Robert Lansdorp obit

Robert Lansdorp, who coached Austin, Sampras, Davenport and Sharapova, dies at 85

“I think he’s the best coach to teach ground strokes in the history of the game,” said Tracy Austin. 

He was not on the list.

Robert Lansdorp, a longstanding and legendary tennis instructor who coached four players who became No. 1 in the world, has died at the age of 85. The news was reported by Tennis Channel’s Jon Wertheim on X.

Those four No. 1s—Tracy Austin, Pete Sampras, Lindsay Davenport and Maria Sharapova—collectively won 24 Grand Slam singles titles. Austin, Sampras and Davenport were all inducted in the International Tennis Hall of Fame, with Sharapova on track to be inducted next year.

“There was a point to all that torture,” Maria Sharapova wrote of Lansdorp in her autobiography. “Everything was done in the service of a philosophy; every drill had a reason, was taking the player somewhere.”

Lansdorp worked with many more ATP and WTA pros. By his estimation, at least 20 of the players he taught reached the Top 50. Notable Lansdorp students include Brian Teacher, Eliot Teltscher, Robert Van’t Hof, John Austin, Michael Joyce, Jeff Tarango, Derrick Rostagno, Justin Gimelstob, Eric Amend, Anastasia Myskina, Kimberly Po, Stephanie Rehe, Alexandra Stevenson, Anna Marie Fernandez and Melissa Gurney.

Always willing to speak his mind, Lansdorp crusaded for years against what he called “the Academy ball.” As he once explained, this high-arcing shot might well earn a player a college scholarship, but “it won’t make you a champion.” To Lansdorp, the greats struck the shots he taught in Southern California for more than 50 years: exceptionally forceful groundstrokes—hard, flat drives that penetrated the court with sustained depth and pace.

“Robert was a big part of my success,” said Austin. “You know he’s going to make you tougher, to make you stronger, to make you mentally tough.”

I think he’s the best coach to teach ground strokes in the history of the game.  - Tracy Austin

The cornerstone of Lansdorp’s method was relentless discipline and repetition. His students have spoken repeatedly of his masterful ability to feed balls with different paces, spins and locations, one fired after another from a shopping cart. As Sampras noted, “Robert taught me to hit properly.”

One of the most famed Lansdorp drills was simply called “20”—the student running all over the court to hit 20 straight shots the proper way. Reach 19 and miss? Then start over.

“There was a point to all that torture,” Sharapova wrote in her autobiography.  “Everything was done in the service of a philosophy; every drill had a reason, was taking the player somewhere.”

If on the outside Lansdorp came off as a drill sergeant, his gruffness covered up for a profoundly soft and generous soul, a paternal quality that endeared him to so many students.

“He was like a second father to me,” Davenport said in 2013. “We were super close. He was really gentle with me.”

Lansdorp was born in Dutch Indonesia on November 12, 1938. Rarely did he speak about his childhood. But Lansdorp did note that his father, a business executive, was twice taken to prison camps at gunpoint, first by the Japanese, then by Indonesians eager to purge their colonial overlords.

Amid World War II, Lansdorp and his mother would ride a horse and a buggy near the prison camp. Through barbed wire, young Robert was able to wave to his father. As a 2005 Los Angeles Magazine article about Lansdorp noted, “Fleeting connections, painful abandonment and the self-protective desire for independence also help to explain Lansdorp’s love of an individual sport like tennis and the uncompromising, paramilitary way in which he teaches it.”

Shortly after World War II, the Lansdorps relocated to Holland, where Robert began to play tennis. In 1960, his family moved to Southern California. Lansdorp enrolled at Pepperdine University and was an all-American tennis player in 1962.

Not skilled enough to be a world-class player, Lansdorp was a natural instructor—most notably when it came to assessing forehands and backhands. “I could instantly tell how people were hitting the ball right and how they were hitting it wrong,” he said.

After several years teaching at Morley Field, San Diego’s preeminent public tennis facility, Lansdorp in 1971 replaced Hall of Famer Vic Braden as head pro at The Jack Kramer Club. This was where Lansdorp first earned international prominence, most visibly when Austin burst on the scene in the late 1970s.

Near the end of the decade, Lansdorp relocated to a venue in nearby Torrance, the West End Racquet & Health Club. Later, he worked at Riviera Tennis Club, located in the Pacific Palisades.

Other instructors branched out—facilities, camps, teaching teachers and many more promotional approaches. Never Lansdorp. Like many a tennis icon, he remained highly individualistic.

“Everyone knows what I can do, don’t you think?” he said during the 2005 US Open. “But I’ll tell you this: There’ll never be anyone who can do it like me. Never.”