Nick Bollettieri started a pioneering tennis school and coached ten of the sport’s top-ranked players, including Andre Agassi, Maria Sharapova and Venus and Serena Williams. The Hall of Fame tennis coach has died at 91.
and Robert Johnson. He continued to work as an instructor long after being inducted in 2014, the same year that one of his pupils, Japanese right-hander Kei Nishikori, reached the U.S. Open finals.In all, Mr. Bollettieri coached 10 world No. 1 players — including Agassi, Sharapova, the Williams sisters, Boris Becker, Jim Courier and Monica Seles — most of whom lived at his academy in Bradenton as children or teenagers.
Mr. Bollettieri had served as an Army paratrooper and embraced the role of courtside drill sergeant, ordering students to run on a nearby beach for infractions that included smashing their rackets or showing insufficient enthusiasm., “but it won’t be much fun.” The article went on to describe Mr.
Mr. Bollettieri knew so little about the sport that he would meet with other local tennis pros before each lesson, getting advice on how to teach it. But he was a master promoter — he later called himself “the Michelangelo of Tennis,” to the annoyance of critics who noted that he was only an average player — and began drawing large crowds to his clinics.After a few months, he dropped out of law school to focus on coaching.
The school was sold in 1987 to IMG, led by fellow tennis Hall of Famer Mark McCormack, and has since added a half-dozen sports and expanded into a 600-acre campus.
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