University of Georgia Athletics
Bernstein’s Dreams Keep Becoming Reality
May 08, 2023 | Women's Tennis, The Frierson Files
By John Frierson
Staff Writer
Drake Bernstein was pretty certain about a few things when he was a young man growing up in Winder, Ga., about 25 miles from the Dan Magill Tennis Complex. He knew he wanted to play tennis for Georgia, he knew he wanted to live in Athens, and he knew he wanted to work in the sport in some form after his playing days were done.
Drake Bernstein is living his dreams, ladies and gentlemen, and he has been for quite some time.
"A lot of stars have aligned, and here we are," Bernstein said in an interview Sunday, a day before Georgia made official what everyone suspected, that Bernstein, the women's tennis team's associate head coach since 2015, was taking over as head coach following the announcement last Friday that coaching legend Jeff Wallace was retiring at the end of the season.
"Since I've walked in these gates as a recruit, since I've walked in as a player on the team, since I've walked in as an assistant coach, it's like every day I walk through the gates like, this is a joke, this is a dream," he said with a big smile. "This is what I get to do to support my family. I absolutely love tennis, I absolutely love Georgia, and I get to have the two of them together every day. It doesn't get better than that for me."
Bernstein's family includes his wife, Cassidy, a four-time All-American and 2008 SEC Freshman of the Year during her Georgia gymnastics career, and their two young children, Brody and Cashton. If you're keeping score of national championships in the Bernstein household, Drake won one as a player (NCAA, 2008) and one as the women's associate head coach (ITA National Indoor, 2019), while Cassidy won NCAA titles in 2008 and '09 during the GymDogs' run of five in a row.
Georgia men's associate head coach Jamie Hunt, who was teammates with Bernstein for three years, including on the 2008 title team, said Bernstein's work ethic has always set him apart.
"His work ethic is second to none," Hunt said. "He's an incredible worker whether it's in recruiting or player development on court or preparation and scouting the other team. He's just a worker. He had that as a player and he's taken that on as a coach. There's nobody that works harder than him."
The No. 4 seed in the NCAA women's tournament, Georgia hosts No. 13 Oklahoma at 5 p.m. on Friday in a Super Regional (round of 16) at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex. The men, meanwhile, host No. 11 Harvard at 2 p.m. Saturday.
Like the other tennis coaches at Georgia, Bernstein is a Bulldog through and through. He grew up cheering for Georgia, he lived his dream by not only playing for head coach Manuel Diaz but by winning an NCAA title as a freshman. After a good playing career that included nearly 200 combined wins (singles and doubles) and second-team All-SEC honors, Bernstein spent a year as an assistant coach with Alabama's women's team before Wallace brought him back to Athens.
Wallace didn't just bring Bernstein back to be his assistant, he brought him back to be his successor.
"I hired him with the anticipation and hope that one day when I got to this point, he would be the one and he would be ready," Wallace said following the women's team's 4-0 win over Florida State in the second round Saturday. "He's just done everything I've asked and he's brought such great energy and passion to our program. He loves this place as much as I do, and that's always a great starting point,"
The biggest influences in Bernstein's tennis and coaching life have been Bulldogs. There was Diaz, his head coach for four years, from whom Bernstein learned to keep grinding and have faith that good things will come.
"Manny was a big preacher of just sticking to the process, keep your nose down, keep working, keep working, keep working, and then magic starts to happen," Bernstein said.
In more than a decade working with Wallace, Bernstein learned enough to fill a book. One of the big things he learned and saw first-hand was the value of loading up on high-character players. In good times and bad, character counts for plenty in college tennis, he said.
"It's just having character on the team, and continuing to recruit character is going to be a big deal moving forward," he said. "If you look at the most successful teams out there in any given year, including some of our programs, they've been very deep in character."
Another key figure was former men's player and assistant coach Will Glenn, Diaz's assistant during Bernstein's playing days. Like Bernstein, Glenn was a local kid with a great attitude, who made the most of his talents and helped the Bulldogs win a lot of matches.
"Seeing the love that Will had for Georgia, seeing him live his dream, was a pretty big deal for me," Bernstein said. "It was like, Man, you can do tennis for a living and wake up excited to go into work every day. I always looked up to Will for the coaching and how great he was with our team, but it was also how open he was about being happy that he loved what he did.
"I always thought that if I can be as happy as Will doing something, then I've figured it out."
Georgia fifth-year player Meg Kowalski won't get the opportunity to play under head coach Bernstein — her incredible career will come to an end this month — but she has absolute faith that he will do great things.
"He's the best, and he's going to take over for Jeff and fill those shoes so perfectly," she said. "He's got big shoes to fill, but I am so excited for Drake to steer this program. Amazing, amazing things are to come."
In 38 years leading the Bulldogs, Wallace won six national championships, 20 SEC titles and was named National Coach of the Year four times. He is one of two women's coaches ever to reach 800 career wins.
"It's hard to imagine doing anything for 38 years," Bernstein said, "and it's hard to imagine all of the lives that he's touched."
There's a saying in sports, particularly in coaching, that you should never follow a legend. That you're setting yourself up for failure. The idea being that your odds of living up to the standard set by an extraordinary predecessor, especially one who's still around, are pretty slim. And there's ample evidence to support that idea.
At the same time, there's plenty of evidence that one legend can be followed by another. All Bernstein has to do is look from his office near court 6 at Henry Feild Stadium over to Diaz's office by court 1.
In 1989, after Dan Magill retired from coaching having built the Georgia men's program into a national power that won NCAA titles in 1985 and '87, Diaz, who played for Magill in the early 1970s and then became his assistant coach in the 1980s, took over. Diaz was following a legend, one who remained around the program daily for years, and all Diaz has done is win four NCAA titles, a couple of ITA National Indoor championships, and pass Magill to become the winningest coach in SEC history.
Bernstein knows better than anyone who he's replacing as head coach. He's worked for him, he's learned from him, and the only thing he can control is how hard he works to keep Georgia among the very best programs in the country.
"I think the way to go about it is to continue to try to be good. It's starting right now. All of this is happening and we're in the middle of the NCAA tournament, and we've got a huge match on Friday," he said.
"My concern isn't 10 years down the road, did I prove myself? It's, can I be very good right now? Can I be very good this summer? Can I keep recruiting great character players to come in here? I'm always going to stick to that, and at the end of it, we'll see what we were able to do.
"It's about upholding the tradition that we have here while adding to it, as Manny's done."
A kid from Winder wanted to be a Bulldog. Done. A diehard tennis fan wanted to work in the sport he loved, and do so in Athens if at all possible. Done and done. Now, Bernstein, while following one of the greatest coaches in collegiate tennis history, gets to forge his own path.
"This is where I want to be," he said. "This is where I've always wanted to be."
Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.
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