Nick Bollettieri, who passed away in 2022, was an American tennis coach. Bollettieri was not just any tennis coach; he trained many young players who would later become champions. Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Monica Seles, Maria Sharapova, and Anna Kournikova were among his students.
Nick Bollettieri was born in New York to immigrant Italian parents. He graduated from college and did a stint in the United States Army, attaining the rank of First Lieutenant in 1956. Bollettieri had a huge passion for tennis even though he never played the sport, and he decided to drop out of the University of Miami Law School and began coaching tennis.
In the early 1980s, Bollettieri opened the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy on 40 acres in Bradenton, Florida. Many famous students would come through, and he would turn them into champions. He was hard on his students, demanding the best out of them. Andre Agassi was among his best, and Bollettieri was Agassi’s traveling coach from 1986 to 1993. Bollettieri ended the coaching relationship after the 1993 Wimbledon Tournament.
Bollettieri has had many honors in his life, but in 2015 he was honored to be the first white man to be inducted into the Black Tennis Hall of Fame. His story has been turned into the documentary Love Means Zero for the Showtime Network.
