Former WTA Top-20 player Anne White recently made her long-awaited return to tennis official when she was named the new Director of Tennis at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club.
The former USC star who led the Trojans to an undefeated NCAA Championship season in the early 1980s, first contemplated the idea of getting back into the game full-time about three years ago when she visited one of her first tennis coaches Nick Bollettieri, who works at the world-famous tennis facility he founded at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., not far from where White’s parents live on Longboat Key.
Anne White with young students Lucas and Tyler Fugier.
The lunch meeting, and the subsequent tour of the expansive IMG campus, led White to the realization that she needed to do a documentary film on the long-time tennis coach who had started the academy back in the early 1970s with White his first out-of-state full-time boarder. With the help of Beverly Hills Tennis Club member and close friend and movie producer Jill Mazursky, White did exactly that.
The 89-minute documentary film “Love Means Zero” was directed by Jason Kohn and premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September. It will air on Showtime at the beginning of summer in 2018. The film will play at the Palm Springs International Film Festival Jan. 5 and 6 at the Anneberg Theatre, and again on Jan. 10 at Regal Cinemas. For more information, go to, click HERE.
“Nick got me back into the tennis world,” White said. “I saw the IMG Academy and what they had done there and it was just so unbelievable. It re-connected me with so many people I had lost touch with over the year and we interviewed guys like Jim Courier and Jimmy Arias talking about what life was like at the academy.”
After retiring from the pro tour at the age of 27, the West Virginia-native White spent the next 18 years in the luxury goods business.
Anne White with BHTC member Raymond Staples.
“I was traveling 125,000 miles a year,” White said. “I love LAX, but I don’t want to be at LAX two or three times a week. I had hit my wall.”
In 2016, White was inducted into the USTA Midwest Hall of Fame and is an honorary member at both the Los Angeles Tennis Club and Beverly Hills Tennis Club. She said the time was just right to settle down into her new role.
“I know a bunch of the people at the club and Russell Simpson, the pro for 17 years, was retiring,” White said. “They were looking for someone to take over and I thought this could really be fun.”
White describes the five-court Beverly Hills TC as a “very, very special place.” It’s in the middle of a neighborhood and not many people even it’s there. “It’s a little gem, and very low-key,” she said. “Pancho Segura was the pro there for years and there’s just such a great sense of community there.”
White spends several hours a day on court with adult members and juniors and said her goals are all about “enhancing the club.”
She said former ATP touring pro Vince Spadea stopped in recently, and her old coach Bollettieri even put on a recent clinic and met with members later in the evening for drinks and a Q&A session.