- American coached Williams sisters, Agassi and Sharapova
- Bollettieri’s academy set blueprint for modern coaching
The renowned tennis coach Nick Bollettieri has died at the age of 91. The charismatic American pioneered the concept of a live-in academy and guided some of the biggest names in the sport, including Andre Agassi, Maria Sharapova, Monica Seles and Boris Becker.
Born in New York to Italian immigrant parents, Bollettieri switched to tennis coaching after dropping out of law school and opened his tennis academy in Bradenton, Florida in 1978. The sports management giant IMG bought the academy nine years later but Bollettieri continued to oversee its tennis programme.