At the age of 17 he began his tennis career and won his first international tennis tournament in
Sochi. In 1970, he continued his tennis career at the army sports club
CSKA Moscow while also serving in the
Soviet army. Since 1974 he coaches tennis players. From 1974 to 1991 he has been the head coach of the USSR, CIS (1992) and Russian (since 1997)
female and
male tennis teams. In the Soviet times, Tarpishchev helped winning tennis players 26 gold medals at European Championships (1974-1983), as well as brought the Davis Cup team in 1974, 1976, and the Fed Cup team in 1978 and 1979 to the semifinals. He was also finalist of the King's Cup in 1981. He was advisor to the president of the Russian Federation for physical culture and sport (1992-1994), president of the National Sports Foundation (NSF) (1992 - July 1994), chairman of the Coordination Committee for Physical Culture and Sports under the president of Russia (1993-1997), and chairman of the Russian State Committee for Physical Culture and Tourism (1994-1996). Since 1994, Tarpishchev is member of the executive committee of the
Russian Olympic Committee and the
International Olympic Committee. Where he was a member of the Radio and Television Commission from 1995 to 1999, part of the Sport and Environment Commission from 2006 to 2015, part of the Entourage Commission from 2014 to 2015, as well as part of the Athletes' Entourage Commission since 2015. In 2014, WTA fined ($25,000), and forced Tarpischev to apologize for making racist and sexist comments regarding American Tennis Superstars Venus and Serena Williams. Tarpischev was also banned/suspended from WTA tour involvement for one year because of his offensive rhetoric directed towards Venus and Serena Williams. In Russia, his participation at the
Evening Urgant show was understood as another lame joke by
Ivan Urgant. Tarpishchev supported the joke in his unsuccessful attempt to be as funny as the host by turning it into an
in-joke about the winning duo of
Bryan brothers () and the gender-neutral word () meaning 'society, community' (analog to the English 'guys'): :
Ivan Urgant to Tarpishchev and Elena Dementieva: It was an
Olympiad where
Masha Sharapova played one [f.], one [m.] of these ()... :
Shamil Tarpishchev (laughing): Williams brothers (). :
Ivan Urgant: Williams brothers. Tarpishchev blamed
Stacey Allaster for initiating a scandal. After the team's victory over
Sweden, Shamil made a record of 55 wins as team captain of the
Russian Davis Cup team. The former record holder was Australian
Neil Fraser. At the
2021 Davis Cup Finals, Tarpishchev led the
Russian Tennis Federation team to victory, securing Russia's first Davis Cup championship in fifteen years. RTF team members included
Daniil Medvedev,
Andrey Rublev,
Aslan Karatsev,
Karen Khachanov, and
Evgeny Donskoy. Following the victory, Tarpishchev criticized the
Russian Ministry of Sports decision to exclude all the main men's and women's team titles (Davis Cup and
Billie Jean King Cup) from the ministry's list of world championships in tennis, thus to make the title-winning athletes ineligible for the locally prestigious (since 1934) award "Merited
Master of Sports" (MMS). Simultaneously, he announced his plans to resign from the men's coaching position to concentrate on management as the federation's president only. ==Publications==