Personal Story

The Best Tennis Coaches of All Time

These tennis coaches are internationally recognised due to the fact that they have trained some of the most prestigious players in tennis. However, they are featured on this list because the players they decided to train weren’t originally at the top of their game. Not only do their tennis players rank as the best in the world, but each of them has also managed to maintain a humble demeanour in spite of their enormous success. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the best tennis coaches of all time.

Toni Nadal

There’s no doubt that Uncle Toni is considered the best tennis coach of the modern era. His player and nephew, Rafael Nadal has managed to win 16 Grand Slams during his tennis career. Rafael was only a child when he started training with Toni. The tennis coach taught Rafael to play with his left hand as it would make it more difficult for his opponents to play against. Although Rafael is actually right-handed, he stated that playing tennis left-handed came naturally to him and it provided an advantage over his opponents.

Nick Bollettieri

Nick Bollettieri, who is currently 80 years old, is regarded as one of the most popular tennis coaches in the world due to his enormous success as a tennis coach. Even today, Bollettieri still rises with the sun at the tennis academy in Florida to practice on the courts. His admiration and love for tennis have produced tons of success for a wide range of players that managed to reach the number 1 spot in the world. Some of the most popular players include Jelena Jankovic, Maria Sharapova, Venus Williams, Marcelo Rios, Martina Hingis, Agassi, Courier, Monica Seles, and Boris Becker.

Marian Vajda

Novak Djokovic is considered the star of Marian Vajda who is currently ranked as the best tennis player in the world. He managed to take Djokovic from the number 40 position to the number 5 position in only 12 months. The tennis coach from Slovakia has also managed to take Djokovic to a total of 12 Grand Slam titles. Marian Vajda is regarded as the primary reason why Novak Djokovic is the champion of the world. However, Vajda is far too humble to take the credit.

Ivan Lendl

Ivan Lendl was one a formidable tennis player back in the day. However, when he retired, he decided to become a tennis coach and took on Andy Murray. Before Andy Murray found Lendl, he managed to take himself to several Grand Slam tournaments but suffered horrible defeats in the process. Thereafter, he decided to get a tennis coach and there was no one better than Ivan Lendl who managed to completely transform the demeanour of Murray on the court. This made Murray mentally fierce, ballsy, and more skilful than ever before. Although Ivan Lendl was never capable of winning Wimbledon during his career, he managed to make it as a coach when Murray claimed victory for him.

Personal Story: The Coach

The boy was six years old when he first started playing for the coach.  It was the summer between first and second grade and the boy still remembers it to this day. The coach was in his fifties and in his thirty fifthyear ofcoaching young men in the fine art of how to play basketball. But the boy would tell you that being a coach was only a disguise, one of many he wore.

He had a knack for talking to kids. He put them at ease from the first word, even though he was six feet two inches tall, broad-shouldered, two-hundred twenty pounds. He was an imposing figure but the children flocked to him.

He had been a three-sport athlete in high school: basketball, football and baseball. He probably could have played in college but he went to war right after high school. When he came back from overseas he plied the trade he had learned in the Army, working in electrical construction. This was another persona. He was the lineman for the electric company. The guy who took the neighborhood kids for rides in his bucket truck. The same bucket truck he used to hang a backboard and basket on a telephone pole.

While raising a family, he began to mentor some of the neighborhood kids. He started coaching, first baseball, then basketball. He had nine children of his own, six boys and three girls. He often joked he could field his own baseball team.

The neighbors respected the coach. They knew that not only were their kids safe with him, they were also learning. And not just learning a game. They were learningvalues andbuilding character. Sportsmanship, teamwork, handling tour emotions and dealing with a loss were all subjects the coachdelved into on a daily basis. And the kids ate it up. They responded to his teaching and developed a brand of basketball that is rarely seen: A truly unselfish team.

In 35 years of coaching Catholic League basketball, the coach won thirty-two league titles. He took his young men to the state finals a whopping twelve times, winning eight. More importantly, all but four of his student athletes graduated high school. Most went on to college and a few even played Division One basketball.

It turns out that he wasn’t just a coach. He could be a mentor, a teacher, a philosopher and a poet. He could be your bigbrother, your crazy uncle or your stern father, depending on what you needed at the time.

Watching the boys, now men, return for his funeral was very emotional. There were different eulogies, but allin all, there was very little talk of sports. Odd for the funeral of a man with his pedigree. Instead there were words like love, family, character and commitment. Words that were to be the real lesson taught by the coach. I know because I saw him with his disguise off. He was my father.