Nick Bollettieri, creator of tennis champions, dies at 91

Nick Bollettieri, who never competed in elite tennis but was once the sport’s most famous coach in the world, developing 10 players to reach the world’s No. 1 singles rankings, died Sunday at his home in Bradenton, Florida. He was 91 years old.

Journalist David R. Legge, who is writing an authorized biography of Bollettieri, confirmed his death. Legge said Bollettieri started having kidney problems several months ago and that his health has deteriorated since then.

Bollettieri was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island in 2014 as a “contributor” to the game. He joins just three other honorees for his coaching alone: ​​Australian Davis Cup captain Harry Hopman and two other Americans, Vic Braden and Doctor Robert Johnson, an African-American junior tennis advocate who mentored Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe.

Bollettieri co-founded the Port Washington Tennis Academy on Long Island, New York, in 1966, with John McEnroe and Vitas Gerulaitis as pupils.

In the early 1980s, he opened the Bollettieri Academy in Bradenton in former tomato fields, pioneering the concept of offering residencies to promising young tennis players. He sold the school in 1987 to the sports agency IMG. Now known as the IMG Academy, it teaches young athletes in a variety of sports and owns dozens of tennis courts for the Bollettieri Tennis Program. Bollettieri, who founded this program, became its president.

Serena and Venus Williams, Monica Seles, Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Maria Sharapova, Marcelo Rios and Boris Becker are among the players who trained or lived at the academy.

Bollettieri was known for a tough driving style. As he told Sports Illustrated in 1980, “He yells at kids, insults them. And they try harder. He grabs players and tells them off the court. And they try harder. In youth tournaments, when Bollettieri’s contingent arrive, the other kids look at them as if the marines had just landed. They’re the product of a tougher kind of training.”

Nicholas James Bollettieri was born on July 31, 1931 in Pelham, New York State, in Westchester County. His father, James, was a pharmacist and his mother, Mary Rita (DeFillipo) Bollettieri, was a housewife.

He graduated from Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama in 1953 and later served in the military in an airborne division. After his discharge in 1957, he attended law school at the University of Miami. To earn tuition money, he taught tennis at courts in the area, charging $1.50 for a half hour of instruction, although his experience was limited to a few games as a teenager. His early students included Brian Gottfried, who had an outstanding tennis career.

Bollettieri dropped out of law school after a year and worked summers at the John D. Rockefeller Estate in Pocantico Hills, a village in the Westchester town of Mount Pleasant, and winters at the Rockefeller-owned Doral Beach hotel in Porto Rico, becoming its tennis director. He returned to Florida in 1978 and became an instructor at what was then the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort on Longboat Key, before opening his gym in Bradenton.

ABC News’ “20/20” profiled the academy in its early years, bringing it national attention.

In 2014, Bollettieri was teaching private lessons for $900 an hour.

“Nick is one of the youngest, most passionate guys on the planet,” Jim Courier, who won four major singles titles, told The New York Times at the time. “No kidding. He doesn’t do it for the money. He loves making a difference and making meaning out of it. As cheesy as it sounds, it’s true. He has a family and more wives than anyone should have, but Nick is someone who wakes up from morning and look forward to going to the office. It’s what keeps you going.”

Bollettieri is survived by his eighth wife, Cindi Eaton; his children from previous marriages, including daughters Danielle Bollettieri, Angelique Bollettieri, Nicole Bollettieri Kroenig and Alexandra Bollettieri; sons James, Giovanni and Giacomo; and four grandchildren.

Bollettieri was the instructional editor for Tennis Magazine and published the memoirs “My Aces, My Faults” (1996, with Dick Schaap) and “Bollettieri: Changing the Game” (2014). He was the author of “Nick Bollettieri’s Tennis Handbook” (2001).

In his later years, Bollettieri reduced his schedule and trained indoors.

“Today the whole world plays tennis, and many years ago there were about six countries,” Bollettieri told the Times in 2014. “Now we’re competing against the world, so it’s a lot harder for me when someone comes up and says, ‘Nick , tell us about another champion’. I’m very reluctant.”