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ROME – The first thing you notice, as with most former players-turned-coaches, is how they just know how to BE on the practice court.

Standing at the net, sprinting to pick up a mixed first serve, looking intently on but not necessarily saying all that much.

As if they knew the drill long before they even performed it.

That was Tomas Berdych, who is still only 37 (!!), on court with his 21-year-old countryman Jiri Lehecka Tuesday at the Italian Open.

He’s six months younger than Stan Wawrinka, who won his first-round match on Wednesday. He’s just nine months older than Rafael Nadal, and about 20 months older than Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray. But he’s been retired nearly four years now.

He went 4-2 against Alexander Zverev, with whom Lehecka practiced Tuesday – he won the first four. And he was 2-1 against Tobias Kamke – who is the same age almost exactly as Djokovic and Murray and is working with Zverev.

Berdych, who had persistent back problems, wrapped it up in 2019 and was honoured at the year-end finals along with a crop of other fine players.

He won 13 titles during his career, got to a career high No. 4, and was basically in the top 10 for a decade (along with banking nearly $30 million on the court).

He lost more finals than he won. But he also made the Monte Carlo finals in 2015, the Madrid final in 2012 and the Miami final in 2010.

In 2010, he also reached his one and only Grand Slam final at Wimbledon.

Pics – the MANY stylings of Tomas Berdych

He also rocked it in Davis Cup with teammate Radek Stepanek.

Like many, Berdych had the unfortunate luck to play basically his entire career with the Big 3 on the prowl.

Quiet retirement – until now

Berdych’s last match came in the first round of the 2019 US Open, where he lost in four sets to a then-unknown kid, Jenson Brookby.

Since then, he kept a remarkably low profile. And then he turned up in Dubai this year, apparently on his way home from vacation, and looked in on Lehecka – whose coach Michal Navratil is the son of Berdych’s own former coach, Jaroslav Navratil (who sported a mullet LONG before it became a thing in tennis).

At that time, he told the ATP Tour website there were no plans for a collab.

And then, there were.

Lehecka says that his childhood idol was Roger Federer. And then he realized it would be smart to look at someone whose game more closely resembled his own, to gain some knowledge. That player was … Berdych.

And now, it’s Coach Berdych.

Here’s what they looked like on the practice court Tuesday night.

(It sort of harkens back to the Federer-Edberg collab, in that sense).

They began in Monte Carlo. And now, they’re in Rome, at which Berdych played 13 times and made the quarterfinals once. He lost twice to Nadal, once to Federer. And the last two times, he was beaten by Canadians – Milos Raonic in 2017, and Denis Shapovalov in a third-set tiebreak in 2018.