My Big Break

How did I get the job at the fabulous Dorado Resort I asked myself.

One day a woman came into my pro shop in Ohio and asked to borrow some tennis balls so that her son could practice his serve. When she brought them back, I refused to take payment for their use.

A few weeks later, I received a call from Rock Resorts, the management company for the Dorado Beach Resort in Puerto Rico, which was owned by Laurance Rockefeller and his family. My name had been submitted on a long list of possible applicants for the head tennis pro position.

Would I be interested in applying for the job? I was stunned. Of course I would! I didn't have much of a name in tennis yet, so I didn't think my chances were very good, but what did I have to lose?

A few weeks later, to my surprise, I received a call from Rock Resorts notifying me that I had been selected for the job! I was thrilled, of course, but also amazed. How had it happened?

It turned out that the woman who had borrowed the practice balls was Dora Pasarell, the mother of Charlie Pasarell, who at the time was one of the best junior players in the country. She and her husband, Charles Sr., were well respected business leaders and athletes in Puerto Rico and members at Dorado.

It paid off being nice to Charlie Pasarell's mom—even if I didn't know who she was at the time.

Dora had not only proposed me for the job but had offered a strong recommendation in my favor. Dora's son Charlie, of course, went on to become one of the best players in the world.

My second wife Nancy and I packed our bags and flew to San Juan where we were met by a car and chauffeur from the hotel. The resort was located on a section of pristine coast. As we entered we could see the private airport, which allowed' wealthy clients to fly in from San Juan.

There were individual, two-story cottages along the beach, nestled among lush trees, a main hotel and a house called "Su Casa," where Amelia Earhart spent time before her fateful flight.

When I met with the manager, he told me I would earn $3,500 for the winter season, November through March, plus all the money from lessons I taught and the proceeds from the pro shop. We were given a beautifully furnished condo with maid service and offered free meals. As a director I had dining privileges to eat with the guests of the hotel. To say I was in paradise would be an understatement.

I quickly realized, though, that the people who stayed at Dorado Beach came mostly for the golf. The two 18-hole courses hosted the famous Dorado Cup, which attracted all the top 1960s golfers, including Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player--his daughter later attended my tennis academy.

Me, demonstrating some good volley form in the old days.

The assistant golf pro there was Chi Chi Rodriguez, a promising "local boy" on the cusp of realizing his extraordinary talent. He and his wife lived in another condo on the grounds, and he and I became good friends.

Fortunately for me, hotel guests had to pass by our front tennis courts on their way to the golf shop and golf course. When Nancy and I saw them heading our way, we'd race out on a court and start hitting balls back and forth to give the impression that tennis was a fun, lively activity at the resort. And over time, we built the business.

Most of our guests left their racquets with us overnight. Many of these racquets were strung with gut. During the evening, a sprinkler system would come through the window of the pro shop and “accidentally" wet the strings. The next day in the heat and humidity, they would begin to pop. Naturally, we gave our guests a great deal on restringing.

About the only thing that could get me off the court in those days was when the surf got big. I've always been crazy about surfing, and while the other side of the island had the big waves, there was a small point on the golf course, surrounded by rocks and jutting into the ocean, that made a great local spot for us. I'd phone my son Jimmy Boy to alert him that the conditions were ripe, and we'd have fun together body and boogie board surfing.

I met a number of interesting, prominent people at Dorado Beach. One day when I was giving a tennis clinic for the children of some local club members, a solidly built, middle-aged gentleman stopped on his way to the golf course and watched me teach for a while.

Jimmy Boy and I had our own private surfing spot at Dorado.

Then he commented, "Young man, you belong with children!" I didn't know who he was at the time, but soon found out. It was Vince Lombardi, the coach of the Green Bay Packers, who had recently been named the most successful coach in the history of the National Football League.

After football season ended, he came to Puerto Rico to play golf and relax. He stopped by the tennis courts nearly every day, and we became friends. I loved football and would send bags of golf balls up to Green Bay for Vince and his friends. Later on, he helped me start a summer camp in Wisconsin that became the prototype for the Academy.

The life lesson here is that you never know whom you are talking to and what might happen as a result of a friendly conversation. Nowadays the buzz word for that is networking. I have no doubt that this was one of the most important practices that made my career successful.

The tennis program at Dorado kept growing and our courts were often completely booked. One day, a guest telephoned the pro shop to reserve a court at 9 a.m. the next day, and Nancy told him we were booked up until 3 in the afternoon. She had no idea what it meant that she had just turned down Jay Rockefeller.

When I found out about it, I just about had a stroke and quickly called him back to tell him that a court had opened up for him at the time he had requested. This was before he became governor of West Virginia and later on, a U.S. senator. I later had the privilege of teaching the entire Rockefeller family at Pocantico Hills, their 4,OOO-acre estate and compound in Tarrytown, New York. For me that was almost a surreal experience, coming as I did from the streets of North Pelham.

Believe it or not Vince Lombardi helped me start my Beaver Dam program.

All of the Rockefellers overwhelmed us with kindness and affection and made us feel like a part of the family. We played together, swam together and had lunch together. But when we were summoned to come up to the "big house" on the top of the hill, where Governor Jay had his own tennis court, it was all business, even I got a little nervous.

In the meantime, my marriage to Nancy came to an end. I'm not sure what went wrong. I was too busy with tennis lessons, schmoozing with guests and running tennis camps during the summer, which all may have contributed to our breakup.

I think maybe coming from a quiet Midwestern town, it was too hard for her to fit into my wild, erratic life, and she decided to move on. In the fall of 1964 she went to Mexico and got a divorce.

I didn't remain a bachelor long. Chi Chi Rodriguez was planning to play an exhibition golf event in Des Moines, Iowa, and then head to Las Vegas afterward, and he invited me to join him. I drove to Des Moines, and directly across the street from the airport was a restaurant and hotel called "Johnny and Kay's." Working there was a cute waitress whose name was Jeri Sylvester. She was a senior at Drake University, liked music and had a fun personality.

Before long, I called Jeri and invited her to come down to Puerto Rico, and she accepted. Soon after she arrived, we were married by a judge in his office in Old San Juan.

Our two daughters Danielle and Angel were born in 1967 and 1969, and we had a lot of fun at the resort. I can still remember Angel as a little girl walking into the pro shop with live lizards for "earrings." She'd have them bite her earlobes and they dangled by the side of her head as she came in to show them off.

My third wife Jeri and my daughters.

After the season in Puerto Rico, I would spend the summer at a variety of tennis clubs on the East Coast and in the Midwest. But after five winters at Dorado, Bland Hoke, the general manager, called me into his office. He told me that I was doing a great job and he wanted me to stay at the resort year round. When I said to him that I couldn't do that because of my summer camp commitments--I wasn't about to give those lucrative jobs up--he informed me that it would be my last year at Dorado.

Some days later, Laurance Rockefeller and his wife Mary stopped by to say hello. When they asked me if everything was okay, I said, "Yes, but I won't be here much longer," and told them about the manager's ultimatum. Two hours after they left, I received a call from Bland Hoke and he told me I could do as I pleased.

There were many times in my career when I was something of a hothead. This was long before I started my Academy in Bradenton, Florida, and sometimes I had to take to the highway when there were disagreements with owners or management.

One time, for example, I had an argument with a woman at a one of the Midwest clubs where I was working. She always complained that the hartru courts were too dry and gave the maintenance crew a difficult time.

I agreed that the courts were too dry, but it was because she and her friends continued to play on them long into the watering time. She ranted that it didn't matter how long they played, it was my job to keep the courts in top condition.

An add for Beaver Dam—that's Jimmy Arias and Kathleen Horvath with me.

The next day, as she and her friends were playing at exactly the time that the courts should be watered, I turned on the sprinkler system and soaked the entire group. Dripping wet, she ran into my shop, yelling, "Do you know who I am?" My response was "Lady, I don't care who you are!" Well, it turned out that she was the wife of the president of the club. When I found out, I told her, "You don't like me and I don't like you. Either you stay out of my way, or tell your husband to buyout my contract." He didn't but when I finished the season I decided to move on.

At some point I recalled Vince Lombardi's advice that I belonged with children, and I called him in Green Bay to ask for his assistance in identifying another location for my summer programs. Vince Lombardi went out of his way to help me and the very next spring I found myself in a little community called Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, about 100 miles northwest of Milwaukee.

The sign at the entrance to the town said that 14,000 busy beavers lived there. I ran my summer programs at Wayland Academy, a private prep school that students from all over the United States attended, and Beaver Dam became the premier summer tennis camp in the world.

I ran the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Camp in Beaver Dam from 1968 to 1983. We had kids come from all over the world. Many of the players who later made up the national tennis teams of Mexico and Israel got their start there. The mix of culture, ideas and talent gave me the idea of starting my own year-round program.

It really was the genesis of the NBTA, and I developed some of the ideas there that I would later apply at the Academy--physical and mental training and discipline, plus complete immersion in the sport. The camp ran for eight weeks and my coaches and I put the students through the paces, conducting strenuous workouts.

When they weren't hitting balls, I had them running in place. If I felt people weren't giving it their all, I'd make everyone, staff and students alike, run laps on the nearby sports track, barking out orders like a drill sergeant.

Over the course of the years, we had celebrity visits at the camp from such greats as Marty Riessen, Dennis Ralston, Stan Smith, Bob Lutz, Charlie Pasarell and Arthur Ashe. That's where Arthur and I got to know each other better and discovered a mutual passion for teaching kids , which led to a working relationship later on. Arthur, who could be sparing with praise, described Beaver Dam in one word, "Unbelievable!" Another important benefit of the camp was that it allowed me to recruit and tryout coaches and staff, some of whom have now been with me for 40 years.

Myself and Mr. Marx, later in 2006. His son Louis was the captain of the Princeton tennis team.

I must say, I had a lot of fun at Beaver Dam, coaching, running the show and dashing around in fancy sports cars, first in a red convertible Mercedes and later, a yellow Corvette. I even enjoyed the campers' annual show, in which they poked fun at me strutting around, yelling and sporting designer sunglasses.

In 1969, Tennisplayer publisher John Yandell, then a junior player in Oklahoma, attended for a couple of weeks. He told me later he remembered two key pieces of advice I gave him. First that he should compact his backswing on his forehand. Second that he should stop ordering peperoni pizza delivery at night. Both still good points, and I know John agrees.

In retrospect, what mattered most about both Dorado and Beaver Dam were the lifelong connections I forged with some of the guests and families. Many became incredibly important and my life and career would not have been the same without them. We were always on the lookout for customers with children who loved tennis. Two such fathers came in and before we knew it, they bought nearly everything we had in the pro shop. Then they booked two of my assistant coaches and myself to teach their kids all day long.

We had our hands full with these kids. They were out of control, driving golf carts over the tennis courts, all over the golf course, and finally getting stuck in the sand. One of the fathers, Dan Lufkin, could not have been more apologetic. The other dad, Louis Marx, just laughed and laughed. He tipped everyone with $100 bills and nobody complained.

Louis Marx was a wealthy man with a big heart. His father was the owner of the famous Marx toy company. Mr. Marx--I always called him that--lived for tennis. He had a house outside of New York City, and when we were there he would invite us to come out on weekends.

He was an excellent player himself, who had competed in the U.S. National Championships, and he wanted his sons to play college tennis. One of them, Louis Jr., became captain of the Princeton University tennis team.

Unfortunately, good things eventually come to an end. In the case of Dorado Beach and me, it happened in 1976 when a Sports Illustrated management team took over the running of the resort. They planned to install Butch Buchholz, Jr., a well known tennis player, as head of the tennis program. They were willing to keep me on if I was willing to work under him, but it would have been awkward with the many guests who knew me from before. Besides, it's nearly impossible for someone with my personality to play second fiddle.

I did not have any definite plans, but wasn't worried. I figured I had plenty of irons in the fire. Little did I know that I was about to embark on the most significant step in my career.