From: The Racketeer 5, January 1994
Florida - Tennis Heaven
by Steve McKeown
MOST SINGLE men in their late twenties develop obsessions to excuse themselves a place in life's mainstream. Be it trainspotting, computers or pornography, the greater the isolation from traditional family life the deeper the obsession seems to be.
Over the years my fanatical interest in the fortunes of Tranmere Rovers FC has become so integral to my way of life that a couple of years back I stopped seeing it as a hobby and needed a new obsession. By chance it was tennis and, eventually, MPTC.
The first stage of this was the purchase of all the right gear as advertised in Serve & Volley. The second was to spend ridiculous amounts on coaching until long after the Law of Diminishing Returns had begun to operate. As I had set myself various targets of achievement which, I had only partly attained in my first two years of club tennis, I looked at the options available to get the development plan back on track.
Ignoring the prospect of financial ruin I scoured the nation's sporting publications for tennis holidays offering intensive coaching without the sun, sea and sand angle. The final choice after a lot of research was the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy (NBTA). Most of the tennis resorts in Florida offer superb tennis but are hotel based with the inevitable good food, night life and pampering you expect for big money. NBTA offers a modified version of their junior scholarship program with basic accommodation and unlimited tennis. Seventy-one outdoor courts with all the championship surfaces except grass, four indoor courts, gym, dance studio and swimming pool were enough to keep anyone busy
I left Gatwick on a miserable December Saturday and fifteen hours later arrived at Sarasota-Bradenton on the south side of Tampa Bay ready for a week's tennis. As it was one of quietest weeks of the year, with only twelve adults on the program, I had a room to myself,
but when it gets busy (eighty-plus people were booked in Christmas week) up to four must share a two bedroom apartment.
NBTA has two hundred full time students, some on scholarships, but most being funded by their parents at $800 per week. The majority of the kids are educated at local schools until early afternoon then play tennis the rest of the day. The 'Top Gun' group are among the world's top juniors and they play tennis all day including two hours in the gym. They have private tuition each evening. The weekly adult program, using the same facilities, runs from Monday to Saturday, with organised tennis related activity from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. involving mainly coaching, but also fitness work, and theory in the classroom.
The majority of the adult students were middle aged career types who played competitive tennis at club level. Only Antonio, an Italian banker, played at a level way beyond what I was aspiring to. Everyone is assessed on the first morning and you never feel out of your depth as you don't mix with students of considerably different ability.
The mornings were spent drilling in ability groups of three to four students per coach. Every half hour or so the coaches would rotate, and each hour the drills would change. Although each day we would concentrate on a different aspect of shotmaking (forehand, backhand, serve/overhead, volley) everything was placed in the context of a rally so that towards the end of the week the drills concentrated on all aspects of the game. Most of the sessions were spent playing on a slow clay surface, which aids shot development, patience, and is relatively easy on the joints.
The coaches were all former pros or collegiate champions and had more of a 'hands on' approach than the textbook-oriented approach of most LTA coaches. A lot of what we would cover was not that far removed from Eddie's philosophy.
The afternoons involved playing points with the other students and the coaches. Only later in the week did we play sets. It was rightly pointed out that we all arrived with our own idiosyncratic point winning shots which at a higher level wouldn't work so well. By concentrating on technique after a few days we learned how to play the right shots in relation to the state of the game and the point in the rally we had reached. No more swinging forehand volleys!
The gluttons for punishment who didn't collapse on the stroke of four o'clock had the option of using the gym, playing a fellow student or hitting against the dreaded ball machine. After hitting nine hundred balls in forty-five minutes on a random feed I crawled back to my room vowing to stay in bed the following day. Paying $2,000 for the trip is the only incentive you need, however, to get up the next morning.
By the end of the week I was totally depressed with my tennis. When Andrei Medvedev, Petr Korda, Luke Jensen and Mary Pierce are furiously hitting balls a few courts away you don't half feel inadequate plopping balls over the net to a coach who is trying his best not to show his despair when you are making the same mistakes on Friday as Monday.
However since returning there has been a noticeable improvement in my game. For the first time I know precisely how to hit each shot and when to use it. The next stage is to work on temperament; one of the few aspects of the game you can pick up from a book. Having the bottle to depend on your technique when under pressure rather than improvising is key to my development. Fitness is another key area but the social side of the game in England means the vast majority of players fall down in this area.
Finances permitting I would dearly love to repeat this experience. It is certainly expensive and demands a level of commitment to the sport that the average club member is unlikely to have. A fitness level which allows you to play for five hours a day is also essential as most of the students keeled over at some point during the week. If you can meet these criteria then I doubt the keen tennis player could do better than a week at the 'Home of the Champions'.