Scott Nichols, Mariana Hollman
By Mike London
Salisbury Post
SALISBURY — National championships are the ultimate dream of every competitive athlete, but few get to make it happen.
Scott Wilson Nichols is an exception. He’s won 14 national championships and has the Gold Balls to prove it.
Nichols has won those Gold Balls in tennis, and while he is in his 60s, he probably won’t stop with 14 Gold Balls. You can compete in age-group tennis even in your 90s.
Nichols is local. His official job title is Director of Tennis at the Country Club of Salisbury. That’s a position for which he was hired for in October 2022.
Nichols holds elite national rankings in his age group and adds a wealth of teaching and coaching experience to what he still is able to accomplish on the court as a player.
Nichols won the Eastern Section Junior Grass Court Singles Championship when he was a teenager and played four years of college tennis at Guilford.
In his 30s and 40s, he was a top-ranked men’s doubles player and his national rankings continued into his 50s and 60s. When he was 43, he won the USTA National Men’s 40’s Grass Court Singles Tennis Championship. He played in Turkey on the U.S. Trabert Cup Team in 2004. In 2005, he was named Professional Tennis Registry Player of the Year.
Gold Ball No. 14 for Nichols came recently in Lancaster, Pa., where he and his partner, Mariana Hollman (Kernersville) won the 60 National Tennis Mixed Doubles Championships. Nichols had a solid partner. Hollman played for Pepperdine in her college days, has coached college tennis and competes at a lofty international level in her age group.
Nichols has enjoyed an amazing career as a tennis professional and coach.
As a high school coach, he twice won South Carolina state championships coaching Hilton Head girls and he won four Texas state championships coaching the boys teams at Cathedral High School in El Paso.
He’s been a teaching pro in Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina and California. He left a pleasant gig at Hilton Head, taking his talents to the West Coast to become Director of Tennis Operations at the Marbella Country Club in San Juan Capistrano, Calif.
If you’re wondering how you go from playing pickleball with billionaires in Orange County to giving lessons to regular folks in Salisbury, Nichols and his wife, Colleen, relocated from California for family reasons.
They moved back east to Summerville, S.C. The next stop was Salisbury.
Scott and Colleen have twins. One lives in Winston-Salem and the other in Charlotte, and the Nichols’ are grandparents. Salisbury sits in an ideal location between Charlotte and Winston.
Besides his still prodigious tennis skills, Nichols is a real estate expert who has made sales on both coasts. He’s a drummer, he’s been a fundraiser for worthy causes, and he’s an author.
He has written a critically acclaimed instructional tennis book entitled “On the Other Hand.” It’s all about the overlooked but important role of the non-dominant hand in tennis strokes.
Nichols may find time to write another book one day about all those Gold Balls. He’s won national titles at many different ages. He’s won in singles, doubles and mixed doubles. He’s won indoors and outdoors. He’s won on hardcourt, grass and clay.
There will be so many tennis stories to tell the grandchildren, and he’ll have the Gold Balls to prove it.
