Never give up, legendary tennis coach tells young ’uns
KUALA LUMPUR: Refusal to give up is one trait that legendary coach Nick Bollettieri sees in many tennis greats whom he has coached during his lifetime.
The 87-year-old has moulded tennis greats such as Andre Agassi, Monica Seles, the Williams sisters Venus and Serena, Maria Sharapova and Kei Nishikori, and they all share the same trait of never giving up when the chips are down.
They just kept getting up. They kept fighting.
And yesterday, Bollettieri drummed the same mantra into 60 young Malaysian players aspiring to be future stars.
“When one falls down and makes an error in school or in life, my daddy always said it’s not how you fall, it’s how you get back up and say I will try again.”
“Failure is part of life but when you fail, you find a way to get better and find success,” he said at the #TraintoWin Junior Tennis Camp at the National Tennis Centre in Jalan Duta yesterday.
The American returned to Malaysia for the second time in two years to develop junior players from here and across Southeast Asia during a four-day camp that ends on Sunday.
“Some people say you can make a champion, I think champions are born. However, less talented players with better work ethics in a team can beat the player with more talent,” he said.
Bollettieri also stressed the importance of having programmes for children to keep them away from drugs, alcohol and violence.
“We need to keep kids off the streets. Build their self-esteem, to know who they are, so they can say no to drugs, alcohol and violence.”
Duta International Tennis Academy director and manager K. Rajani said Bollettieri will continue to engage with a select group of junior players through bi-weekly coaching sessions via live video conferencing and the BounxSport app after the camp is over.
She added that BounxSport has pledged RM20,000 to kick-start a level-based youth tennis league in Malaysia which would focus on matching players and teams according to their skill levels rather than the method of age and gender-based play.
The US-based sports technology startup will also seed RM10,000 for an adult tennis league for active and infrequent players to find suitable level-based play matches.