Adam Peterson Thankful for Each Day
He Spends on Court

There are few days that go by on the court for high performance tennis coach Adam Peterson where he doesn’t dive deep into his memory bank, pulling out a drill or recalling some sage advice from the pivotal coaches who shaped him growing up in the City of Orange.

Now 51 and fully recovered from a brave battle with Lymphoma cancer in 2021, Peterson serves as an Elite National Coach under one of those mentors, Mike Nelson, at the Anaheim Tennis Center, where he works with eight to 12 players on a weekly basis.

Nelson, a USTA Certified Pro and owner of the Anaheim Tennis Center for more than 15 years, is one of Orange County’s most respected coaches. A former Portland State standout, he founded the Orange County Tennis Academy in 1986 and has guided hundreds of juniors to college tennis, including three national champions: Peterson in 1990, Lindsey Nelson in 2001, and Kaitlyn Christian in 2006.

Today, Peterson continues to pass down those same lessons to the next generation. Among his current group of players is 16-year-old ITF world No. 1-ranked junior Julieta Pareja of Carlsbad, whom he has helped coach for the past three years. 

Born in Fullerton, Peterson’s family moved to Ohio for eight years after his first birthday. The clan, including his older brother Dax, made the trek back to the Golden State when Adam was 10 in 1984 as he recalled it was around the same time as the Summer Olympics were taking place in Los Angeles.

The first coach he had back in Southern California was Chuck Boyle, who ran his academy out of the now-defunct Racquetball World in Santa Ana. Boyle, an ex-football coach and World War II veteran, was more like a drill sergeant than a tennis instructor. While also working with Nelson at the Ridgeline Country Club in Orange, Peterson spent time in Newport Beach with Australian legend Syd Ball between ages 14 and 18, winning two national titles, including the Easter Bowl in Miami and The Ojai Boys’ 16s singles title in 1990, while also starring on the Mater Dei High School team.

Peterson also played for the legendary Dick Leach at USC, helping lead the Trojans to back-to-back national titles in 1993 and 1994, the latter a 5-3 win over Georgia in front of a hostile home crowd in Athens, Georgia. He recalls those college days fondly and remains in regular contact with his Trojan teammates.

He can relate to a quote by Hall of Fame football coach Bill Walsh, who once said, “The best coaches don’t just build players; they build other coaches too.”

Through a connection with his former Trojan teammate Jon Leach, Peterson landed a dream role from 2002 to 2008 as coach to Leach’s wife and fellow Orange County native, Lindsay Davenport. During that period, Davenport spent 98 total weeks as the WTA’s world No. 1 playing, including being the year-end No. 1 in 2004 and 2005, under Peterson’s direction and guidance.

Following his tenure working with Davenport, Peterson joined USTA Player Development as a National Coach from 2009 to 2019, spending eight of those years at USTA Training Center West in Carson. He was promoted to USTA Lead National Coach in 2012. It was around this time when Peterson worked closely with two more coaches who were hugely influential to him and would inspire him even during his most difficult struggles recovering from cancer. 

Ola Malmqvist, then the head of women’s tennis for USTA Player Development, hired Peterson for the prestigious national coaching job. Jose Higueras served in the same capacity on the men’s side. Peterson recalls their philosophy clearly, “Keep things simple. Control what you can control. Don’t waste energy on things you can’t control.”

Peterson, who has also coached Grand Slam champions Madison Keys, Samantha Stosur, and Coco Vandeweghe on the WTA Tour, said he remains impressed with Pareja and her game style.  

“Julieta has weapons and we are just trying to get those weapons even better and, slowly but surely, take away as many holes as possible in her game that might get exposed under pressure against really high competition,” Peterson explained.

He continued: “It was obviously very apparent when I first met Julieta that besides her skill level—and probably even more importantly—her mind and her heart were already so mature. In other words, how she saw the game, how she competed and how she worked.

“I follow professional tennis, obviously, what’s going on with results, and I’ve never worked with any player, except for maybe Lindsay who was already a top pro at the time, knew what was going on every day on tour. Even at such a young age, she just loves it. She really wants this kind of life. So, working with somebody like that you’re already a step ahead because the chances of having bad or down practices go way down. She’s very engaged and wants to get better all the time.”

Peterson said he doesn’t feel pressure coaching the No. 1 junior in the world. “No, I don’t think so. Julieta is just really buying in and that makes our job as coaches easier. Right now, it’s just the process of getting better. That is the goal and that takes care of all the other stuff.”

In July of 2021, two years after returning to California following a move to Orlando after the opening of the USTA National Campus there, Peterson said he wasn’t feeling normal. He delayed seeing a doctor until one day he was rushed to the emergency room with his liver and kidney in complete failure.

Peterson was placed on dialysis to stabilize his organs and after a battery of tests, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 Burkitt Lymphoma—a fast-growing cancer that must be treated aggressively. It was determined that Peterson would need eight to 10 rounds of chemotherapy.

Over the next seven months, Peterson spent two to three-week stints in the hospital undergoing chemotherapy. After the sixth successful round, doctors determined he could stop the treatments, and his chances of a positive healthy outcome looked promising.

In a social media update at the start of February of 2022, Peterson said: “…My oncologist set up a PET scan which would image any lymphoma left inside me. I had that image done…and I saw my oncologist to go over the reading. I am in remission!!!!! We looked at the image and he said it was ‘perfect’…couldn’t find anything. We then compared it to my first image and I saw the baseball size lymphoma in my liver.”

Four years later, Peterson continues regular checkups but says the doctors “feel good” about his recovery. “If they don’t tell me something’s wrong then I assume it’s fine,” he explained.

Peterson said what he learned most through the health trials was “the fragility of life and to make the most you have in the moment. Not to take things for granted and I have a sense of humility. You can’t go through something like that and not be affected to the core. I just wanted to keep doing what I’m doing. I love tennis and mentally that’s where my passion is.”

Peterson averages around five hours a day on court and says he feels good after a day on the courts but doesn’t want to over-extend himself. He counts his blessings each and every day he finishes a day with his students.

Peterson said he was “overwhelmed with gratitude” after his good friend and former pro Debbie Graham Shaffer, who is also a fellow Orange County teaching pro, started a GoFundMe page that has raised more than $132,000 to help with medical expenses.

“I am just so grateful and that afforded me the time to recover properly,” Peterson commented. “It was amazing.”

Peterson is confident there will be many more hours logged on court, teaching the numerous lessons he was taught all those years ago by valuable mentors he had as a junior growing up in Southern California and working with the best at USTA National. The tennis court is the only place he’d rather be. 

As National Coaches Month celebrates those who shape lives through sport, Peterson embodies the resilience, mentorship, and lifelong passion that define the very best in coaching.