Training like a proYutaka Nakamura, director of tennis performance at IMG's Bollettieri Tennis Academy, created these drills for Jesse Levine.
The drills are for movement, power, injury prevention and ''energy system development,'' where muscle groups are pushed to near-maximal output for a given period of time.Most of the exercises can be done with a light medicine ball and a wall, or with a partner.Lunge and throw: In a slight crouch, holding medicine ball at chest height, lift left leg; hold for a second, then drop the leg back into a deep lunge. With maximum force and quickness, snap a chest pass at the wall or at your partner. Catch and repeat. Switch legs.Sideways lunge and throw: In a deep lunge with left leg back, hold medicine ball at chest height. Rotate torso back and throw on the forward snap. Catch and repeat. Switch legs.Wall dribble: Standing at a comfortable distance from the wall with right arm partially extended above your head, bounce the medicine ball at the 12 o'clock position. Catch with your right hand and repeat closer to the 1 o'clock position. Continue until you've reached the 3 o'clock position, then work your way back up, making 15 throws total. Switch arms for next set.Slam: Holding the medicine ball at chest height with both hands, lift the ball as high as possible above your head. You may arch your back slightly and lift onto your toes as you do this. Slam the ball down as hard as possible. Catch and repeat.-- NICHOLAS SPANGLER
Jesse Levine, who at 20 is the 163rd-best men's tennis player in the world, enters this forest. He is short and well-built but has the look of a man who's never dunked in his life. Never benched 225 30 times, or any time. Just a guy. He talks with one of the baseliners about her new puppy. It is the size of a water bottle, apparently.
End of conversation. It is time to work. The Sony Ericsson Open on Key Biscayne, one of the biggest tournaments in Levine's young career, is days away.
For the next hour his heart rate will hover between 157 and 180 beats per minute (about 2 ½ times a resting heart rate). He will run on the treadmill, then switch to an exercise circuit that builds strength, agility and anaerobic capacity.
Levine has done something like this almost every day for the last four years. The goal: Break into the world's tennis elite -- the 100 top-ranked players -- by the end of 2008, when he turns 21.
STAYING FOCUSED
He started playing when he was 7, became one of the best juniors in the country by 13, and quit other sports when he was 15.
He left Boca Raton Prep after his sophomore year because the school calendar did not fit his tournament schedule, which demanded a lot of international travel. He finished high school, online, while training at the IMG campus. He has lived here since he was 16.
The only significant interruption was last spring for a season at the University of Florida, where he played No. 1 seed and went 24-1 before dropping out, six months after he enrolled, to join the professional circuit.
He has never smoked a cigarette, never suffered an injury and never, from the time he was 15, gone longer than a week away from training.
Can he imagine a life outside tennis, without the structure of tournaments, training, travel? What would he do with himself? He thinks awhile before answering.
``Probably I'd be a professional golf player. That or soccer.''
Now a high-five from his strength coach, Yutaka Nakamura. Nakamura's job is to make Levine -- 5 foot 9 and 150 pounds, 20 pounds and several inches smaller than most of his opponents -- quicker, stronger and fiercer on the court.
''Explode!'' along with all its conjugations, gerunds and participles is one of Nakamura's favorite words. When Levine grabs an eight-pound medicine ball, lunges and flings hard against the wall, he doesn't fling hard enough: ''Explosiveness!'' Nakamura shouts.
Explosive variations follow. Standing perpendicular to the wall, Levine lunges low as if to pick up a half-volley. Hips, torso, arm and hand crack whip-like. He is flinging very hard now. When the ball hits the wall it makes the flat pann of a boxer's heavy bag hit hard. Explosive pushups follow. Levine does the circuit over and over, without pause, for the rest of the hour.
''In the modern style of tennis,'' Nakamura says, ``there's very little time to set up and recover. We use the open stance. We incorporate the legs and the trunk to produce power.''
The world's 163rd-best player is sweating lightly, breathing deep but easily.
He wins more than he loses but wins nowhere near as often or big as he did in the junior ranks. He lives in an apartment, not a mansion, and flies coach. Since January, he has earned $47,626, which should just about cover living expenses and airfare. He gets all the Nike gear and Wilson racquets he can use but no money for using them. A scholarship covers the $31,100 a year IMG's Bollettieri Tennis Academy charges for coaching, sports psychology, nutritional advice and strength training.
He is not guaranteed entry into ATP Tour events, the sort that dispense six-figure checks and get broadcast on television. He has to fight his way in by winning the less prestigious Challenger events (held in unlikely places like Bosnia or Morocco or even Sunrise, where Levine made an early-round exit last week).
One exception is the IMG-owned Sony Ericsson Open -- the so-called Fifth Slam -- where Levine, an IMG client, received a main-draw wild card this year. Just one win at the Ericsson would mean the biggest paycheck of his career -- about $10,000.
An hour is up. Levine drinks one small cup of water, grabs his immense racquet bag and walks out to the practice court.
SPARRING PARTNER
His practice partner for the day is Xavier Malisse, the former world No. 19 in 2002, who is now at 350.
Malisse arrives, beautiful blonde in tow. She sits courtside in giant sunglasses. The weather is very sunny and very windy. The players greet each other and commence hitting metronomically down the middle, slowly at first, then when they are warm and fluid, faster, until they are hitting well and truly hard, each stringbed to ball contact a heavy percussive thwock the phenoms hear from three courts over.
They drift over until there are 20 of them outside the fence. Inside the fence, three coaches whisper tactics when the rally breaks.
Malisse is taller and heavier and hits a flatter ball than Levine but Levine swings very, very fast. His stroke is a coiling and uncoiling that starts at his knees, runs through the hips and ends with the tip of the racquet almost over his shoulder. This is serious torque.
He does not ''make it look easy.'' He is grunting and sweating too much for that. But he does make it look almost slow. In the two thirds of a second it takes the ball to travel from baseline to baseline he has already turned and drawn his racquet back. He is already waiting.
His balls are heavy and deep and seem to be jamming Malisse, which frustrates the bigger man. The Ericsson is just days off for him, too, and soon his racquet flies spinning into the windscreen. Later, after a miss, he pulls his shorts down. The girlfriend laughs, seeing his underwear.
Gabriel Jaramillo, the tennis director, walks over. He likes what he sees from Levine, likes working with him day after day. ''If I didn't think the guy had it in him to be top 10 in the world, I wouldn't do it,'' he says. ``I'd find someone else.''
GOTTA BELIEVE
But the coach wants something more than talent and hard work from the player. ``Everybody's good, everybody tries hard. It's really how much you believe in yourself. And he needs to be meaner.''
He talks about Agassi, Sampras. They knew they were the best and treated their opponents accordingly. Which is to say, diplomatically, not always well.
Sometimes, he thinks, Levine is too respectful, or satisfied to be merely very good. ''A lot of players get complacent,'' he says. ``Those are the ones stuck in the 100s.''
'If he loses a tight match against the No. 15 in the world, I don't want him coming off saying `I played well' -- no, that's the wrong attitude, buddy. I want you coming off pissed . . . That's bull- - - -. I don't want to hear it again.''
Maybe it's just a difference of style.
The 163rd-best tennis player in the world is reached on his phone a few days later. He's a little nervous about the tournament, but in a good way. And he takes issue with his coach, at least on this matter. ''Obviously, you have to believe in yourself, that you're better than the guy you're going up against,'' he says. ``But you don't have to show it.''
Then he excuses himself, because he has to go practice.
