rewrite this content and keep HTML tags
TEMPE, Ariz. — Frank Brennan Jr. is asked it every spring.
“During every NCAA Championships, people ask me, ‘What do you miss most since you’ve retired?’”
It’s nearly impossible to settle on just one thing. A 21-year tenure as the Stanford Women’s head coach, in which he won 10 team championships and sported a remarkable 510-50 record, is replete with memories, relationships and accolades he could easily point to.
Brennan, inducted into the ITA Women’s Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame in 2006, delves into all that and more in our Q&A with him in which he discusses his wide-ranging impact on college tennis and his love for the Cardinal.
What initially led you to Stanford?It’s sort of a crazy story. I grew up in New Jersey and I always tell this story. The first book I ever read was the Bob Mathias story, who was an Olympic decathlete, two-time Olympic champion from Stanford. I read that book and thought, This guy is the greatest athlete in the world. Stanford, I was just sort of fascinated with it. There was also a tennis player by the name of Jon Douglas who was also a football player. He was a guy I looked up to. He was older than I was, and I looked up to him because he played football and tennis and I played other sports besides tennis. I thought, That’s cool. He’s like me, not playing just tennis. I played football in high school and a little bit of basketball. I just sort of followed Stanford after that. The main reason I got to Stanford was because of Lele Forood, who was my protege since she was 10 years old. She was making a decision between Florida and Stanford. I said, ‘You’ve got to go to Stanford. It’s the greatest school out in northern California.’ I had never visited up to that point, but I was heavily in the Stanford camp at that point. She did go to Stanford and become a star and that sort of further enraptured me with Stanford. One day, I was in New Jersey at my tennis camp and Lele came in off the pro tour, and she said, ‘You know the job at Stanford just opened up.’ I said, ‘Really?’ I move at glacial speed, but my wife moves a lot faster. She said, ‘You’ve always wanted to be a college coach and this is a school you love. Why don’t you apply?’ She got me off my butt, I sent off my tennis camp brochure and sent it to Stanford. They called me out for a visit. Dick Gould, the longtime successful men’s coach, was an acquaintance of mine. He’d come to Florida where I was living at the time and was recruiting one of my male players to come out to Stanford to play on the John McEnroe team. He was in my corner, I felt, so that was a pretty good deal.
When you were offered the job, how long did it take for you to accept it? Was it an immediate yes?I was smart enough to clear it with my wife. At the end of the interview, there were two or three other people being interviewed. I didn’t know I got the job until I got back to Jersey. Camp was over for us and we were out on the Jersey Shore and I got the telephone call from Stanford that I got the job. I had already discussed it with my wife that if they gave me the job, I’d take it. She was actually more for it than I was and I was 110 percent for it. It was a pretty easy decision.
How did your experience running these youth camps in New Jersey translate to coaching in college?Not much at all really. I was a teaching pro for private clubs for a long time. I was fortunate enough to have six, or so, national junior champions. I was already coaching at that high level and had girls who went off and were playing pro tennis. What I didn’t have was that experience of running a team and running a team practice. The Xs and the Os were in my DNA, but when I got to Stanford, I showed up the first day with a tennis racket in my hand and talked to the girls and didn’t know what I was doing. Of course, one girl yells, ‘Coach, can you look at my serve?’ Another girl yells, ‘Coach, can you look at my backhand?’ ‘Coach, I can’t get my forehand in.’ I quickly put down my racket and picked up a clipboard and started to run practice that way. I pretty much only got to hit a couple times a year when we were doing one-on-ones. That was the big difference for me, just learning how to deal with 10, 12 people at a time over when I did private lessons with one at a time.
How long until you felt comfortable being a college coach running a program?It didn’t take very long. I was used to dealing with young girls at a very high level. I had been in tennis my whole life. My father was a coach. It came pretty naturally to me. I had a very good mentor at Stanford in [men’s coach] Dick Gould. We shared an office, so if I had any questions, I could just turn around and ask Dick, ‘What do you do on Thursdays? What’s a good drill for doubles? What do you do when 10 girls show up and all want to work on something different?’ He was a great mentor for me in the beginning and saved me a lot of learning time.
You were 510-50 in your career. What went into the preparation for matches?We worked hard all the time. What I would do about a day before the matches, I’d get the girls together a day before at practice and say, ‘This is dealer’s choice. Whoever wants to play a set, I’ll have you guys play a set together. Whoever wants to drill some ground strokes, I’ll put you together. Whoever wants to have me look at their serve, I’ll do that. We’ll mix and match over the course of the day.’ I thought that was important because right before a match – my team was unique in that we were so darn good and these girls were all national champions at some point, whether they won the national 16s or 18s or the Indoors, Outdoors, hard courts. They were a hard bunch to deal with who had strong opinions on things, so I thought that was the best way to handle that. Some girls wanted to do some drilling, no sets, while other girls wanted to do no drilling and some sets. I gave them the freedom to do that on the day before [matches].
You won the national championships 10 times. Is there one that sticks out as most memorable for you?The first one was really something. There was a wall at Stanford at our stadium and the men’s team had put up eight national championships on that wall. The women had one and it hadn’t been the NCAA yet, it was still AIAW, which nobody knew what that was. You had to explain that it was the NCAAs. Anyway, when I got our team on that wall for the first time, that was the NCAAs in 1982 – the first NCAA Women’s Championship – that was really special. I’ll never forget it. I remember every minute of it. The other one that was very big was when we had a drought of about four years in the late 1990s. When we won again in 1997, that was pretty special. That was the first one with my son as an assistant coach. I remember when it was over, I said, ‘OK, we’re going to order [championship] rings next week. What do you think we should get? The girls like smaller, more conservative rings. What do you think?’ He said, ‘I want a big one. I want the biggest one we could afford.’ ‘You know what, you’re right.’ After winning a lot of championships – we won six in a row just before that – it was sort of taken for granted. It was stupid. When we didn’t win for four years and we finally won in 1997, it was like, Wow, let’s get a big ring. That was special, especially because he was with me for that. The last one in 1999 was very special because we had no thought about winning – or at least I didn’t. We had four freshmen out of six starters and they were good, but the Florida team was ranked No. 1, undefeated at that point. My freshmen were just young enough to know that they were not supposed to win. They went out there and played a fantastic match against a really tough, experienced Florida team. It was an epic match where we had two rain delays, we were down match point in two singles matches and came back and won them both. It was one of those storybooks where if you wrote it and gave it to Hollywood, they’d say, ‘This is unbelievable. Come back with something more believable.’ Two rain delays, so you can imagine how long this match took. By the way, we were in Florida in Gainesville. The match seemed to start at noon and ended when it was dark because of the rain delays. That was very special.
You talk about those four freshmen you bring in who start right away in 1999. Obviously, you were bringing in top talent year after year. What was your recruiting pitch to get these players to come to Stanford?We had a good reputation. We had a good track record. Stanford is an outstanding school. I let the school sell itself. I didn’t push too hard. I did a lot of tough recruiting. But it was like anything else where you get a couple girls just because they know about Stanford, about our winning tradition. Those special girls who play No. 1 or No. 2, it’s a battle. You bring them in for a visit – I’d always try to get them to come to Stanford last. I had them meet the team, didn’t want to show them anything that wasn’t real. We didn’t put them up in a hotel, we put them up in the rooms with the girls, let them go to some parties, eat in the dorm, go to some classes, let them come to practice so they can see what it’s really like. If they like it, we can do business and if they don’t like it, I’m not going to lie and say, ‘We’ll do something special for you.’ Recruiting was difficult because of our academic standards, but that was something we signed on for. If you come to coach at Stanford, you’re just not going to get everybody you want. You’ll get very few, but you have to find the best ones.
Was the recruiting aspect of the job something you enjoyed?I did. We had a great product and I really enjoyed the kids – even the ones who didn’t come. I didn’t waste too much time. I was pretty lucky with admissions because I had a friend over there [in the office] … I didn’t have to waste a lot of time with girls who I knew weren’t going to get in. Once they got in, I had to convince them that we were the place to come to in order to get the best education and the best tennis. One of my competitors was pro tennis. It wasn’t always a decision for the girls to decide between UCLA and Duke and Stanford, but it was sometimes between Stanford and turning pro. When they played some pro tennis tournaments as juniors, you sort of held your breath that they didn’t do anything too spectacular. Then, they’d make that phone call and say, ‘Coach, thanks for everything but I’m turning pro. I just beat the No. 28 player in the world and my dad and I think I can do it.’ I always said I watched their results with mixed feelings. I wanted them to do well, but I didn’t want them to do that well.
It’s one thing to win a national championship, but to keep doing it, how do you ensure your program can sustain success?Number one, you don’t get satisfied. Number two, every team has new players on it. It’s not the exact same team every year. As I said, that last year in 1999, we had four new girls. They were pretty hungry to win a national championship because they had never won one. For them, it was brand new and they didn’t need any extra motivation. We just tried to keep the recruiting – the old saying is, if they can’t play, I can’t coach. I did have great players. My hope was that I didn’t screw them up. We had good recruits coming in every year. Coaching talent is not easy. If you have three or four national champions, somebody has to play No. 1 and somebody has to play No. 3. You have to convince your No. 3, a national champion last year, that she’s going to be better off at No. 3 and that’s where she deserves to be. There’s a lot of psychology involved.
You’ve since remained very involved in the program because of your son. What has that meant to you?Well, before my son, it was Lele. When I retired all those years ago, I made sure Lele was in place to get the job and of course she got the job and the rest was history. I mentioned I coached Lele since she was 10, so she was like a daughter to me. I was very close to the program for all those years. I didn’t want to be too close because I didn’t want to get in her way. I thought that’d be a very bad thing to happen, so I kept my distance but we went to a lot of matches. My son was her assistant at that point, so obviously we were very involved at that level. When she retired this past year and Frankie took over, that was really a special thing. It was touch-and-go for a while. We didn’t know where Stanford was going to go [with the job search] … Frankie’s eminently qualified, he’s a national assistant coach of the year and he was with all these teams that won these championships. When they followed through on that and made him coach, that was a big relief.
What do you think about the team now and the direction they’re headed under Frankie?[Frankie] waited 24 years. He was the assistant coach for a couple of years and then the associate head coach for 15, 16 years. He’s been waiting for this opportunity. When it finally came, two girls turned pro, another girl got injured and was going to miss most of the season, another girl – I mean, these are all top-four – got injured and played three matches and her season was over because she hurt her hand. At one point, he was playing two walk-ons. No. 3 doubles was a total walk-on team and No. 5 and 6 singles were walk-ons. It was tough. Then, there was the whole idea of the ACC [move] and different courts and travel. I think he’s done an amazing job. He’s won every match he could possibly win. The only matches he lost were against teams quite a bit better than him. He loses 4-3 to Duke with two walk-ons. That’s just unbelievable. I’m really proud of the team and he’s very proud of the team. I’m very proud of him because he withstood all of this adversity and somehow still managed to pull off these victories. Literally, at one point, another girl showed up with a wisdom tooth that had to be pulled and she passed out in the locker room before the match. It was like, what else could happen? Lightning? A lightning strike? He’s gone through so much and they were in the Sweet Sixteen. He’s got the full package, he’s a great Xs and Os coach, but he’s also a very good motivator. He runs a little hot, but boy, he loves the girls and they love him. He would take a bullet for them and they would take a bullet for him. He’s getting the most out of them.
Is there a career highlight that stands out for you?During every NCAA Championships, people ask, ‘What do you miss most since you’ve retired?’ I just miss the celebrations. We won a lot. We won a lot of championships. Those celebrations were special and memorable. Most of the families were there. When we won, everybody was involved and it was really special. It’s hard to pinpoint one. That 1999 team that won absolutely shocked me. One of my former players, Patty Fendick, who was the coach at the time at Texas, saw me just before that Florida final and was looking pretty happy. I was a wreck. I thought this Florida team could really beat us up pretty badly. Patty looked at me and said, ‘Stanford’s going to win. Right, Frank?’ We’re going to win, right?’ I’m thinking, God bless you having that kind of faith. I didn’t quite feel that way, but I said, ‘Of course we’re going to win. We’re Stanford.’ And what a pleasant surprise. They always ask which championships are your favorites. They’re usually the ones that are the surprises. If you’re supposed to win and you’re undefeated and you end up winning, it’s more of a relief than a pleasant surprise. When you’re not supposed to win and you somehow pull it off – which we did two or three times – those are really special. It’s such a surprise.
You alluded to it a bit, but furthermore, what do you miss most about being Stanford’s head coach?Getting to know the girls. It’s a small, intimate team. The relationships are different than with football, where you have 100 guys out there. I’d run into these girls or get acquainted with them when they were 15, 16 and get familiar with them and their hometown and who their coach is. Eventually, I’d get to meet their family and meet grandma and pet the dog. The girl ends up coming to Stanford and you get her through her first year and maybe her first boyfriend, or in Stanford’s case, her first ‘C’. Those are usually traumatic. You get a [high school] valedictorian who comes in and they get a ‘C’ in chemistry and they’re crying in practice. You can’t figure out why. They just got the first ‘C’ of their life. But sometimes, the parents break up and different things and you take these kids through it all. Probably the greatest compliment to me was when more than a couple of girls said that they wouldn’t have gotten through Stanford without me. That really shocked me. When I think back and what I went through with them, which had little to do with tennis, you think, That was really special. That was nice that I was able to do that and be in that position. My son is in that same position now. He’s performing that same role that I performed. That’s what I miss. Getting to know the girls and getting them through that difficult period in their lives from 18-22.
