Nick Bollettieri’s new book, “Changing the Game”, is dedicated to Arthur Ashe and Billie Jean King. “Most people build buildings. They tore down barriers.”

Nick (Bollettieri) of time

April 5, 2014

There are teachers and then there are teachers – Aristotle, who taught Alexander the Great; Annie Sullivan, who unlocked the brilliance of Helen Keller; Jelena Gencic, who taught Novak Djokovic poetry and classical music along with groundstrokes.

Nick Bollettieri is a teacher. Watch him talking to kids who’ve been practicing tennis on one of the 10 indoor courts in the gorgeous new Lifetime Athletic in White Plains, N.Y. He doesn’t just autograph his new book, “Changing the Game” (New Chapter Publisher, 319 pages, $26.95), for them. He takes the time to explain the fine points of the game – their game. And the kids, hardly bigger than the tennis bags they are carrying, really listen.

Even his inscription in my copy is a teacher’s admonition: “You have studied the game. But remember it’s people that you must know in order to give more precise information.”

To Nick, that’s what makes a great coach – the ability to know the individual student to help him become the most he can be.

Nick grew up in Pelham, N.Y., playing football and thinking tennis was a sissy’s game. But then an uncle who belonged to the New Rochelle Tennis Club invited him to join him there and, well, football’s loss was tennis’ gain.

Nick has coached 10 world No. 1s, including the Williams sisters, Maria Sharapova, Andre Agassi and Monica Seles. It was Seles who surprised him at Madison Square Garden on World Tennis Day March 3 to introduce him as one of this summer’s inductees into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

I’m smart enough not to ask who his favorite is and instead ask who is the best he ever coached. He answers the question by turning it around.

Sympathy for Achilles

April 3, 2014

“The “Iliad” may be a giant of Western literature, yet its plot hinges on a human impulse normally thought petty: spite,” Natalie Angier writes in the April 1st edition of The New York Times’ Science section.

Natalie Angier may be a brilliant science writer for The Times, yet she has a long way to go as a classicist and literary critic. In an essay on the possible benefits of spite – I say possible because I don’t think spite is good in any event – Angier goes on to explain that Achilles sulked in his tent, holding a grudge against Agamemnon in part because he took Achilles’ war prize, the woman Briseis. Oh, if it were only that simple.

In fairness to Angier – whose essay is all about the evolutionary role spite plays in fairness – she doesn’t have the time or space in the article to unspool the back-story that explains the bad blood between Agamemnon and Achilles, two of the key figures in the Trojan War.

So here we go...

Novak_?okovi?_-_Roland-Garros_2013_-_004.jpg

Nifty shades of grey: Rafanole XL

April 1, 2014

After his 6-3, 6-3, 83-minute drubbing by Novak Djokovic in the March 30 Sony Open final in Key Biscayne, Fla., Rafael Nadal was asked a perfectly existential question: Is he glad Nole exists?

“No,” he said. Laughter all around. That Rafa, what a kidder. Then he added, “I like challenges, but I am not stupid.”

Nole had a Descartian “I play Roger Federer and Rafa, therefore I am” answer to the same question:

“I think challenges, big challenges that I had in my career changed me in a positive way as a player. Because of Rafa and because of Roger, I am what I am today in a way.”

Welcome to Rafanole XL as the media dubbed their 40th encounter, the most in the Open era. Oh, Rafa and Nole, you’ve finally been accorded NFL-Super Bowl Roman numeral status. Can your own John Madden fantasy league be far behind?

Di –Virgin-t

March 31, 2014

My friend Babs and I went to see “Divergent” this past weekend. The film was just about to start when five giggly tweens plopped down in the seats next to me.

“Are these seats saved?” the one closest to me asked, suddenly all girlish concern.

I was tempted to say “yes.” Who needs five texting jumping beans when you can have peace and quiet? But how dog in the manger would that be? “No, no,” I said, smiling.

I bring this up to begin with, because these tween girls are, after all, “Divergent’s” target audience. It may be “The Hunger Games” 2.0 or another American tale of the limits of conformity. But at its heart, “Divergent” is very much a virgin’s story, about growing up and learning to use your mind and body properly as you follow your heart and overcome your fears, including the fear of men.

Author to Author with Lisa Fantino

March 30, 2014

A look at my interview with fellow author Lisa Fantino:

Career journalist and editor Georgette Gouveia has ink running through her veins, as blue and black as any true writer. To say she’s well-trained is an understatement, having received both a Bachelors and Masters degree in Critical Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, the suburban New York bastion of the creative arts. To say she’s experienced is also an understatement, having served as the senior cultural writer for the Gannett newspapers prior to becoming Editor at WAG Magazine, the glossy magazine of luxury living. To say she’s inexperienced in the world of gay male athletes is the supreme understatement but that hasn’t stopped her from creating a believable world of lust, love and domination in her new book “Water Music,” the first in a series, The Games Men Play.
You are a woman author venturing inside the psyche of gay male athletes. How did you make the decision to explore this subject?
“When I injured my shoulder, I spent a lot of time exercising, with sports droning on in the background on TV. I began to notice that how players reacted to one another after a match or a meet depended on who won and who lost. So I started thinking about rivalry, particularly among players who appeared to be friendly. Then I thought, What if the players were also lovers? I chose men, because I thought it would give my readers – whom I presumed to be female – an opportunity to explore issues of power, dominance and submission safely without projecting themselves into the scenarios.”

Interlude with the vampire, part 2

March 29, 2014

Recently, Anne Rice announced that she was returning to her most iconic character, the vampire Lestat, with the Oct. 28 publication of “Prince Lestat,” which thrilled me no end.

“Prince Lestat” would immediately follow the events of “The Queen of the Damned,” the third, and I think, the most sensuous book in “The Vampire Chronicles.” It is for me also the most homoerotic of the series, although I think Rice would say these books are instead vampire-erotic since her vampires cannot have sex. Whatever. The point is that in Rice’s work, bloodlust is a metaphor for lust, just as the relationship of the fun-loving Lestat and the depressive (and at times depressing) Louis – as well as that of Daniel, the interviewer in “Interview With the Vampire,” and the vampire Armand – is a metaphor for a gay relationship.

Looking back on it, I realize that these books paved the way for my own foray into homoeroticism with “The Games Men Play” series.

ArtsWestchester CEO blogs about Water Music

March 28, 2014

A look at my interview with ArtsWestchester CEO Janet Langsam:

To look at her, you might think she’s a school teacher. But Georgette Gouveia is actually the feisty editor of the smart and sassy WAG, a monthly magazine dedicated to serving up a piquant dish of stories to keep tongues wagging. Gouveia is also the author of a hot-off-the press, and I do mean hot, racy novel “Water Music.” Yes, she certainly does keep tongues wagging.
Deftly, and with great trepidation, I tried to dig beneath Gouveia’s cool, conservative, sometimes almost prim, exterior to fathom why a gal like her would fantasize in her book about four gay, male athletes.