Nick Bollettieri

Nicholas James Bollettieri (July 31, 1931 – December 4, 2022) was an American tennis coach. He pioneered the concept of a tennis boarding school, and helped develop many leading tennis players during the past decades, including Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Monica Seles, Venus Williams, Serena Williams, and Maria Sharapova. Bollettieri was also a tour traveling coach, the last time having been for and with Boris Becker for a span of two years.

Bollettieri was mentioned and/or profiled in several television series and documentary films, including Jason Kohn's documentary film Love Means Zero, which was premiered at the 42nd Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2017.

Born in Pelham, New York, to immigrant Italian parents, Nick Bollettieri attended Pelham Memorial High School. He was a charter member of the Beta Lambda chapter of the Omega Gamma Delta Fraternity and he graduated in 1949. In 1953, he graduated from Spring Hill College (Mobile, Alabama) with a degree in philosophy. After serving with the United States Army and attaining the rank of First Lieutenant in 1956, he turned to teaching tennis after dropping out of the University of Miami Law School. Bollettieri's first students included Brian Gottfried. His first formal tennis camp was at Wayland Academy in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin.

Though he had only dabbled in the sport in high school, Bollettieri was the tennis director at Dorado Beach Hotel in Puerto Rico in the late 1960s when it was a Rockefeller resort.

Moving to Longboat Key, Florida, in 1978, Bollettieri served as an instructor for the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort. In the early 1980s, Bollettieri opened the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy (NBTA) in Bradenton, Florida, on 40 acres (16 ha) in unincorporated Manatee County on the west coast of Florida, about fifty miles south of Tampa.

Seeing a template for other sports, International Management Group (IMG) bought the academy from Bollettieri in 1987, but Bollettieri continued to manage and play a pivotal role in the development of the tennis academy and ancillary programs. In his final years Bollettieri coached top-tier players at the academy, and spent most of his time in Bradenton.

Bollettieri continued to teach and hold public speaking engagements worldwide, including a visit to teach students at Tri-State Athletic Club in Evansville, Indiana. He was also the instruction editor of Tennis magazine. Over the course of his life, Bollettieri wrote two memoirs: My Aces, My Faults with Dick Schaap in 1996, and Bollettieri: Changing the Game in 2014.

Bollettieri also wrote a 2001 instructional book, Bollettieri's Tennis Handbook, which covers everything from stroke techniques and strategies to skill development and physical and mental conditioning. Additionally, he was featured in the Nick Bollettieri DVD Collection, a set of ten instructional DVDs that cover a wide range of practice methods.