Trade School : Leaving Home to Attend a Tennis Academy Isn’t an Easy Step. But Those Who Have Done It Say It Will Improve Their Chances of Making the Big Time

Their friends, their families, their schools and their freedom are some 3,000 miles away. But their goal--to become the best tennis players they can be--and their dream--to become the next Pete Sampras or Andre Agassi--take Kevin Kim and Geoff Abrams to Tampa.

Along with 53 other aspiring professional male and female tennis players, they leave their apartments at the Palmer Tennis Academy each morning by 7. Their days are filled with tennis drills, matches, running, weightlifting and college prep classes.

By the time they return at 8 p.m. to the two-bedroom apartments they each share with three other students, Kim and Abrams barely have enough time to call their parents or friends, let alone study or relax. “I’m not lonely here, there isn’t enough time for that,” Kim said from Tampa last week.

Kim and Abrams are two of about 400 kids chasing their dream through about a dozen academies, most in Florida. The largest and most famous is Nick Bollettieri’s in Bradenton, Fla., which produced Agassi and Jim Courier, among others.

Kim attended Sunny Hills High in Fullerton for two years before arriving at Palmer in September. Abrams, who had been considering Palmer for several years, arrived in January from Newport Harbor High.

Whether their decision is the right one depends on who is asked. Their parents, sometimes with reluctance, point to the young athletes being mature enough to chart their futures.

Some coaches and tennis officials, however, see a down side to the academies.

“I’m very concerned about the future of junior tennis in this country,” said Seena Hamilton, founder and organizer of the Easter Bowl tennis tournament, a prestigious annual event held in Palm Springs this year. “It’s like playing roulette. It’s a 35-to-1 shot. I see this frenetic chase for elusive dollars and nobody knows who’s going to hit the jackpot.

“And even when they hit the jackpot, there’s nothing for sure. Getting there is sometimes easier than being there.”

But there are plenty willing to take that chance. Many of the academies offer instruction in golf and tennis, and most send students to other sites for educational instruction. At Palmer, the schooling is done at the academy, leaving little time for anything but tennis lessons and studies.

“I could do without some of the rules here, but I figure I have to make a few sacrifices,” Abrams said.

Ask the Abrams and Kim families about sacrifices. They are paying $16,000 a semester in tuition, room and board so their 16-year-old sons can improve their serves, volleys, forehands, backhands, overheads, and maybe their confidence levels.

Is it worth the money? Is it worth being able to see your son only once every six months?

“I think you have to sacrifice,” said Nancy Abrams, Geoff’s mother, who essentially managed his career when he lived at home. “I want the best for Geoff. I do miss him, but sometimes with a 16-year-old, they’re in their own world anyway.”

Andrew Kim also misses his son, but he believes, though somewhat reluctantly, that sending Kevin to Palmer was the right thing to do.

“I made the right decision,” said Andrew Kim, who has already paid $32,000 for Kevin’s first two semesters. “If he succeeds this year in the boys’ 18 (division) and wins a Grand Slam (junior) tournament, then he has an automatic berth into several pro tournaments.”

Kim appears ready to win the Junior Wimbledon, the Junior French or the Junior U.S. Open. In November, he won the U.S. Indoors in Dallas as the 10th-seeded player. In a recent tournament, he soundly defeated Michigan’s Mike Russell, last year’s U.S. Hardcourt champion in the boys’ 18s.

Kim, who entered the Easter Bowl tournament this week as the second-seeded player in the boys’ 18s, won his first-round match Monday. Abrams, who was seeded somewhere between ninth and 16th--exact seeding is unknown for those players--lost Monday to unseeded Joey Pitts of Smyrna, Ga., 7-6, 6-0.

Kevin O’Connor, director of tennis at Palmer, said Kim and Abrams have taken their games to another level since their arrival.

Kim, quiet but confident, was the nation’s top-ranked 16-year-old before enrolling at Palmer. Abrams, who was already 6 feet at 13, was highly ranked nationally in the boys’ 14s, but his progress leveled off in the last year as other players caught up with him physically.

“Geoff is benefiting so much from an academy environment,” O’Connor said. “He’s getting better by the hour. He’s eating this up. Kevin is getting better over a long period.”

Kim and Abrams believed their games had become stagnant in Southern California because their competition had dried up. The top players in their age divisions were a notch below their level, and players who were a notch above had gone to college or were living too far away.

So Kim and Abrams decided, separately and coincidentally, to go somewhere where there would always be an equally or more talented player to practice with.

This way, there would be no more two-hour drives on a weekend morning or on a school night to train with a college or pro player. The best players and coaches would come to them, and they wouldn’t spend spare time coordinating their next workout.

“I spent a good deal of time with Kevin when he was here,” said Kim’s father, a state athletic commissioner who is involved in a metal manufacturing company in Los Angeles. “It was a 24-hour job. I was always thinking about what has to be done so Kevin can get better. Maybe this is good for both of us. Maybe he needed some leeway. Deep down, maybe he wanted some room.”

Said Nancy Abrams: “It was his decision. I knew Geoff had to take the opportunity when it came up. I know it was a hard decision. He really liked his life here, but he needed more time on the court and at Palmer, everything is right there.”

As logical as academies sound to some families, they have never made much sense to Sam Olson, Kevin’s private coach for three years.

“My personal opinion is you can improve no matter where you live, even if you live in Alaska,” said Olson, who runs a tennis academy at the Balboa Bay Racquet Club. “That’s why you’ll get good players from small towns in Czechoslovakia (Ivan Lendl). If a kid’s working hard, he’ll improve no matter where he is.”

Olson concedes that finding quality opponents at an academy is easier than in your neighborhood.

“I can understand the reason Kevin and Geoff went there, because it’s a lot less work,” Olson said. “But if he entered men’s open tournaments in Southern California, he’ll get as good a competition as he’ll get in Florida. But sometimes it’s hard to get some of the pros out to those tournaments.”

O’Connor said there are no such problems in Tampa, where the U.S. Tennis Assn. training center is less than a hour away by plane.

“Kevin was playing the other day with Brian Dunn, who is ranked 170th in the world, and serves 120 miles an hour,” O’Connor said. “You’re not going to get that kind of competition from an after-school program in Southern California.”

But Olson argues that $16,000 is an inefficient way to find good training partners.

“If (the Kim family) allotted $6,000 a year to get some of the top professional players around here, they could save a lot of money, keep Kevin at home with his family and keep him in his surroundings,” he said.

Olson contends Kim was playing well before he left California in September.

“Kevin went from a virtual nobody to one of the nation’s top players in just about a year and that was without an academy,” he said. “Sure, he’s improved, but I think he would have improved a lot anyway.”

Kim said his son listened to Olson’s arguments before he left for Florida, but he wasn’t swayed.

“Sam talked to him for over an hour,” Andrew Kim said. “He listens to Sam quite a bit, but not that day. He said, “Dad, let’s go.’ ”

Andrew Kim acknowledged he is very skeptical of tennis academies, but he trusted his son. Kim said he was persuaded that Kevin was mature enough to handle an academy environment last year at a clay court tournament in Nashville.

“I told a reporter from Nashville that Kevin was thinking about going to Palmer, and Kevin privately told me, ‘Dad, I don’t want you to divulge information on what I’m going to do. This is my choice.’ Here’s my 15-year-old kid lecturing me on how to behave. That was an eye-opening experience. That made me respect whatever he wanted to do, even though it’s a costly venture,” he said.

Abrams, who is also very close to his mother, said Palmer has matured him, but also confined him.

“There’s a lot more structure than I’m used to,” he said. “Your time is monopolized. The social aspect is totally different here. At home, I’d go out Friday and Saturday night with the guys or with my girlfriend. It was basically a normal life.”

Then again, O’Connor said Palmer’s multicultural, college preparatory curriculum offers students a perspective they wouldn’t find in most public or private schools. The curriculum is written by Norman Palmer, father of professional tennis player Jared Palmer and the academy’s founder and principal.

“You can’t take wood shop or home economics here as a blow-off class,” O’Connor said. “This is a non-traditional learning environment. Teachers work with three or four kids and they teach pro-active learning. The teachers are very demanding. I would say the kids are challenged as much academically as they are on a tennis court.”

Half of the students at Palmer come from countries other than the United States. About 15% of the students are from California, Norman Palmer said, and an average stay is 3 1/2 years. Last year, 15 students graduated and nine of those received NCAA tennis scholarships.

O’Connor said some students aren’t able to handle the curriculum or the structure and are quickly weeded out. But Abrams--an A student--and Kim--a B student--have adjusted well.

Abrams said he was concerned Palmer would be academically inferior to Newport Harbor, but he said that hasn’t been true.

Abrams, who is interested in pursuing a career in the biomedical field, is taking trigonometry, English, chemistry, sociology and world history.

“I don’t think the typical high school kid could relate to this,” Abrams said. “If they weren’t pursuing a sport, they wouldn’t want to do this. I don’t think I’m different than the average kid, just more decided in what I want.”

O’Connor said average kids haven’t seen the Eiffel Tower during the French Open or Centre Court at Wimbledon.

“If that means being an average kid, then I’d rather be a special kid,” he said.

How special is Kim? He is one of 14 members of the U.S. National team--meaning his travel to three national and 15 international tournaments are paid. He also receives free coaching from USTA coaches.

“Kevin is beginning to get a strong sense of confidence in himself,” O’Connor said. “He’s about ready to take off now. He’s one of the top prospects we’ve had in this country in the last couple of years.

O’Connor believes Kim is closer to becoming a professional than Abrams. But then Abrams and Kim also see their careers taking different paths.

“I’ll go to college definitely,” said Abrams, who is interested in Duke and Stanford, among others. “If I do well in college, then I’ll think about pro tennis.”

For Kim, college is secondary at the moment.

“My No. 1 priority is to play on the pro tour,” said Kim, who is being heavily recruited by most traditional tennis powers. “I think I’d kind of like to go to college, but I’m not sure.”

Kim and Abrams say they are sure they’ll be back at Palmer next year. Andrew Kim and Nancy Abrams said they will continue to support their sons’ decisions and back them financially.

“I was leery because a lot of kids that have gone to academies haven’t done that well,” Andrew Kim said. “Kevin, and now Geoff, are kind of Guinea pigs. It will be interesting to see how this whole thing plays out.”