Andy Brandi went 460-43, including 196-6 in SEC playing and won three NCAA championships during his 17 seasons coaching UF's women.
Remembering Andy Brandi (1952-2024)
Saturday, February 10, 2024 | Women's Tennis, Chris Harry
Share:
By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Old-school University of Florida folks will recall the old multipurpose O'Connell Center and the 200-meter indoor track that encircled the second level. One day, a good three decades ago, Jeremy Foley walked into the facility and happened upon the women's tennis team doing sprint work. The UF athletic director stopped and watched as Andy Brandi, the hard-driving and famously fit coach of those Lady Gators, was running with but trailing (barely) the pack, and doing so with a warning.
"Don't let me catch you!" Brandi yelled. Andy Brandi
They never did, nor would have dared. Brandi pushed his players to greatness and the results spilled out across the UF tennis complex in the form of dozens of championships and All Americans during a spectacular and generational Hall-of-Fame career.
Chasing greatness was what Brandi's life was about and it was a chase that ended Thursday when Brandi, 72, died in Boca Raton following an illness. He left behind his wife, Nancy, son Chris and an international tennis community that adored him.
"Simply put, Andy Brandi was a winner in every sense of the word," said Foley, who was named UF athletic director in March 1992 and was rewarded with his first NCAA title on the job by Brandi's women about two months later. "He was one of my all-time favorite coaches here."
And the winningest coach, by percentage, ever to lead a Florida team.
Over the course of Brandi's 17 seasons, Florida won 14 regular-season SEC titles (and lost just six league matches), 10 conference tournament crowns and captured national team championships in the 1992, '96 and '98 seasons. His won-loss record at UF was an astounding 460-43 (a winning percentage of .914), including 196-6 in SEC dual matches (.970). Brandi, a 2006 "Gator Great" and inductee into the UF Athletics Hall of Fame, was the first Florida coach to lead one program to three NCAA titles.
"He was a fabulous coach, first and foremost," said Andrea Farley, a four-year standout for Brandi in the early 90s. "But Andy also was a great teacher in life, as well. A great mentor and person."
Brandi retired in 2001 to return to coaching the professional ranks. In 2017, he came out of retirement to join his son as co-head coach for the LSU men's team, a post he held for five seasons. The last two years he had been coaching part-time in South Florida, but Brandi's brand long ago had gone global.
"Andy Brandi was a giant among tennis coaches and a wonderful human being," International Tennis Association Chief Executive Officer Dr. Timothy Russell said. "His developmental prowess as a teacher was celebrated throughout his distinguished career, and his genuine fondness for people as a mentor and friend will be remembered by all who knew him."
When he left UF 22 years ago, he did not leave the cupboard bare. Quite the contrary.
"Everything he put in place here — with the way the players worked, their attitude, professionalism and the way the community viewed women's tennis — was here when I arrived, all thanks to Coach Brandi," said current UF women's coach Roland Thornqvist, who in succeeding Brandi has guided the team to four more NCAA crowns in his 23 seasons. "They were enormous shoes to fill and I underestimated that. I was young and full of vigor, but it was a huge legacy he left behind."
Thornqvist honored that legacy the only way Brandi would have wanted: By building on the championship-level foundation he left behind.
UF athletic director Jeremy Foley (right) presents Andy Brandi (left) with his "Gator Great" plaque during his 2006 induction into the UF Athletics Hall of Fame.
Brandi was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1952 and attended Trinity College in San Antonio, Texas, where he played on the men's tennis team and turned to coaching after graduating with a business degree. He spent a short time playing on the pro circuit before turning to coaching. He was 33 years old and tutoring the likes of Kathy Rinaldi, Carling Bassett and other professionals as executive director of the IMG Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Fla., when the Gators came calling to take over a program that had been a Southeastern Conference and regional power, but had been bounced early in its three NCAA Tournament appearances.
That changed.
In his third season, Brandi had two Gators, Shaun Stafford and Halle Cioffi, facing off in the NCAA singles final (Stafford won). That same season, and for the next four thereafter, Florida advanced to either the NCAA semifinal or the national title match and lost each time.
Through it all, Brandi maintained an uncompromising standard during practice; one that sometimes chased players away.
"We'd practice on one set of courts and the men on the other," Farley said. "Sometimes they'd come up to us after practice and say, 'How do you all do it?' "
They had no choice. Brandi's competitive nature would take over. He became close friends with UF national-championship swim coach Randy Reese. The two schemed to room tennis players and swimmers together to get war stories about which team — Andy's or Randy's — was working harder. Steve Spurrier once cut a spring practice short to take his football team to Linder Stadium to show his players how fiercely Brandi's teams competed.
Farley recalled that when the SEC began tracking grade-point averages in each sport, it sparked Brandi to start making study halls into competitions against other UF teams. When Brandi told a player to be on the court for practice at 5:30 a.m., he intentionally would show up at 5:20 to make a statement.
"He could make a sport out of anything," Farley said.
But on the court, the Gators could not get over that national-championship hump.
Then a young freshman named Lisa Raymond, by way of Norristown, Pa., showed up.
Lisa Raymond (left), with Andy Brandi after winning the 1992 Rolex singles title, is considered one of (if not the) great player in women's college tennis history.
"My decision to go to the University of Florida was based solely on wanting to play for Andy Brandi and the two years I spent there were the two best years of my life," Raymond said. "He taught me about the work ethic and discipline it would take to be a champion. For other players — a lot of other players — how he did it did not work, but Andy saw things in me that I didn't see in myself and everything for me took off. Once you earned Andy's respect, you were golden with him."
It took eight years of knocking on the NCAA title door — usually getting denied by the juggernaut at Stanford — before the Gators kicked the door down in '92 to cap a take-no-prisoners 30-0 season by defeating third-ranked Texas in the final on Stanford's home court in Palo Alto, Calif. Putting an orange-and-blue exclamation point on the season was Raymond, the freshman who played No. 1, winning the singles title (to go with her indoors single title a couple months earlier) for a clean sweep.
Andy Brandi and his 1992 Florida women's NCAA champions (Andrea Farley - right of Brandi and Lisa Raymond - back row, far right). Photo: Gus Bower
Florida women's tennis was there to stay, with Brandi becoming a father figure to each player who went through his program.
A self-proclaimed taskmaster, Brandi went through something of a metamorphosis after that first championship season, actually loosening the reigns somewhat. Although his on-court demands and details did not change, he began putting more emphasis on relationships. The results continued.
"He would move mountains for the people he loved and cared about," said Raymond, who remembers fondly how Brandi was sitting courtside for her epic victory over Venus Williams in the 2004 Australian Open. "You could just see on his face the joy this man had for me and this adventure we'd been on together."
On Thursday, when word of Brandi's passing came to light, the 1992 team's group text message — something the players started when they returned to campus in 2017 for the 25-year anniversary celebration of that first championship — began firing up with tear and prayer emojis, as well as long, typed-out recollections. Lots of them. All priceless.
"My favorite memory of all my tennis memories — and I have lot of great ones — has a lot to do with winning that first one for Andy," Farley said. "We were in position to win in the past and didn't. Because it had become so hard, that made that first one that much sweeter."
The chase is supposed to be hard, right?
Andy Brandi made it rewarding. And worth the wait.
