BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) - Famed tennis coach Nick Bollettieri turns 90 in July, and is selling his home on Palma Sola Bay.
But that doesn’t mean he plans to slow down any time soon or that he is leaving Bradenton. Bollettieri and his wife, Cindi, just want to move closer to IMG Academy across town.
It took a world-wide pandemic to knock him off his go-go stride of presenting clinics and motivational speeches. “It’s restricted 99 percent of my business,” Bollettieri said this week.
In the interim, he has been finishing up a new book with Tennis Channel’s Joel Drucker, titled “Leap, Then Look: Motivational Messages by a Crazy Tennis Coach.”
He has also been working to bring back a program from the past to help inner city children.
“In the late 1980s I am sitting on a bench at the French Open and this man says, ‘Nick, what are we going to do about the thousands of boys and girls that will never get a chance to hit a ball or play sports?’ That man was Arthur Ashe, my friend. I started the Ashe-Bolliterri program with Bob Davis being the director in Newark, N.J., and we ran that program for 13 years,” he said.
Ashe, the first Black man to win the Wimbledon, U.S. Open and Australian singles titles, died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1993. He was 49. It is thought that he may have contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion during heart surgery.
HELPING INNER CITY KIDS
Through the Nick Bollettieri Family Foundation, Bollettieri has already brought the Bollettieri Tennis & Learning program to Team Success, an A-rated school serving some of Bradenton’s poorest neighborhoods. Bollettieri has also been working with Mayor Francis Suarez and celebrity restaurateur David Grutman to bring the program to Miami-Dade, where he started his tennis career.
“We are hoping to do a couple of locations in Miami and several more in the Bradenton-Sarasota area,” Steve Shulla, Bollettieri’s manager, said.
The foundation has also been working with the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee on scholarships possibilities.
“My objective is to give hope to children who have nothing,” Bollettieri said. The program not only helps develop tennis skills, it helps prepare children academically to enter college, and potentially helps future generations of people.
THE MAKING OF A LEGEND
Bollettieri’s rise to fame really started in 1978 when he founded the Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, and helped produce 10 No. 1-rated players. Among the standouts: Monica Seles, Jim Courier, Andre Agassi, Marcelo Rios, Maria Sharapova, Venus Williams, Serena Williams, and Jelena Jankovic.
“He created the model for training tennis players and the holistic approach to training,” Shulla said.
International Management Group, or IMG, bought the academy from Bollettieri in 1987, but he has maintained a working relationship with the sports powerhouse.
“I am very active with IMG now. I go in and work with the students and coaches. Jimmy Arias was my second student and now he is the tennis director at IMG. We started with 60 acres, and now IMG is 600 acres and is still expanding,” Bollettieri said. Another of his first students was Shulla, who now serves as his manager.
One of Bollettieri’s friends, Richard Williams, father of tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams, was also unafraid to be different.
“He trained his daughters far different than anyone else. He taught his daughters that there is no such thing as a ball out. You run for every ball,” Bollettieri said.
Bollettieri is the father of seven, including the two adopted boys, who happen to be Black, still living at home. Bollettieri, who is in 13 halls of fame, is most proud to be the only white person to be inducted into the Black Tennis Hall of Fame.
“That one means a lot to me,” he said.
For his 85th birthday, Bollettieri flew with the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels. Prior to entering the tennis world, he served as an Army first lieutenant and paratrooper. He is thinking that for his 90th birthday, he might like to go big again, perhaps by doing something like parachuting out of an airplane.
“Don’t be afraid to do something that people say you can’t do. That’s what I did. People thought I was crazy, building the first live-in tennis academy,” Bollettieri said.
“Did I ever think I would become famous? I never thought about it. But it is sort of amazing,” he said.
WANT TO BUY NICK BOLLETTIERI’S HOME?
The Bollettieri home on Palma Sola Bay in Northwest Bradenton is listed for $2.2 million. The four-bedroom, four-bath home on almost one acre has 4,560-square-feet under roof and a three-car garage. For an appointment, call Adam Cuffaro of Michael Saunders & Company at 941-812-0791.
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