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King of the court

The day is a terrible thing to waste, and Nick Bollettieri wouldn't dream of it.

By DAVE SCHEIBER
Published February 24, 2007

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As Haile Dickert, 16, prepares to blast a backhand, Nick Bollettieri maintains a watchful eye. Photo gallery with audio
	[Times photo: Dirk Shadd]

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BRADENTON -- At 4:25 a.m., a tan Jeep Wrangler whips into a reserved parking spot in the Florida darkness and out steps the ageless King of the Court. His short-cropped gray hair is thinning on top and his skin has been creased by years in the sun. But he sports the same lean 5-10, 160 frame he's had for decades. And hey, even in the middle of the night, his perpetual tan looks pretty darn good. Despite the unforgiving hour, when the rest of the world seems to be sound asleep, Nick Bollettieri strides robustly toward a massive workout center in the midst of the one-of-a-kind, 300-acre empire he founded and that his presence completely permeates.

Clad in a red-white-and-blue windbreaker and matching red shorts and shoes, he is a walking energy field, moving so briskly that keeping up with him in the parking lot shadows is tough.

The truth is, nobody on the premises can really keep up with the reigning dean of tennis coaches, who has helped shape the careers of nine No. 1 players - Andre Agassi, Boris Becker, Jim Courier, Maria Sharapova, Venus and Serena Williams, Martina Hingis, Monica Seles and Marcelo Rios - as well as dozens of other world-class players for half a century.

At 75, when many seniors are kicking back in retirement, Bollettieri may have cornered the market on stamina. Three years into marriage No. 8 - neck and neck with Elizabeth Taylor - he appears to have finally met his love match in 42-year-old Cindi, a tall and striking former Ms. Teen Vermont with a master's degree in social work and a self-deprecating sense of humor.

"Nick has his own version of speed dating," she says with a smile. "It's you meet someone, you propose and you get married the next day."

Cindi helps oversee her husband's tennis business and manage his whirlwind schedule and life with a staff of three assistants. Meanwhile, Bollettieri, once an Army paratrooper, a law student, a college philosophy major and a young tennis pro who got a helping hand from Green Bay Packers coaching great Vince Lombardi, never stops working - rarely stops moving - except for the 4-5 hours he allows himself to sleep each night.

"My mind is always going, always thinking of a new way to do something," he says with the enthusiasm of a salesman, which, in part, he is.

He founded the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in 1978 and partnered with IMG in 1987. Out of that has evolved IMG Academies, with Bollettieri serving as president. Today, IMG Academies is a world-class training center for elite athletes from around the globe - juniors to adults, amateurs to pros - who train at Bollettieri's tennis academy, the David Leadbetter Golf Academy, academies for basketball, baseball and soccer, and a physical and mental conditioning program. At times, the place resembles a bustling prep school campus, with students making their way to onsite schools - between lessons and training - riding bikes or toting backpacks and laptops.

And the ones with a special gift for tennis move from their homes in Portugal, China, South Africa, Canada and all over the United States for a chance to train with the master and his pro staff. And if they're good enough, Bollettieri will grant a full or partial scholarship to offset the annual tuition that equates to a high-end college, $30,000-$40,000 a year.

His personality spans the spectrum: from charming and kind-hearted to irascible, demanding and blunt. Those closest to him can wind up on the receiving end of his occasionally tempestuous, Type-A ways, but they know he drives himself as hard as he does everyone else. And his influence on the sport and passion for teaching are still going strong.

Back in the spacious, brightly lit workout room, another day has begun for the man who recently was honored with the naming of Bollettieri Boulevard in Bradenton. It will wind down about 18 hours later - after a blur of lessons, meetings, TV filming and enthusiastic commentary on tennis and life with the distinctively grainy, New York-accented voice of one of the game's legendary instructors and unique characters.

It was a Nick-at-Day-and-Nite marathon and began like this:

4:30-5:30 a.m.

Bollettieri stretches in preparation for work with the medicine ball. "Every person in the world should get a big medicine ball and use it when they wake up in the morning and before they go to sleep at night," he says. "Totally relaxes your whole body and lower back!" He flips on a big TV overhead, just in time to catch a live broadcast of Sharapova - who started training at his academy at 9 - beating Vera Zvonareva in the Australian Open. "Keep your head up, Maria," he says to the screen, looking concerned.

"She was training here before Christmas," he adds. "It's very important, because the bigger you get - and Maria is 6-2, pushing 6-3 - an awful lot of work has to be done to get low and move quickly to the ball."

He moves from one weight station to the next, keeping an eye fixed on the match, pumping iron and fielding a reporter's questions as he goes.

Where do you get this energy?

"It's just the way I've always been. I don't think you can allow yourself to even think about being tired. The days are long but the days are interesting. Because when you deal with life and stories and parents, that's interesting. I don't think a person can press 18 or 19 hours into a day if it really wasn't within them. I just enjoy doing it. My alarm is always set for 4 and when it goes off, I'm out of bed."

So how did Vince Lombardi open the door for you in tennis?

"Well, Vince played golf in Dorado Beach in Puerto Rico. He stopped in the tennis center and watched me teaching children. And he said, 'I think you belong with children.' So the next year, I had a job at a club in Chicago and didn't get along too well with the president's wife. So I said, 'to hell with it' and I called up Vince and Art Nielsen of Nielsen Ratings. And the two of them got me started in my first big camp in Beaver Dam, Wis."

It's 9 p.m. in Australia, 5 a.m. in the IMG gym. Sharapova is struggling but holding on. Reporter and photographer are struggling but holding on. Bollettieri just keeps picking up steam. He pulls out a yellow legal pad filled with pages upon pages of meticulously handwritten notes to his administrative staff. "Every night at home, there are certain things I have to answer that my staff compiles for me," he says. "Notes from students wanting to come here. Proposals for me to go to Morocco, Dubai, India and France. I'll be going to England to give clinics and Croatia this summer. My schedule for 2007 is virtually all booked."

He writes his script for a public service announcement to combat child abuse that he'll film after lunch. It's 5:31. Sharapova wins 7-5, 6-4. Bollettieri smiles. "Maria's not playing well, but she's still winning," he says, finishing his workout with a flurry of leg presses beneath a Sharapova U.S. Open poster proclaiming "I Love New York."

6-8 a.m.

He arrives at the cavernous indoor tennis center with the vaulted ceiling and fabric roof just in time to supervise lessons for a dozen promising young players from Russia, Italy, China, France and the United States "This one's tough," he points to a 5-year-old from China training with her 7-year-old brother, their parents watching off to the side. Bollettieri moves to a far court to watch the 10-12-year-olds and adjust their wrist action. "I don't always know their names, but I know their games," he says.

One parent, Dr. George Lin, left Virginia and relocated his family and practice to Tampa Bay so son Carter, 10, could train here. "Nick is great," Lin says. "He's here. He tracks how the kids do. Carter won an intra-academy type tournament a few months ago and Nick found out about it and said, 'Carter, how come you didn't tell me? Who's your coach?' Carter said, 'You.' Nick said, 'And when you win, don't you want to come tell your coach?' He's just so involved."

Bollettieri roams the courts scolding a few instructors ("You gotta explain positions!") and tweaking techniques of the kids. Nearby, career tennis pro Julio Moros, 58, talks about the boss he has had for 35 years, starting in Puerto Rico. "I've been with Nick through the great times and the bad times," he says. "Even though he makes you work very hard, he's very generous. When he makes money, he shares it with you. He's driven so you become driven."

Moros thinks he is one of the few people to see Bollettieri cry.

"One time, one of his wives decided that he wasn't spending enough time with her, so she told him it was either her or the job," he says. "He loved her very much. But he chose the job."

8-9 a.m.

Michelle Larcher de Brito, 13, of Portugal via South Africa arrives for her morning lesson. She is in her fourth year training with Bollettieri and he makes a bold claim. "I project her to be one of my very best," he says. She gives the statement credence by running a 17-year-old male player from the school ragged with blistering shots and superb shot placement. "Nick is really supportive, but he can also be very strict," she says later. "But that's good, because I need that."

9:05 a.m.

Betsy Nagelsen McCormack, former women's pro tennis star and Northeast High graduate, stops by to train. Her late husband, Mark McCormack, founded IMG and brother Jimmy Nagelsen is a tennis pro here. "I don't think anybody has ever met a human being more energetic than Nick Bollettieri," she says. "But he also has wisdom, coupled with compassion."

Bollettieri is at the other end of the building, giving tips, taking one of the 40-50 cell phone calls from around the world he receives every day.

10:40 a.m.

Bollettieri sits poolside beneath a blue, cloudless sky sporting designer angular shades and soaking up the rays shirtless. His pearly white teeth would make any dentist proud and he says he can read small type without contacts or glasses, making him the go-to guy when friends can't read their restaurant menus. He has his legal pad out again, scribbling tennis tips for his Web site - nickbollettieri.com - and waiting for a visit from his biographer David Legge, working on a followup to the book Bollettieri wrote in 1996 with the late Dick Schaap, My Aces, My Faults.

11 a.m.-noon

At the weekly staff meeting, Bollettieri, Cindi and their crew work on how to get him in and out of a half-dozen countries for clinics, as well as to his annual inner-city tennis program in Minnesota. The topic turns to his dislike of his flip-top cell phone. He wants a simple no-flip cell. Someone suggests a wraparound headset. "I ain't wearing that," he barks. "They make you look like a space cadet."

Noon-1 p.m.

The staff drives down the street to a favorite lunch spot, South Philly. Cindi looks at her husband. "He's like a Jack Russell terrier," she says. "Because if you know the breed, they're small but they don't know they're small. It's like they think they're Rottweilers. So they take on the world. And they are absolutely tenacious." Which is precisely what Bollettieri was with Cindi when he first met her at a Massachusetts fundraiser. "He invited me to come down to Florida for New Year's Eve in '03. Well, I'm an old-fashioned girl. So Nick came up with a plan to pay for my whole family to come down, too." In the end, Cindi arrived by herself. Bollettieri started proposing a month later.

"Every time he would propose, he would send his assistant out to buy a different piece of jewelry to go with the proposal," she says. "And I would turn him down every time. Finally, the fifth time, he said, 'I know exactly what you're doing. You keep saying no because you know I'm going to give you another piece of jewelry the next time I ask you so you can build up a war chest.' So finally I said yes."

But Bollettieri still had to travel to New England to ask Cindi's father for her hand in marriage, and her father is a no-nonsense border patrol officer.

"Nick was petrified because he'd never been through a formal process like that and also because my parents are six years younger than he is," she says. "And here's a man coming in who's been married seven times, right? My dad said, 'So you're the old man trying to marry my daughter?' But actually things went well. My dad's premise was, 'If you hurt her, I will kill you.' Anyway, Nick promised that wouldn't happen. And now, everyone adores him."

They were married on April 22, 2004 (his favorite number is 4, hers is 2). He was 72, she was 39. A graduate of the University of Kentucky, she has started a program in Vermont, Camp Kaizen, for overweight girls 9-14 that she and her husband oversee.

"From my first date with him, we just clicked," she says. "Like a good doubles team."

1:02 p.m.

Bollettieri whisks through his reading of the PSA for the Sarasota Sports Foundation in three takes, each time ad-libbing different flourishes.

 

2:07 p.m.

He sits at his desk chatting with his staff, next to a box of Nick Bollettieri bobbleheads. Around the corner, the Bollettieri pro shop - with a life-size Nick cutout and all manner of Bollettieri gear - is bustling.

2:59 p.m.

Bollettieri strides past the War Room, featuring 17 computer stations with two monitors each, displaying the action on all the outdoor courts so coaches and players can assess their progress.

3-3:30 p.m.

Back at the indoor courts, Bollettieri arrives to give a private lesson to granddaughter Willa Bay, 6. "Willa, that's fantastic," he says as she returns a shot.

 

 

 

3:35 p.m.

Bollettieri walks past some teenage players and notices empty water bottles on the floor. "Throw away the bottles!" he says. He's a stickler for discipline and keeping on schedule: "If most people would examine their daily schedule, I guarantee a third of the day is wasted."

4 p.m.

In constant motion, Bollettieri oversees a new round of lessons indoors and out, cell phone pressed to his ear.

How do you keep track of so many things at once?

"I believe only a few people can sense what's going on around them at all times," he says. "All the great NFL running backs can do that. And I can go out and concentrate on my lesson and look at every other lesson being given and know exactly what's going on. Like when a racket was dropped a few minutes ago, I turned around to see if the player threw it or dropped it. You have to be aware of those details."

4:30 p.m.

Ted Meekma shakes his head in admiration inside his office. He started with Bollettieri at age 16 in one of his summer camps; today he is senior vice president of IMG and director of IMG Academies. "It's not just his physical age that is so impressive but it's his mind-set," he says. "He's got a zeal that never fades. In so many ways, his energy and charisma are crucial to this operation. He's revolutionized the way athletic training is delivered in so many ways. Other places have tried to copy Nick's model, but this is the original.

"What makes him different is he's not one of those guys who waits for someone to walk in the door. He goes after the business.

"Somebody once remarked he's a genius wrapped in a maniac, my good friend Nick."

6-8 p.m.

First comes a final round of lessons, including one with precocious and promising 6-year-old Greer Glodjo, who prevailed on her parents to seek Bollettieri out after watching the Tennis Channel. Next, he and the staff head for Gio, an Italian restaurant where they often dine.

Bollettieri, with a droopy-eyed gaze and grin of Jack Nicholson, regales a dozen guests with stories. "I knew very little about what I was getting into as a tennis coach, but God gave me the ability to read people and that's one of my greatest gifts," he says.

One of his instructors, Jeff Russell, has a story to tell. One year when Russell played in the French Open, Bollettieri rode him all week, about not shaving well, about wearing his hat with the bill turned backward. "When we got back to Bradenton I was convinced he hated my guts," he says. "At the time I was 23 and having a little trouble at the bank getting my mortgage. So I mentioned it to Nick. He said, 'Come with me.' He drove me to the bank, talked to the vice president and got me the mortgage and gave me $5,000 toward the down payment of the house."

But don't cross him. Once a mother went behind his back to one of his instructors, questioning the way Bollettieri taught her daughter to grip her racket.

"I called the mother, father and coach over and asked the mother if she had questioned my approach," he says. "She said yes. So I said, 'Go to my office, get your tuition back. I'm done with you. You could put a million dollars on the table right now. I won't reconsider.' And I didn't."

9:15-10:30 p.m.

Inside their lavish two-story home near the complex, Cindi attends to e-mails and Nick plops down on a leather couch, turns on the TV and watches Serena Williams, who recently trained at his academy, take a step toward winning the Aussie title.

He moves to a lower perch on the stairs, his favorite spot to do his "homework." He writes notes quietly. It's nearing 10:30 and his weary guests have to go. But Bollettieri isn't slowing down. There is more work to do and no rest in sight for the King of the Court.

Dave Scheiber can be reached at scheiber@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8541.

[Last modified February 27, 2007, 17:20:28]

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