Nick Bollettieri is currently in Italy, since he will join the meeting of international coaches to be held in Rome in a few days’ time: in the process of reaching Rome he stopped in Milan, where he had the chance to check out one of the most promising talents of contemporary tennis, i.e. myself. Or better, to put things as they are, I enrolled in a clinic organised by him and open to amateurs, both adults and youngsters. After the clinic I had the opportunity to briefly interview Bollettieri: you can find the audio files on the video sections TennisUnderwold’s facebook page. Each of them indicates the main topic discussed in it by Bollettieri.
If someone is curious, the clinic itself is organised as such: 40 people were admitted and divided in several groups, which carried out different training sessions with different coaches; each session lasted about 25 minutes and one was coached by Bollettieri. What happens in his session is that Nick looks at a few shots by each player of the group and shares his suggestions with all of them; as per myself (if you care) the advises were: 1) forehand: take immediately the left hand in front of me, instead of charging the shot with the hand on the heart of the racket, moving it in front only at a later stage: he told me that what I was doing is also correct, but such technique should be implemented only by very good players (and I am not one of them); 2) still forehand: end the follow through of the shot by gripping the head of the racket with the left hand (held at shoulder’s height), in order to be sure to complete the swing in a high position; 3) as per my double-handed backhand, he changed the grip of the right hand from something in between an eastern and a continental to a pure continental, to be able to rotate the racket at impact more easily.
One consideration I would like to make: this guy is 85 or 86 and he is still a tank: he coached adults from 9.30 to 12.30. At 2.30 started with kids and ended 3 hours later; than he checked out two stronger juniors playing in the hosting club for about half an hour; eventually, he ended his day by releasing 2 interviews. He basically worked 10 hours that day; the following one, he went to Turin and started a further clinic: Bollettieri is really an amazingly energetic and passionate person; plus he is 100% down to earth.
Following my clinic, I had the chance to interview also Fiorella Bonfanti, a representative for Italy of the IMG Academy. This is another interesting interview: I will write it down in a further article to be published in the next few days.
