The Academy is directed by long time tennis coach and former professional player, Rob Lapides. Rob has coached at the professional, collegiate, high school, and junior levels for over twenty years and has worked with a number of nationally and ITF ranked players.
He is a former junior stand out who went on to play at the professional level where he competed in numerous ATP satellite and qualifying events as well as a number of ATP main draw tournaments. Beyond traditional tennis program management, his expertise includes; Elite Level Training, Mental Toughness Development, Game Theory, Rapid Skills Development, and Training for Young Athletes, Pre-Schoolers, and Special Needs Students.
Rob is the original founder and director of several popular tennis programs and camps taking place in locations including; Millbrook Camp in Marshfield, MA, Grasshopper Tennis School in Zurich Switzerland, Dexter-Southfield School in Brookline, MA, and the Tennis Academy of Tokyo, where he's overseen tennis programming for thousands of junior players.
Beyond tennis academy training, Rob's recent elite coaching activities include working with players participating at the French Open, U.S. Open, Australian Open, Indian Wells, and many ATP/WTA tour level, Challenger, and Futures, events.
His most recent high school coaching activity included leading the Dexter-Southfield School Boys Varsity Tennis Team to New England Championship titles in three out of its first six years of fielding a varsity team, and producing four athletes who competed in Division I nationally ranked tennis programs, and one athlete competing on the ITF junior and professional tour.
Over the previous twelve months, junior players under Rob's tutelage have won over 170 USTA tournaments, with many achieving national rankings.
Rob hand-picks and personally trains and works with all Academy staff. Our coaches represent a variety of competitive and teaching backgrounds. Playing experience includes; ATP, WTA, ITF, USTA Professional, as well as national and international junior competitions such as Orange Bowl, Kalamazoo, and Junior Grand Slam events. In addition, most coaches have competed at the ITA/collegiate level and have represented college tennis programs at a variety of schools including; Amherst, Bates, Boston College, Boston University, Duke, Holy Cross, Georgia Tech, Harvard, Middlebury, MIT, Northeastern, Purdue, Quinnipiac, Stanford, Syracuse, Tufts, Cal-Berkeley, UMass, Miami, Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin, and Yale. Many of our coaches also gained teaching experience at a variety of world class tennis training academies in the U.S. and abroad.
Beyond tennis, Rob has enjoyed over 25 years of business success in the venture capital and private equity industry, has founded several commercial and non-profit ventures, sits on a number of commercial and philanthropic boards, and has traveled and worked in over forty countries for both tennis and non-tennis activities. After concluding his professional tennis playing career, he earned a Master's Degree in Business Administration from Babson College and has taught a number of undergraduate and graduate course in Economics, Finance, Investments, Multinational Management, and Entrepreneurship.
