Mind, Set, and Match

It's day one for me at the world- renowned Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Florida. In the past three hours, I've hit about 500 balls - more than I usually see in a month.

"Let's pair up and play some points," hollers Chip Brooks, who directs the adult program. "Todd, you and Jimbo strike it up on court three."

It's not an even pairing: I'm fit and I hit the ball okay; Jim Schreiber is a beefy New York businessman, 20 years my senior. Twenty minutes later, however, I'm a throttled 6-2 loser. During the last four games, I win two, maybe three points. A savvy competitor, Schreiber reads the book on my technique immediately: no forehand. For 20 minutes, I see nothing but forehands. Game, set, match.

"Hey, good playing with you," says Schreiber as we head to the cafeteria for lunch. "Can I make an observation?" I nod. "Your problem is mental. Definitely."

During drills, I'm an ace. In a competition, I consistently tank against people I should beat or at least challenge. It hasn't always been this way. At age 12, I was a regionally ranked junior. But at 13, I lost a club match to a 10-year-old ubergirl named Joy Cummings. I still haven't recovered. That's why I've come to what is reputed to be the toughest tennis camp in the land: I want to reclaim my once-scrappy court style.

My expectations are high, but that's true of just about everyone who journeys to Bollettieri's world-beating academy. Most people sign up, says Brooks, so they can get good enough to beat somebody back home. In my case, that somebody is my older brother Tom.

"One of two things will happen to you at Bollettieri's," predicts Tom, himself a former instructor. "Either you'll come back as your 12-year-old self, ready to take on me and the rest of the world, or you'll never want to pick up a racquet again."

Good competitors make mistakes. Bad competitors repeat them.

Bollettieri's sprawling, state-of-the-art complex is home to 79 championship courts, a 30,000-square-foot, artificial-turf "training dome," and a workout palace called the International Performance Institute. Gadgetry and high science abound. There are high-tech ball-serving machines, courtside video-playback stations, even an on-call sports shrink.

The hardware dazzles, but it's the aura of Nick Bollettieri that draws the world's top professionals and, in increasing numbers, weekend warriors like me. Though he never played competitive tennis, the 66-year-old camp patriarch has produced more champions than any coach in tennis history. The list starts with Andre Agassi and runs to Monica Seles. And it grows annually.

"Someone once said this place is all about survival of the fittest," says Bollettieri as he welcomes all of us to his six-hour-a-day ground-stroking sweatshop. "I don't disagree with that."

Bollettieri has just returned triumphant from the French Open, where star pupil Iva Majoli pulled off the upset of the year by beating Martina Hingis, the world's number-one woman player. Wearing black, razor-style Oakleys and a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves ripped off, he looks more like a member of the Crips gang than a tennis elder. The image isn't an act. For Bollettieri, the game is more blood sport than country-club social.

"Know something?" he says, drawing the proverbial line in the red clay. "I'm 66, but that doesn't matter. I want to do everything better than you. I want to be better than you on the court, on the golf course, in the weight room, on the dance floor. I have to win everything, understand?"

Of course we understand: Bollettieri is a maniac. Still, each of the 12 adults at this week's camp - a mostly male, fortysomething group that includes a couple of New York City attorneys, a Hugo Boss marketing exec, and a commercial real-estate developer from Denver - hungers for just a little of what he's got.

Surprisingly, we won't spend the week engaged in smash-mouth competition. The single biggest failing among recreational players, says Bollettieri, is that they compete before they're ready. "Points without preparation," he calls it. His remedy: drills, drills, drills. Done the Bollettieri way, drills have a blistering intensity. And the feedback, shall we say, is spirited.

Mohamed Chaouqui, a flashy junior instructor from Morocco, is an able stand-in for the master: "Balf, ask me if I care if you're tired," he taunts as I wobble through the infamous sprint-and-fetch-it drill, in which the instructor stands at the net and whacks the ball into alternating corners, sending the hapless player racing back and forth to hit returns.

After watching me bury one forehand after another in the bottom of the net, Chip Brooks explodes: "Hey, if I'm a basketball player and I throw up an air ball twice in a row, what do you think I'll do the third time? I'll break the damn backboard, that's what! If you want to win at this game, Balf, don't repeat your mistakes!"