When Drake Bernstein hit high school standing just 5 feet tall, he realized his childhood dream of playing in the NBA was probably not going to happen.

Though the junior now helps fill the lineup for Georgia’s men’s tennis team (and is 5-foot-10), he grew up shooting hoops in his driveway and continues to do so during the off-season.

Junior Drake Bernstein has applied his father's advice in basketball to his tennis game to find success for Georgia's men's tennis squad. Photo by Jon-Michael Sullivan

His father, Jeff Bernstein, coached college basketball, including at South Carolina State, and influenced his son’s interest in basketball and in all sports.

“My dad always coached college basketball, and he worked a little with the NBA, so he was always shoving a basketball in my hands,” Bernstein said. “I would play around with his players and on my own, and it was something I really enjoyed doing. He could always give general knowledge about sports, like basketball, and then I’d transfer that over to tennis.”

The native of Winder, Ga., feels his father’s lessons on the basketball court have carried over to the tennis court. Though Bernstein’s father did not give technical tennis advice, he emphasized a certain attitude, which still affects his son as an athlete.

“[Basketball has] a couple of similarities with tennis and, really, with all sports — you have to be pretty disciplined,” Bernstein said. “My dad put that discipline into me at a young age. Even when I was six or seven, I was alone practicing basketball. Every day I’d go home and play basketball in the driveway.

“Then once I started playing tennis, I didn’t and don’t really have a problem practicing alone and going out and hitting serves on my own or playing out of a ball machine on my own. That’s proved to help me a lot throughout my career here. That’s one place where it carried over, discipline-wise.”

Though all of his teammates have come out to the court with him before, Bernstein and senior Alex Hill play together regularly after the tennis season.

The two teammates have also coached Tri Delta’s intramural basketball team since Bernstein’s freshman year.

He channels his father and older brother, who was a graduate assistant at Clemson, into this casual foray through his coaching. Majoring in Sports Management, Bernstein hopes to make coaching a career, but in tennis, not basketball.

Though he focuses exclusively on tennis in the spring, Bernstein keeps basketball as a hobby and a way to exercise in the summer and fall. He practices at the Ramsey Center at least once a week during the off-season.

Though he can dunk (“Even when I was doing it my best, it was probably still only one out of ten, but every now and then, I’d get a good one in,” he said), he does not consider himself a flashy player.

“[Growing up] everybody else would have all these trick shots, and all I could do was regular shots. [Associate head coach] Will Glenn will never let me forget that he beat me in horse when we played,” Bernstein said. “Just shooting around is fun, and I like playing defense actually. When the season is going on, I can’t get any stupid injuries from playing pick-up basketball. Hopefully this summer I’ll be able to get out and play just to stay in shape.”