The pre-E.T.A. reputation: Hopman, Bollettieri, and the riding-crop resignation

texture · UNDATED (pre-E.T.A. coaching career, B.S. era; Winter Park FL and Sarasota FL)

• When: UNDATED (Schtitt's U.S. coaching career before E.T.A., B.S. era; "just lately" before the E.T.A. hire for the Bollettieri incident)
• What: Before E.T.A., Schtitt ran the "infamous old crop-and-epaulette Harry Hopman program in Winter Park FL" (where prorector Mary Esther Thode was his pupil). He had "just lately been asked to resign from the staff of a Nick Bollettieri camp in Sarasota because of a really unfortunate incident involving a riding crop." His corporal-punitive reputation preceded him; the novel hedges that the stories "must have been pumped up out of all sane proportion." "For historico-national reasons" he "has always had a soft place inside for anyone who seems even marginally politically repressed."