Like Father, Like Son ft. Orlando & Zander Bravo

ParentingAces - The Junior Tennis and College Tennis Podcast

Welcome to Season 10, Episode 38, of the ParentingAces Podcast, a proud member of the Tennis Channel Podcast Network. This week, Lisa chats with Father-Son duo, Orlando and Alexander Bravo.

Orlando grew up in Puerto Rico where he was first introduced to tennis. As his game developed and he maximized his competitive opportunities in and around his island home, Orlando realized he needed a more vigorous training environment and moved to the Bollettieri Academy as a teen. He was there during the heyday of American Tennis, living and training with Jim Courier, Andre Agassi, Michael Chang, and other US Tennis Stars. However, he discovered his game was better suited to the College Tennis arena rather than the professional tour, and Orlando pursued both tennis and academics as a member of the Brown University Men's Tennis Team.

Orlando went on to further his academics at Stanford University where he earned both a business and a law degree before becoming Puerto Rico's youngest billionaire as the founder and managing partner of Thoma Bravo, a private equity investment firm.

Zander is a rising high school Senior who fell in love with tennis at a young age. However, he also fell in love with other sports before making the decision to focus his energies solely on tennis. He entered his Junior year of high school with the goal of playing at an Ivy League college as his father had done. However, his tennis game wasn't yet at the level where he was attracting the attention of those Ivy coaches.

Zander, with his parents' blessing, chose to move from San Francisco to South Florida to train with coach Todd Widom. After only a few months with Todd, Zander's game improved to a level where multiple Ivy League coaches were looking at him. Earlier this summer, Zander got the offer from his dad's alma mater and accepted. He will be playing at Brown University beginning Fall 2022.

As always, a big thank you to Morgan Stone, aka STØNE, for our intro and outro music this season. You can find more of his music at SoundCloud.com/stonemuzic. If you’re interested in House Music, please be sure to check out his social media channels on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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