TCF i told you before i raise my child and am responsible for his character as for his tennis he's the one who produces his own game and schedule, just recently he's allowed out side help , As for raising a champion we do believe its and attitude and mental position that is being instilled in him.
I totally get that Brad. Just understand that there are lots of American kids and coaches who are training hard and are not "afraid of foreign players" as you have put it in the past. But it is what it is...waaaaay harder to make it now than it was 15-20 years ago. Here's what Nick B. and Mike Agassi are saying these days. From Tom Perrotta, tennis.com:
Nick Bollettieri, the famed founder of the Bollettieri Tennis Academy and former coach of Agassi, Seles, and Sharapova, among others, says he can surmise a lot from watching a 4-year-old. The way children hold the racquet and react to balls gives Bollettieri a sense of “what God gave them,” he says. But he’s given up on predicting whether those talents will produce a professional. When I asked Bollettieri why, at last year’s U.S. Open, he stepped closer, paused a few beats, and began slowly jabbing his index fi nger into my chest.
“You’ve got the whole world now, buddy,” Bollettieri said, emphasizing “whole” as if the planet had recently doubled in size. “Look at the NBA, look at baseball.” What he meant was, look at Russia. Look at Serbia. Look at Eastern Europe. Look—off in the distance—at China. More kids are playing tennis, and they’re playing it well at earlier ages.
“When I used to have an Agassi or a Seles, I could say, ‘I’ve got another one,’” Bollettieri says. “I can’t say that anymore.”
These days, the odds are even longer, so much so that in a recent conversation, Mike Agassi, Andre Agassi’s father, told me that he wouldn’t want his children to play tennis today. “I’d go after golf and baseball,” Agassi says. “Golf has longevity, and in baseball if you lose, you aren’t the loser. The team loses.”
