!_DSC8744 by Pete Bodo
Down at Nick Bollettieri's last week, I had a chance to catch up with one of his earliest disciples, Brian Gottfried. Some of you may remember Brian's smooth, classic game. He played serve-and-volley, regardless of surface, and loved to hit a heavy backhand slice and roll in to the net.
Brian was a Top 10 player back in the 1970s (his highest ranking was No. 3), and the best measure of his precise game was his performance at the French Open, a tournament dominated at that time by players who popularized the term, "clay-court specialist." Brian got to the final at Roland Garros in 1977, and even though he got just three games off Guillermo Vilas (ouch!), it was still a memorable, unexpected run - kind of like when Sampras, Rafter, Edberg and Becker made their marks in Paris.
Visiting with Brian reminded me of an interesting fact about Nick's academy. Although it was, and still is, often described as a "factory," the players he produced were anything but cookie-cutter. In fact, one of Nick's outstanding qualities is that he's always known when to leave well enough alone. How did a guy like Jim Courier endure the academy experience and still end up with that weird backhand that nobody in his right mind would teach? That he and others with idiosyncratic elements in their games emerged from the "factory" gave eager critics of Bollettieri more ammunition in their once endless battle to discredit Nick as a showman, a guy whose main talents were for self-promotion and playing Svengali to countless kids.
That Nick always knew when to leave 'well enough' alone is to his credit, not his detriment. A number of times I'd watch one of his kids playing and remark on some apparent flaw in his or her technique. At those times, Nick gets this pained expression on his face; doubt and ambivalence cloud his eyes. He seems to agonize before he clamps a paw on my shoulder and then says something like, "Peter (Nick always calls me that, and when Nick talks to you he doesn't let a sentence slip by without using your name) I know. But I don't want to screw around with that . . . Peter, it just seems so much part of his game. I don't want to undermine the boy's comfort or his confidence. We just need to focus on how we can make the best of it."
Another important point: I would never underestimate the value of knowing how to inspire and lead men, or children. Especially children, which is the human life form in which Nick traffics. At a bedrock level, Nick is a military guy. He's a former paratrooper, and the mere mention of the services is enough to light up his eyes. He loves the military (as I write this, he's on a tour of Afghanistan and Iraq, along with his former protégé, Anna Kournikova, entertaining troops). And Nick is an extremely popular man at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The saber with which he was presented on a speaking engagement up at the Point not long ago is one of his most prized possessions.
Tales of the militaristic nature of life at Nick's academy abound. I know that turns many people off, but I'm not one of them. The way I see it, Nick's borderline harsh, discipline-based program brought something new to the soft and - let's face it - bourgeoise sport of tennis. And the espirit d'corps he instilled in so many players, for so many years, played an enormous part in their success.
At times, the "elitist" connotations attached to the academy could be off-putting - Who the hell do these punk kids think they are? But that comes with the territory, and it's all part of the approach. You can just as easily look at some rich kid who wears his natural talent and privilege easily and ask the same question. Nick brought the ethos and mystique associated with outfits like the Marine Corps, or the Navy Seals, to tennis. And because tennis was in so many ways a soft sport, it gave him an enormous advantage and produced great results.
Not all of Nick's students fit the mold easily or comfortably, yet some of them survived and flourished in spite of it. If you read Andre Agassi's book, Open, you know he was pretty harsh on Nick. But if you saw the video tribute Andre recorded for the surprise party thrown to celebrate the Academy's 30th year of operation just two years ago, you'd understand there's a whole, other side to that story (I'll have more thoughts on Andre's book sometime soon). And you'd hear it from Andre's own mouth.
Let's return to Gottfried for a moment. Nick basically became his surrogate father. He developed Brian long before his own career as a coach got traction. It was one of those deals where Nick and Brian drove all over the place to play tournaments, drove around to find courts, players to practice with, guys they could learn from. For some guys, getting hold of a Brian Gottfried is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity - a winning lottery ticket. For Nick, it was just a start - something that whetted his appetite. And my guess is that he learned, from Brian, what a young mind and heart, or some young minds and hearts, at any rate, need - support, confidence, discipline, and a sense of power.
Up until Nick came around, tennis was a game driven to a much greater degree, and at every level, by aesthetics. Motivation, the desire to win, was a secondary developmental issue. And that's a terribly important thing to remember. Something certainly has been lost along the way, but a lot was gained. And with professionalism picking up steam at the time, it was inevitable that winning, the thing Nick has been most interested in, the thing he has an enormous talent for pursuing, would emerge as the ultimate goal. I doubt that the values in tennis today would be much different if there had never been a Nick Bollettieri. He was just ahead of his time in recognizing the importance of winning, and how making it a priority could shape the game - even the technique of the game.
Brian and I talked a little about the past, and how long he'd been with Nick. And I ought to note that Brian was one of the most well-liked, respected, and gentlemanly players of his generation. But something he said at the end of our conversation really put things into perspective for me, in a new simple way.
"Every time I left Nick or the academy," Brian said, smiling, "I felt like I could fly."
P.S. - David Legge, a former reporter at the Washington Post, is presently working on a biography of Nick. It's authorized by Nick, but he has no editorial control or say in the content. David has interviewed hundreds of people for the book, and we had a long talk about Nick just the other day. I'll keep you posted on the progress of that project. When I told David that I didn't have a picture of Maria Shishkina to post the other day, he sent one along. Here's Maria with her mom, Marina, and Murphy Jensen.