Robert Lansdorp:
A Personal Portrait: Part 3

Paul Teetor

Carolyn Xie: another possible Lansdorp superstar?

No one would fault tennis coach Robert Lansdorp for retiring after having produced four number one ranked players:Tracy Austin, Pete Sampras,Lindsay Davenport and Maria Sharapova. Instead, the former Jack Kramer Club coach is back in Palos Verdes working with nine-year-old Carolyn Xie.

After 30 minutes of coaching, coaxing and pleading, Robert Lansdorp is finally satisfied in an unsatisfying way.

"Now that's a good backhand," he yells across the net. "And it only took half an hour."

Lansdorp removes his black wraparound sunglasses, wipes the sweat dripping like summer rain from his long white mane, points his index finger in the air, slowly raises himself to his full 6-foot-3 and pantomimes a professor doing a math equation on a chalk board.

Lansdorp with Sharapova when Maria was still on the way up.

"Let's see," he says sarcastically. "At that rate, you'll be 30 before you can hit a consistent backhand." He pauses a beat: "And I'll be dead by then."

Across the net, 9-year-old Carolyn Xie takes it all in stride without cracking a smile or flashing a frown. After 18 months of once-a-week private lessons with the legendary Lansdorp, she's seen and heard it all before.

"I know he does it all for my game, so I'll get better," the top-ranked junior champion from San Diego confides later. "And he's very entertaining."

Back on the court Lansdorp brings out all his best moves, a greatest hits of RobertSpeak. It's part motivational speech, part technical instruction, part sentimental journey and part comedy from the Obi Wan Kenobi of junior tennis, known from Moscow to Manhattan Beach as a relentless, demanding teacher of flat, fearless forehands and blazing, bullet-proof backhands.

Still sharp, authoritative, and impatient.

"Come on, you lazy little kid, MOVE YOUR FEET," Lansdorp yells in his one-of-a-kind blended accent that slurs together his Dutch heritage, his upbringing in war-torn Indonesia and his constant exposure to 40 years of American teen slang. "This requires brain power, and right now you're brain dead."

Why Not You?

In eight years of work, Robert transformed Maria Sharapova from a skinny little wannabe into a global brand name. Now after splitting with Maria, or more precisely, with her father Yuri, Lansdorp is back to baseline basics last week at a private court tucked behind a Mediterranean-style McMansion in the Palos Verdes foothills.

Semi-retired at age 63, he's a big ol' grizzly bear of a man now who moves a little slower because of a lingering hip problem. But his eye for talent is still keen, his wit is still sharper than a backhand slice, his smile is still quick, his patience is still short, and he still talks in that same distinctive, jazzy-yet-authoritative voice.

If you simply closed your eyes it's easy to imagine him running the same routines with his original protege, Tracy Austin, back in their salad days at the Jack Kramer Club in Rolling Hills Estates in the early 1970s, before Austin shocked the world by winning the 1979 U.S. Open at age 16.

He is thinking of molding one last champion before turning full-time to his other passions: playing guitar and writing songs and finding a soul mate for the next chapter in his crazy, against-all-odds life and distinguished career.

Robert with Maria and Carolyn Xie.

"This little Carly, the girl is phenomenal," he said after the lesson. "When I first met her, she was only seven and she told me she had looked up my instructional articles on the Internet! Then I saw her hit one backhand and I said, "My God, where did that come from?" She said she learned it by watching Justine Henin on TV."

But he was just getting started on the virtues of his latest protege: "She has all the qualities to be a champion: she's incredibly talented, she's smart, she works hard, she wants to excel, she has nice parents and she listens to me."

Lansdorp admits he is at a personal and professional crossroads that could lead away from tennis. But he also admits he would love to develop one last world champion, even if it takes him another seven years.

"I'm tired of this game," he says while trying to fix Carolyn's footwork on her one-handed backhand. "I'm going to retire next month."

Five minutes later, however, after Carolyn had lashed a dozen frozen-rope backhands in a row, he was calling her "Sweetheart" and telling her he could picture her playing in the French Open when she is 16. Although he didn't say it, you imagine he could also see himself coaching her there.

Elliot Teltscher: a former protege who understands Robert's impact.

"Tracy did it and Maria, too," he said. "Why not you?"

A Perfect Storm

In the last two years, Lansdorp has been swamped by a perfect storm of major life changes that has left him adrift and searching for stability.

"He's one of the most respected tennis pros in the world, but right now he's at a point where he's got to take a step back and figure things out, figure out his next step," said Eliot Teltscher, one of the many former world top-ten players who credit Lansdorp with their development. "With the energy level he puts into his coaching and everything else he does, I'm not sure he can keep doing everything the same way he always has."

First Lansdorp recently divorced after a 32-year marriage, but he doesn't like to talk about it out of respect for his wife's privacy. Then he had surgery for lip cancer, but he is still shocked that it could happen to him -- despite a life in the sun. Then he moved from his long-time home in Rolling Hills Estates to a friend's vacant house on the Hermosa Beach Strand, in part for the sense of community he feels with all the uber-athletic, forever-young types doing their thing on the beach and The Strand.

Tension in the players' box over Yuri's behavior.

To top it all off, his slowly deteriorating relationship with Sharapova's father, Yuri Sharapov, hit rock bottom at the U.S. Open last fall when he publicly called Sharapov's behavior in the player's box during her matches "obnoxious."

Most of the tennis world sided with Lansdorp because Sharapov, who has no tennis background, insists on illegally coaching with hand signals from the player's box and is frequently caught by the umpires.

Yuri is also routinely rude and disdainful to everyone from sportswriters to tournament officials and is notorious for micromanaging his daughter's every off-court move and chasing every endorsement she can get.

But Maria herself has said repeatedly that she will be forever grateful for the many sacrifices her father and her family made to get her all the way from Siberia to the top of the tennis world. When some of Robert's comments were printed in the New York Times, things came to a head. Robert chooses not to air the details of exactly what happened and who said what to whom, but suffice it to say his work with Maria reached an end.

Gratitude for a father and family who sacrificed everything.

A Predictable Right of Passage

For a guy who emphasizes repetition in practice -- "It's the key to tennis," he says -- it's become an unwelcome ritual in his life. Little-kids-turned-teen-champions breaking away from him in the first flush of big-time success.

By all accounts, however, this rite of passage is not about Lansdorp or even his style but more about the classic A-Star-is-Born syndrome and the newfound pressures of fame, fortune and all that goes with it. The elements are familiar. There is the suddenly wealthy family that was there long before the coach. There is a new sense of living in a bubble where everyone treats you like a king or queen. Then there is the growing entourage that often is jealous of and seeks to undermine a strong willed coach.

And that's part of the problem Lansdorp doesn't treat anybody like royalty -- especially not some unknown little kid he took under his wing and molded into a teenage champion.

All his stars eventually reacknowledged Robert's role in their success.

"Robert treats everyone the same way whether it's a guy off the street, an unranked player or the number one player in the world, and I respect him for that consistency," Teltscher said. "But sometimes it has caused him problems."

Maria: learning how to win without Robert.

Lansdorp says he has come to terms with the inevitability of breaking with his star students and holds no resentment. And he points out that it happens to most other tennis coaches too. Indeed, much of the gossip and intrigue on the pro tennis tour centers on coaching breakups and coaching hookups. Top ranked American Andy Roddick, for example, changed coaches like he changed socks over the last two years.

"It doesn't bother me any more," Lansdorp said, with a mixture of resignation, resentment and disbelief. "I don't understand it, but I accept it and I don't bitch about it."

He didn't mention it, but sooner or later they always come back into Robert's World. Austin did, and now generously credits him for much of her success every chance she gets. Eventually he also reconciled with Davenport and Sampras, the other two Palos Verdes Peninsula kids who blossomed into Grand Slam champions under his tough-love style of coaching.

"Sharapova will come back too," Teltscher said.

Teltscher views Lansdorp from a unique perspective: not only is he one of Lansdorp's true success stories -- "I was a scrawny little kid with not much game when Robert came to the Kramer Club," he said.

"I think in five years they'll be very good friends again," Teltscher said. "Sharapova just needs some time to get confidence that she can win without Robert."

The Last Dance

Back on the private courts in Palos Verdes, Lansdorp has finally decided on drastic action to drive home his point about Carolyn's backhand footwork. Her final step to the ball needs to be shorter so she can unload her power into the ball, not waste it by stepping too far.

Still in the game or retiring next month?

"You're starting to irritate the hell out of me," he tells Carolyn as he walks to the side of the court. "Come over here."

Liping Xie, Carolyn's mother, looks on approvingly from the sideline, where she is picking up balls so Lansdorp can concentrate on coaching. After all, this is what she and her husband pay $200 an hour for. Once Carolyn taught herself by watching TV and started beating top-ranked San Diego kids three and four years older, everyone started telling them they might have a tennis prodigy on their hands. But neither of the parents played tennis themselves so they asked around and learned there was only one coach for this kind of elite talent.

After three months of trying to contact him by phone and email, Lansdorp finally answered one of their emails and agreed to meet and evaluate Carolyn. So they made the two and a half hour drive to Palos Verdes.

"He said Carly is very talented and could be a champion if she worked hard and listened to him, but he made no promises," she said. "He said all he can do is show her the right way. The rest is up to her."

Now Lansdorp produces a long brown cloth that he ties around her ankles. "If you fall, it's your fault," he says as he ties it from ankle to ankle, designed to stretch only as far as he has deemed appropriate for her backhand.

She accepts it all in silence and soon is taking the shorter step and lashing backhands down the line and crosscourt with equal ease.

"That's about 200 percent better," Lansdorp says. "Maybe we should just tie your legs all the time."