| 1 | 1 | | As the Wimbledon tennis championships get under way later this month, once again |
| 2 | | we pin our hopes on the British players. All the expectations, all the build-up - and the big |
| 3 | | question remains ... not whether they'll win the tournament, but whether any of them will |
| 4 | | win even a set! Will it happen? Not a chance! Why not? |
| 2 | 5 | | Maybe some of the answers can be found at the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy |
| 6 | | (NBTA) in Florida. It takes in some of the finest tennis players in the world, usually at the |
| 7 | | age of 12 or 13, and works on them for the next five years - as in the case of rising German |
| 8 | | star Tommy Haas, who's 12. 'He is the best boy 1 have ever seen at this age,' says Nick. |
| 3 | 9 | | Andre Agassi and Monica Seles went there, too, and there will be others. The young |
| 10 | | hopefuls return from a local school at lunchtime and spend a minimum of four hours every |
| 11 | | aftemoon, six days a week, working towards joining that Academy hall of fame. |
| 4 | 12 | | It's thanks to those successes that the Nick Bollettieri Academy is now regarded as |
| 13 | | number one in a rapidly growing industry. It has 235 full-time students who fly in from |
| 14 | | Australia and India, from Sweden and Yugoslavia, all with the same dream in rnind - to |
| 15 | | get to the very top. |
| 5 | 16 | | You could call this a 'tennis factory'. You could argue that it's nothing better than |
| 17 | | the 'battery hen' approach - with a mental-toughness coach, footwork specialists, teams |
| 18 | | and trainers, aerobics instructor, fitness coach and sports psychologists, all directed |
| 19 | | towards kids in their early teens, producing players of undoubted excellence. |
| 6 | 20 | | But then, as Nick Bollettieri points out: 'No one forces these kids to do it - they're |
| 21 | | here because they want to beo What you have to remember is that there are many, many |
| 22 | | boys and girls with the necessary skills to be great players, but very few of them have the |
| 23 | | application and deterrnination to do it.' |
| 7 | 24 | | There is another big factor - the rest of the child's farnily. They have to go along with |
| 25 | | the idea, too. Not every mother and father want their son or daughter to spend their entire |
| 26 | | teenage life hitting tennis balls in the hope that they rnight one day make the big time. |
| 27 | | And the vast majority of parents, Nick agrees, don't. They want their kids to have a normal |
| 28 | | childhood. |
| 8 | 29 | | 'There are certain qualities that people like Monica Seles have and that you don't |
| 30 | | find with the vast majority of children. Her attitude - one that accepts the amount of time |
| 31 | | needed to master the technique - is very rare,' says Nick. 'She would practise for up to six |
| 32 | | hours a day, seven days a week, and still want to play even more. Very few have that |
| 33 | | dedication, but that's what you need.' |
| 9 | 34 | | Nick himself didn't start playing tennis as early as his youngsters. Indeed, not until |
| 35 | | he was 19. IronicalIy, he adrnits that even if there had been such a facility when he was |
| 36 | | young, he wouldn't have wanted to be there. 'I wouldn't want to be like these kids. I did so |
| 37 | | many things, played so many sports, experienced so much of life. I wouldn't have wanted |
| 38 | | to spend my whole childhood playing tennis. But it's a different world now. IC you want to |
| 39 | | make it in the game - and, let's face it, very few of these kids will- then that is what you |
| 40 | | have to do to have a chance. |
| 10 | 41 | | That's one of the problems you have in Britain. There's as much talent as in any |
| 42 | | other country, but it's no use picking people who are 18 and trying to make champions of |
| 43 | | them. You have to develop them from a much younger age and, until you can do that, your |
| 44 | | players will find it so much harder because they don't have an even chance.' |
