Nick Bolletierilike the famous American tennis coach André Agassi, jim courier, Monica Seles, Maria Sharapova, Anna Kournikova, Serena Williams anyone Boris BeckerHe died aged 91 in Bradenton (Florida), among others, as announced this Sunday by his student, the German tennis player. tommy haas.

Again he was just an amateur player and never won any tournaments, he was considered revolutionary as a coach.has the ability to get the most out of every player, even at the expense of maximum demand. At the time, it was a pioneering center where parents sent their children in hopes that this army lieutenant with a degree in philosophy was determined to take the last drop of his talents from them.

Bollettieri imposed on his tennis players militarized education to bring them to maximum performance. Avid tennis players lived in isolation in a compound that even looked like a prison.They slept on bunk beds like in the army and trained for hours on slopes and in the gym, plus they had to clean the facilities and even sports cars, they said. Bollettieri After becoming a paratrooper in the United States Army, he started his passion for tennis by teaching at a hotel in Puerto Rico.

From there, he would move to Florida, where in 1978 he established his first academy on a large tomato field thanks to a million-dollar loan from a friend.

prison camp

Inside memories of AgassiThe former #1 American, ‘On’, written in 2009, recounts his impressions of his time at the academy where his father sent him at age 13. “People like to say that Bollettieri Academy is like a military camp, but in reality it is like a prison camp.», Says agassi “Constant pressure, brutal competition, the complete absence of adult supervision are slowly turning us into animals. A kind of law of the jungle reigns there. as if karate boy but with rackets”.

BollettieriHe was born in Pelham (New York, 1931), the son of Italian immigrants. ruthless and convinced of his formula for success. “It’s about hitting hundreds of balls for four or five hours a day and paying the price of being a winner. Success does not come by chance, it is about blood, sweat, tears, frustration and the determination to achieve it. The secret of my center was to bring special people together; Some of them pushed each other to be better, they became champions for that.”