Bollettieri bothered by U.S. flop 'Down Under':: HeraldTribune.com
Bollettieri bothered by U.S. flop 'Down Under':: HeraldTribune.com ~~~
Nick is never at a loss for words, and it would be difficult to write a column about him without mentioning once again how much better U.S. tennis was back in the heydey of his academy. Here's the latest update on that:"To me, you have to come up with a program the way the academy was," Bollettieri said Tuesday. "We had them at a young age and never ran out of ammunition. We should be concentrating on players who are 11, 12, 13 and 14 years of age."
There was a time when the best young Americans flocked to the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy. Agassi, Jim Courier, Aaron Krickstein and even Pete Sampras trained there at the same time. Pierce and, later, the Williams sisters trained there.
The academy, even back then, wasn't exclusively all-American. Monica Seles was a member of the academy. And, later, Tommy Haas.
What they all had in common is that they trained there without paying. In 1987 there were 27 players with connections to Bollettieri in the main draw of the Australian Open. And all of them were on scholarship.
Bollettieri believes those who handle tennis in the U.S. should make certain that players have the best opportunity to work on their game without worrying about how to pay for the instruction.
I don't get this. Isn't there still an academy with Nick's name on it? What is stopping him from going back to the way it was? Is this an admission that selling out to IMG was a mistake? I know the Academy still offers full scholarships and they have scores of talented young players training there. Granted the percentage of Americans may be smaller than it used to be, but welcome to the 21st century of tennis, the one where Croatia wins the Davis Cup and the top players in the game come from Switzerland and Belgium.
And I know that Bollettieri is revered in the Sarasota/Bradenton area (they've just named a street after him), but this strikes me as a bit much:The year's first Grand Slam tournament ended prematurely for the U.S. without any American-born player -- male or female -- reaching the semifinals.
Nick Bollettieri says that shouldn't happen. And wouldn't if he were running American tennis.
Oh really? Would anyone like to make a bet on that?
4 comments:
Dear Colette, Thank you for this posting. I reacted precisely the same way you did to these inane comments by Bollietieri.
Not only do the comments make no sense, but the tennis players and coaches that really know tennis all secretely understand that Nick knows very little about tennis and could not personally develop anyone. Every player that he takes credit for developing was already one of the world's top players that Bollietieri gave a scholarship to. They accepted the scholarship because it was a good facility to train at, with great tennis weather for training in sunny Florida, and with good competitors who were also there on scholarship.
The "deal" is that the players get a great place to train free of charge and the academy gets to claim credit for developing these players so that they can make the real money on the parents that pay the full price for their offspring who are not going to be world class players but hope they will become great players because they believe the marketing hype that Nick developed Agassi and company.
Andre Agassi was trained by his father, a tennis coach (read Mr. Agassi's new book and Mr. Agassie's poor assessment of Bolliettieri); Seles was trained by her father; the Williams sisters were trained and developed by numerous coaches first in Southern Cal and then Rick Macci, not Nick. Krickstein (trained by his father and others), Courrier and Arias (trained by his father) were already Orange Bowl International Champs or certainly all national champions before they ever set foot at his academy. Even Sharopova who came to the academy at 9 years old to train has been clear to point out that Nick has never been her coach. It was Lansdorp, her father or someone else.
I challenge Nick to name one player that he truly developed in that wasn't already great before he gave them his famous five minute pep talk and then took all the credit. I'll give him three things: (1) He is a pioneer in the academy business; (2) He is a good motivator; and (3) He is a very hard worker.
However, there is no evidence that he is a good tennis coach who can personally take a mediocre player and make him or her a great player. The true experts in the tennis field all know this.
I personally first learned all of this the hard way when I went to his academy (at Wisconsin then) when I was 10 years old in the 1970's. Even at that age I could tell that he wasn't what he was all cracked up to be. I knew that at 10 and I know that even more today in my 40's.
agree with you about Nick's "coaching" although I would say his motivational skills, along with instilling supreme confidence in a player that is already talented...this could be viewed as a "weapon" in itself. I have no idea if Nick could help USA tennis if he were in charge, but I, Joe tennis parent have some ideas. Currently, the USTA has a high performance program that is now being geared towards the 10-14 year olds. They pick who they feel (mostly based on USTA rankings) has the best PRO potential, and then they arrange a few times per year for them to all meet at either of their High Performance centers (Carson or Key Biscayne) to train and play against one another, while the coaches observe and evaluate. Usually this consists of about 10-12 kids per camp. I "think" some USTA money is given to these kids, to cover travel expenses to tournaments throughout the year? I feel this all a good thing, but..not nearly enough if want to compete with the other countries who are surpassing us. What about talented kids out there who either cannot afford top notch coaching, or..who's parents do not have tennis backrounds to coach the kids themselves? Or how about kids who live in non-tennis hotbeds. Yes, its all well and good that the USTA may offer these kids free coaching "when" and "if" they are near Carson or Key Biscayne..but is that enough? Suppose a talented kid wanted to take advantage of this. To get full benefit, they would need to relocate to these areas. The cost of living, and of course uprooting the whole family may outweigh any decision to relocate.
I feel many more cities besides Carson and key Biscayne should have these facilities, or a smaller version of them. Also, it would be beneficial for more financial assitance to players and families who live in the non-tennis areas to get the best coaching available in their current area. Also, rankings in the 12's. Is that the gold standard for evaluating talent? Has anybody seen any USTA 12's events lately? I would venture to say that way lower in the rankings are lurking much better talents than maybe the top. The USTA must find these, and foster their development to the fullest. Maybe they can ask Nick!
I totally agree with both of these preceeding posts, except for the part in the last one about asking for Nick's expertise.
Clearly the USTA's contributions to junior tennis is woefully inadequate. Almost all of the parents of the top juniors seem to agree and have been quoted in various publications as saying so. For example, Ally Baker's father in a Tennis Magazine article and Donald Young's parents discussed below. The USTA makes many millions of dollars from the U.S. Open, but gives relative pennies to junior tennis. We have tons of talented juniors but most of them don't have the money to pay for the travel expenses and other expenses that are needed to compete nationally and internationally on the junior circuit as well as the pro tour. There have been many studies about the biggest obstacles for players to make it on the pro tour and in every case the players indicate that the lack the financial resources to continue on the tour for more than a year as the biggest one because it is too expensive to travel and pay for coaching, hotels, etc.
In the other countries, the national tennis federations shell out thousands of dollars to subsidize their top players so that they can afford to spend at least 3-5 years on the tour in order to compete starting at age 15. One year isn't enough and most American kids can't even afford one year.
These training centers aren't a bad idea, but the money would be much better spent subsidizing our top juniors who show the most potential at ages 15 or 16. Instead, I am told that the USTA only gives some of these kids a few thousand dollars and equates the invitation to the training centers and the coaching offered there as giving them real cash which isn't nearly the same thing.
The top American junior today, Donald Young's parents, have been quoted as saying that they've recieved only "peanuts" from the USTA and that was why Donald was forced to take the IMG endorsement contract and turn pro at 15 years old. The USTA tried to counter those comments by quoting some high financial amount of money that they have given the Young's but the Young's refuted that claim concluding that the USTA must have been putting dollar amounts on free coaching. But this is coaching that they don't need as Young's parents are both professional coaches who are doing fine, thank you. The top players are already top players and therefore are less in need of coaching as they are in need of expense money for tournaments and travel. I think the problem is that the USTA can't really take credit for the development of these kids who are developed by individual families and private coaching if they only offer money. So, very similar to the Bollietieri unspoken "deal" the USTA and Bolletieri contribute coaching and training to these kids so that they can later claim some credit for the development of these kids. It's obviously political and it stinks. It's the kids and American tennis that gets screwed by this game.
My advice find another sport before it's too late. The USTA will never change, its ranking system is unfair because of so many sections competing for the parents dollars. It uses a totally different aging up system than the rest of the world. (Yeah that was a "genius" idea.) Save your money, go on vacation.
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