TC EMPIRE Trnava. "We are looking forward to the arrival of the renowned coach in Slovakia and abroad. He was practicing with exceptional players like Dominika Cibulkova, Nadia Petrova, Henrieta Nagyova or Yanina Wickmayer," Oto Majba, the manager of the club, welcomes the cooperation.
The arrival of the renowned coach is welcomed also by the head coach of the TC EMPIRE Miloslav Grolmus. "He is very experienced coach, who was training a lot of players from the top 100. I’m expecting that he will be in charge of our international EMPIRE Tennis Academy and in charge of the arrival of the players from abroad. His experience can also be used to improve the quality of our club coaches," said Grolmus.

Photo source: Ivan Kopčáni