Speech by Winningest Tennis Coach Ever

Today I am going to talk about a speech which I listen to every time I go to a tournament that is around an hour away from my house. In this speech, the speaker is perhaps the best coach of all time with 10 world No. 1s and he highlights a number of key points such as “The Olympics are not won by the swiftest or strongest, but by those who enter the race,” and “People with lesser talent and a wise mind can often beat the more talented player,”. Can you guess who the speaker is? It is Nick Bollettieri, the winningest coach in tennis history. I will mention a couple of key points in his speech.

1. “The Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “The Olympics are not won by the swiftest or strongest, but by those who enter the race. How sad it is how many winners don’t enter the race because they don’t think they can win. How many winners quit the race before victory is there?” I’m sure you all can clearly see the message, but I will restate it anyway. What he means by this is there are so many people, players that are faster or stronger than the participants, but they don’t win because they don’t enter the race or contest and that happens because they don’t think they believe they can win.

2. “Champions find a way to make it happen, no matter how long it takes.” Before this specific sentence, he described how he didn’t pass a test to become a navy pilot in college, but he never gave up on his dream, and eventually flew in a jet 41 years later. This all tells us that real champions never give up on what they set out to do, no matter how long it may take.

3. “People with lesser talent and a wise mind can often beat the more talented player.” The message is extremely easy to see here and it is very true. Before this sentence, he described his student, Brad Gilbert, with such ugly strokes that he wore three pairs of sunglasses, but that he beat Agassi and Becker with just his mind. This is also often true. He also mentioned Nick Kyrgios and how he has great talent, but he lacks mentally.

4. “Champions find a way to get through their nerves. Don’t be embarrassed to say you’re nervous, everyone is nervous.” As you can imagine, this is very relatable. If you were never nervous in your life before, then you are not human. But real champions don’t let their nerves eat them up. They take control of their nerves and manage to control them.

5. “Don’t you ever say ‘I can’t do it’, instead say ‘I won’t do it’.” This dialogue directly relates to the first key point, where he stated that there are so many players don’t join the race because of a fear of losing, that there are so many players that quit before the race is over because they think that they can’t do it. Both these points relate to never giving up, no matter how hard it becomes.

6. “If you ain’t nobody, ain’t nobody’s going to talk about you and no matter what they say, you say thank you and let the results of your life do the talking for you.” This is an important point because many people let the bad feedback get to them instead of the good, and you need to remember that there will always be bad feedback, and it will all boil down to whether you let the bad stuff get to you and make you miserable, or you ignore it and keep working hard towards your goal.

Speech Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-KU4ho4GGQ