About
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Oscar Wegner is one of the most known
tennis coaches in the world. After playing internationally in
the 1960s, Oscar undertook a coaching career and developed a
remarkable methodology that makes tennis an easy sport to learn.
Tennis, Oscar says, is far simpler than it looks.
Oscar's coaching concepts have had tremendous impact globally,
earning him, from Brad Holbrook, host/producer of the Tennis
Television Show in the USA, the designation of "the father of
modern tennis". Oscar Wegner's breakthrough techniques, which he
initially taught in the National Tennis School in Spain, then in
Florianopolis, Brazil, where Oscar coached a group of young
players that included "Guga" Kuerten until he was 14, later on
TV in the USA, and finally broadcast worldwide through ESPN
International, have produced top players in the USA and in
countries as far as Russia, Thailand, South America, Spain, and
the Far East. Among those are the famous Williams sisters, whose
father Richard learned from Oscar's televised lessons the
techniques that put them on short notice on top of the tennis
world, and Paradorn Srichaphan, whose father coached him aided
by Oscar's videos.
After a wonderfully productive decade on television, first with
the Tennis Television Show on the USA's Prime Network (now Fox
Sports), and then on ESPN International and the Pan American
Sports Network as a tennis commentator for their Latin American
shows, including Wimbledon, the French Open and the Australian
Open, Oscar switched career gears and decided to tackle changing
the coaching of the game at its grass roots level. He is
presently based in Clearwater, Florida, working on a massive
campaign to reform the American conventional tennis teaching
system and to take tennis and its popularity in the USA to a
brand new level.
Oscar and co-anchor Alina Balbiers on PSN
A native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Wegner traded his
engineering studies for a far more exciting career in tennis.
From 1963 to 1967 he played the International Tennis Circuit in
the United States, Europe, South America, Africa and the
Caribbean. While playing and practicing with many of the top
players of the 50's and 60's and some who would become the top
players in the 70's, i.e. Roy Emerson, John Newcombe, Tony Roche
and Manuel Santana, he compared notes with them and began his
search into the secrets of their success.
A dedicated world traveler, he has served as teaching pro and
tennis director for confederations, cities, clubs, academies,
schools and camps in many countries.
Wegner launched his coaching career in 1968, first as an
assistant to the incomparable Pancho Segura at the famous
Beverly Hills Tennis Club in California, a job that included
daily exchanges with former World Champion Pancho Gonzalez. It
was there that he made the crucial observation that tennis was
being taught one way while the pros played in an entirely
different way.
Wegner set out to resolve this discrepancy. His research led him
to isolate the actual basis of tennis that apply to any player
at any level, whether a pro, an intermediate player, or a
beginner. He developed, as well, a teaching methodology to
communicate those basics to players and coaches alike. This
approach, from its inception, has produced remarkable results,
not only in Wegner's hands, but by other coaches as well.
In 1973 he served as the Junior Davis Cup Captain for Spain and
as one of the National coaches for the Spanish Federation’s
Tennis School in Barcelona. That country was then at a
crossroads in terms of which direction its tennis instruction
should take. Wegner's views in favor of a modern approach to
coaching the game prevailed. To this day, the basics he laid out
remain the major feature of Spain's international success.
Guga, Oscar and Marcio
From 1982 through 1990 Oscar put in place an incredibly
successful program on the island of Florianopolis, in Southeast
Brazil. This one program has produced many outstanding players,
including Gustavo "Guga" Kuerten, winner of the 1997, 2000 and
2001 French Open, number 1 in the world in 2000, Marcio Carlsson,
winner, with Guga, of the 1993 World Junior Davis Cup, Diego
Cubas, number 1 in the 16 years old category in South America,
Bruno Rosa, number 2 in the same category, Maria Fernanda Alves,
number 1 Brazilian Junior and touring pro, and many others.
In 1992 Wegner published the revolutionary book "You Can Play
Tennis in Two Hours".
From 1991 through 1995 Wegner was featured weekly on the Tennis
Television Show, where he exposed the fallacies of conventional
tennis teaching and the true data on how to best teach and play
the game. Those break-through shows are recorded in five (5)
hour long instructional videos available through this web site.
Serena, Richard, and Venus Williams
While watching those shows in the early 1990's, a Richard
Williams of Los Angeles, California, decided to apply Wegner's
teachings on his daughters Venus and Serena. The results were
phenomenal, and even without participating in formal
competition, the two youngsters quickly showed their
championship qualities, securing important financial
endorsements that facilitated their future careers.
The results of Wegner's system, fully documented and endorsed by
top players, teaching pros, tennis directors and officials, some
of which are recorded in this website, makes tennis an easy
sport to learn at any age.
Wegner's approach to modern tennis teaching has truly closed the
huge gap between the way tennis is conventionally taught and the
way the top pros play.
Wegner's 40 instructional vignettes, both in English and in
Spanish, were broadcast by ESPN International from June 1997
through September 1999 several times daily in more than 150
countries around the world, including airings during the Super
Bowl, NBA Finals, Stanley Cup Finals, US Open Golf, etc,
generating over two billion impressions on television worldwide.
Wegner's web-site has already had over half a million visits.
This international exposure, coupled with Wegner's seminars for
the United States Tennis Association during five US Open Tennis
Championships and two Intercollegiate Tennis Association coaches
conventions, and the national distribution of Wegner's book in
the early 90's in the United States, have revolutionized the
entire field of tennis instruction.
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