HATCHETMAN AT BOLLETIERI

MANATEE COUNTY - Two tennis instructors and an executive who helped build the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy into a world-renowned facility have been fired or encouraged to resign in a major shakeup at IMG Academies in West Bradenton.

Coaches Gabriel Jaramillo and Ted Meekma and executive Greg Breunich worked for more than 20 years at the academy -- where superstars like Andre Agassi and Maria Sharapova trained -- and were confidantes of the facility's namesake and founder, Nick Bollettieri.

The three have been let go in the past few weeks, as has chief financial officer Jeff McNeil.

The changes appear to be the latest move by a firm that bought IMG in 2004 and that has restructured other aspects of the company.

The departures at the tennis academy were not amicable, sources say, as Jaramillo was escorted from the property Friday afternoon by a security officer.

Each man was given severance pay, according to Jaramillo's attorney, and signed non-disclosure and no-compete contracts that prohibit them from coaching tennis or speaking publicly about the changes.

"Essentially, this new company brought in a hatchet man to get rid of all the strong people who had been there for years," Mulock said. "They had been with Nick forever. Then they got tossed under the bus."

In 1987, Bollettieri sold the academy to IMG, which kept them all on staff and opened the multi-sport academies in west Manatee County, on 300 acres of former tomato fields. IMG now trains thousands of athletes in sports from golf to basketball

An investment firm, Forstmann Little & Co., acquired IMG -- an international sports and entertainment marketing company -- in 2004 for $750 million.

Forstmann Little has a history of cutting costs to make its acquisitions more profitable before reselling them.

The company bought and later resold Gulfstream Aerospace, Topps and Dr. Pepper.