Oscar Wegner
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Oscar Wegner (born 1939 in Argentina), www.tennisteacher.com, is a former professional tennis player, now notable for his methods of teaching tennis which have influenced not only dozens of professionals who made it to the top, but created tennis booms around the world. Though his resume includes coaching players like Bjorn Borg (rated one of top five players of all time by Tennis Magazine), Guga Kuerten (2000 World Champion), and Vince Spadea, he prefers coaching coaches as the fastest way to make tennis one of the most popular sports in the world.
He played on the men's pro tennis tour from 1962 to 1968. Upon retiring to coach with the legendary Pancho Segura in Beverly Hills, California in 1968, Oscar became the first tennis coach to draw a distinction between the way the game of tennis was being taught versus the techniques of the top pros he had played with and observed closely. Using his background in engineering, his love of ping pong, and his study of martial arts, Oscar began developing simple new teaching methods for total beginners to copy the best strokes of the top pros he had observed, both in person throughout the 1950s and 60s, and from the earliest film of tennis greats as far back as the 1920s.
What's even more remarkable about Oscar's new teaching methods was that he claimed tennis was one of the simplest sports to learn to play if you used his techniques. Oscar’s instructions were contrary to those of the established teaching USA tennis teaching organizations such as the USPTA and PTR. The idea, as Oscar claimed, that it was easy to play like the pros flew in the face of conventional tennis theory, and he set about to prove it for the rest of his life.
These very different teaching methods were first tested on a group of Hollywood movie stars that included Charlton Heston, Dinah Shore, and Dean Paul Martin, who would later be featured in the 1975 movie Players where he played against the legendary Guillermo Vilas in a fictional Wimbledon Final. Oscar's revolutionary ideas did not catch on in the United States and were rejected by the USPTA in 1971, forcing Oscar to go to Spain where he would eventually be hired as the Junior Davis Cup Captain for the National Tennis School.
Wegner first caught the eye of tennis royalty in 1973 when tennis commentator/historian Bud Collins and others noticed a new breed of Spanish junior players who hit with open stance forehands and more topspin than had ever been seen before. The success and subsequent adoption of these new coaching techniques in Spain established the long existing Spanish tennis history at the top of the rankings that continues to this day.
Resistance to Oscar's methods upon returning to the USA continued by the two major US based teaching organizations, who were still convinced conventional tennis teaching methods would prevail. But word began to spread slowly based on the initial results in Spain that there was a new method to play using what Oscar called Modern Tennis Methodology. In 1982, he coached in Germany with great success which brought more attention. The eight years he spent helping Brazil becoming a world tennis power by developing players such as the young Guga Kuerten, Oscar's favorite pupil, a tall skinny player who would later become the 2000 World Champion, and his work on ESPN for Latin America helped created tennis booms all over South America, making tennis one of the most popular sports just behind soccer.
In 1989 Oscar put down his theories in a self published "tennis bible" book "You Can Play Tennis in Two Hours." Despite a horrible review by the USA Tennis magazine, who still believed conventional tennis teaching would win out, Oscar's book quickly made it's way to top coaches around the world whereupon tennis commentator Bud Collins noticed top Russian coaches were using it to base their methods on. Bud, convinced with his own eyes that Oscar's coaching theories had more merit than any he had ever seen, decided to write the foreword for a 1992 republication of the book by Thomas Nelson Publishers. In the book, Bud Collins, who is the games acknowledged historian as well as a noted commentator, advocated "you will find it worthwhile to dump the past and join Oscar in our tennis future."
Prime Network cable TV in the USA then featured a tennis show first called the New Tennis Magazine Show, and later Tennis Television from 1991 to 1995. Oscar appeared with host Brad Holbrook in a series of unedited video segments. Brad became such a fan of Oscar's revolutionary teaching techniques versus conventional tennis teaching that he was the first to call Oscar "the father of modern tennis”. It was these shows that were later released on five video tapes and three DVDs.
It was this controversial yet simple instructional shows that Richard Williams taped and used to teach his pre-teen daughters Venus and Serena. In another continent, a father in Thailand bought the videos to coach his 17 year old son who within five years was ranked as high as number ten in the world ... Paradorn Scrichaphan. Using Oscar’s 1989 book donated to the Russian Tennis Federation, Russian coaches proceeded to overhaul their teaching methods. The International Tennis Federation (ITF), the largest teaching organization based outside the USA, has modeled their teaching methods on the Spanish success that Oscar started, creating a worldwide grassroots tennis growth.
Despite continued resistance in the USA, Oscar's popularity quickly spread around the rest of the world during the 1990s, especially when he became the Spanish commentator for Grand Slams, Davis Cup, and professional tennis matches, for ESPN International. Oscar seized on the opportunity to influence an entire generation of Latin American and foreign players pointing out how the top pros really played, and that this is the easiest way to get to the top. During the late 1990s, ESPN International began broadcasting Tennis Tips with Oscar Wegner that appeared to the tune of two billion TV impressions in over 150 countries during high profile sporting events such as the NBA Finals and Super Bowls on overseas television. To this day those tennis tips have never been seen in the USA on TV which might partially explain why USA tennis has lagged behind the rest of the world in quantity of good players and in the sports popularity.
Oscar started www.tennisteacher.com in 1997 to document and convince the public that the teaching methods he developed make the game of tennis simple and more fun. He currently resides in Clearwater, Florida, mailing out thousands of DVDs and books, and helping coach coaches all over the world via email, telephone, and personal clinics to a spellbound public, which includes now a few thousand coaches using his system. Oscar hopes to stamp out conventional tennis teaching which he claims accounts for the decline of tennis' popularity in this country, while throughout the rest of the world the sport is thriving. His website is full of testimonies from some of the biggest names in tennis advocating his Modern Tennis Methodology versus conventional tennis teaching. In late 2004, the USPTA, which has resisted Oscar for over three decades, finally announced a five year phase out of conventional tennis teaching. In December of 2004, McGraw-Hill published a new book by Oscar Wegner, "Play Better Tennis in 2 Hours." Oscar may be reached via e mail at tennisoscar@aol.com or via toll free telephone, 1-888-999-0077.
