Five Questions With...Nick Bollettieri
Legendary coach of 10 No. 1 playersFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Liza Horan
330 Third Ave.
New York,
212-682-6829
lhoran@tenniswire.org
05/22/09 - "Five Questions With..." is a series featuring exclusive interviews with important industry people. You will learn something with each edition.
Nick Bollettieri's got the discipline of a sergeant, the street smarts of a tough guy, the eye for talent that scouts dream of, the energy of a teenager, the smile of a guy on vacation, and the passion (for tennis, for life) of a new groom. He's coached 10 players who ranked No. 1, from Boris Becker to Maria Sharapova. He joined forces with IMG to form IMG Academies to help develop top pro athletes; it started with tennis and expanded to seven sports. After all that, he's still as hard-working, determined, affable and open as ever. And not afraid to speak in the third-person.
This weekend Bollettieri, 77, is in Birmingham, Ala., for his induction to the State of Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. The 1953 graduate of Springhill College in Mobile has been named Distinguished American Sportsman for 2009 by the Hall. Previous honorees include President George H. Bush and Bob Hope.
Q. Tell me, is the word retirement in your vocabulary?
A. The word "retirement" in Nick Bollettieri's vocabulary does not exist. My wife and I have talked about this for the past couple of years because we run our camp for child obesity called
Camp Kaizan, as well, and until Nick Bollettieri is able to help every child have an opportunity to achieve some sort of greatness, I will not retire.
Q. You are full of gusto. How do you maintain your energy level?
A. I've always been (like) that. it's pretty exciting to me to be able to do all the things I'm able to do, and I'm not able to do them unless the day is very long. My day starts about 4 a.m. I jump out of bed to do my stretching at home. My exercises are lying on my back on a big rubber ball for a minute, lying on my stomach for another minute. I do 50 sit-ups to begin with. I do my stretching. I do my side crunches. And then I'm at the academy at 4:30 and I do a good 30 minutes of light weights—but a lot of repetitions.
And then I'm on the court at 5:00. And I teach until about 11:30, and then I have a staff lunch from about 11:30 to 1:00, and I have a big staff meeting with all my coaches until 1:30, and then I'm on the courts until about 6:30.
But three and a half hours a day is with the general academy, where I try to see every student. About every 16 to 18 days I see every single student for four to six minutes with their coach and within 24 hours we email the parents what we're working on. And then four times a year we send a DVD of Nick working with their child.
At night I try to do a little stretching and some more sit-ups as well.
Now in order to do that, I don't know whether vitamins would really do the trick. I think it's what I enjoy doing. I don't need an alarm to wake up. It's a ritual that I have lived by--it's so ingrained in me that if I did anything other than that it would be sort of abnormal.
But I'm very strict. I'll have a glass of wine, maybe two glasses of wine, but that's most unusual. I'll have maybe a beer a month. I'm very light on the dessert and carbs. I have no snacking and I'm sort of on a ritual all the time. It's sort of a habit that I know exactly what to do in order to maintain the physical fitness that I'm in today. It's really not a job either, you see, it's really a sort of game with me that if I didn't do it I sort of feel that I cheated today. So, it's not laborious to me. It's fun to me.
Q. What are some of the stumbling blocks you see get in the way of so many promising young players?
A. Andre Agassi said a statement couple of years ago. He said that you have a lot of promising youngsters, but at 14 and 15 they sort of reach a stumbling block because the talent that they had sort of comes to a halt.
I disagree with the book ["Talent is Overrated" by Geoff Colvin" that] said talent is overrated. The gentleman said that if you had 100 children go through the same ritual for 10 years they would all be equal. I disagree with it vehemently and so does my friend Dick Vitale and other leading coaches.
I think some of the stumbling blocks, first of all, are the support system, the realistic goals of the parents, and whether or not they can work with the coaches and with the student.
I certainly think that the biggest obstacle is unrealistic goals. Certainly you want to shoot for the stars, but you have to be realistic and that's where I think the coach has to very honest with his students and with the parents.
Quite often that's very difficult because that's their meal ticket. I would rather go hungry than tell parents their children false pretenses of what I think--and I'm not certainly the only person. I certainly think that my years in tennis can sort of predict somewhat the future of youngsters.
No. 2 is certainly lack of financial aid. It is a stumbling block for a lot of children. A lot of children have the ability and have the desire, but tennis is still an expensive sport. Quite often a lot potential youngsters that could make it based on their desire and their hungriness, but you still need money and support.
Q. Do you think the USTA's high performance player development program is on the right track?
A. Yes, I do. First of all, you have the right guy in Patrick McEnroe, and he has surrounded himself with a hell of a team, leading with Jose Higueras, Martin Blackman, and Jay Berger, a former student of the Academy, and other guys who all are former students of the academy.
What Patrick has is the knowledge of being a player, being a Davis Cup coach, and playing for college. He has surrounded himself with one heck of a support system, and I don't believe that he can be intimidated by the higher-ups of the USTA to actually tell him how to run his program. That is very, very important.
However, it is going to take three to five years minimum. I am on the (player development) board with Patrick, and one of the major things that I told Patrick is that he has to win the support of all the coaches at recreation centers and "nobody" pros that really have potential pros. He needs those coaches to be part of his feed-in system.
I think that that is one of the biggest pluses: that Pat has no ego, that he certainly will do that.
Q. Your work ethic seems to be grounded in discipline, efficiency, physical and mental and drive. Is it nurture or nature?
A. I believe I was born with this. I don't believe that too many people can have the viewpoint that I have about life and dealing with people if you're taught that. I believe that this is one of the attributes that God gave to me when I was born, and I don't think that too many people can have that, and that's one of the positive traits that I have. But I am also bright enough to be surrounded with people that are helping me succeed, and I believe that one of the keys to success is to surround yourself with very positive and encouraging people that at times will tell you things that you don't want to hear.
But this is the way Nick Bollettieri has been really all my life. If you have those adjectives of discipline and efficiency that are necessary to become a Top 10 player--No. 1--I don't believe you can become a Top 10 player or the best in anything that you do unless God somehow delivered you with those traits.
However, as Bobby Knight says, having all the talent in the world and not having smartness (isn't enough). And as Dick Vitale says: [You must have] the passion to fight and give your whole life to that. If you're just pin-pointed towards success you need all of those things.
That's the way I feel, because I don't believe that pride and discipline is enough. You have to have certain things that other people just don't have--no matter who teaches them. Those things that just sort of flow and come: You read the ball coming. You can anticipate well. You can sort of set up.
I don't think you can teach those. You can teach certain things, but to be greatness like your Tiger Woods' or Michael Jordans, I don't think you can teach those things.
I think they have to be born.
Being born is not enough to be great. You have to have financial support. You have to have the dedication, you have to have the discipline, you have to have strong work ethics. You have to have those things as well.
What I tell you is not a hypothesis. It's what Nick has experienced working with thousands of boys and girls here.
BONUS QUESTION: Q. What's next?
A. My biography is being written now that will come out at the U.S. Open 2010. It will be an unedited biography written by David Leahy. It'll be a humdinger of a book. I will not see any part of it (beforehand), but it will include personal interviews with Anna Kournikova and the Agassis and the Beckers and the Mary Carillos and Dick Enbergs. So I'm looking forward to reading my biography.
Links:
NickBollettieri.com
IMGAcademies.com
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