It’s Win Win for This Unique, High-Performance Tennis Academy BY EMMY POWELL, NET NEWS EDITOR
Marcelo Ferreira has come a long way to build champions and a winning tennis program for special, young athletes.
40
NETNEWS NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021
Photos by Laura Barnard
M
arietta, Georgia is a far cry from his native Brazil, but Marcelo Ferreira has come a long way to build champions and a winning tennis program for special, young athletes at Windy Hill Athletic Club. His humble beginnings in Sao Paulo included working 10-hour days as a tennis academy ball boy. “Whenever I had a quick break, I would take my beat-up aluminum racquet and go hit against the wall,” recalls Ferreira. That is how he first learned to play tennis as his family could not afford a coach. Ferreira says he had a great childhood but didn’t get to travel the world, wear brand-name clothing, or go to fancy schools. “When I decided to come to America, my parents had to make some major financial sacrifices in order to pay for my SAT and other tests as I had failed several times, and my English was non-existent,” he said. The cost of the flight alone was so expensive that his parents sold their car to provide extra money for Ferreira to follow his passion for tennis. These hardships didn’t prevent Ferreira from becoming a great tennis player. He was recruited in 2002 to play at Georgia College in Milledgeville. He graduated in 2006 and stayed on for a few years to help coach the tennis team. “My years at Georgia College made me fall in love with this amazing country, and I decided that I wanted to stay here and become a college coach,” Ferreira said. That passion for tennis helped him become a student of the game as he felt he needed to think like a coach all the time. That way of thinking paid off. He went on to coach at top Division 1 collegiate tennis programs, including Texas Tech and Pepperdine. After years of coaching college teams, Ferreira says he realized that God was showing him a different path. He and his wife, Jesse, whose family lives in Auburn, Alabama, wanted to be closer to relatives so they moved back to Atlanta. “It is a mecca for tennis in America and in the world,” he said. “And for me, it had a special meaning because coming back to Georgia felt like my life would be going full circle. It’s where this entire adventure started.” He took a job with Universal Tennis Academy and worked out of Bitsy Grant and Chastain Park before he received his true calling. That true calling was to start molding the game and the minds of young tennis players before they reach college. In March of this year, Ferreira started a College Prep High Performance program that includes a full fitness component. His partnership with Tiago Kulaif, who has been in the fitness industry for decades, is one to admire. Kulaif is the Windy Hill fitness manager and conducts all of the strength and conditioning programs for the academy. “My approach is very specific to the game of tennis. I’ve become a student of the game to better understand the movement mechanics necessary to play at a high level,” he says.
