5 QUESTIONS….

THEY WILL NOT LEARN IF THEY DON’T LIKE IT

There are many kids around that even playing tennis for a long time, are not able to get the same level as others. Other kids that are playing for much less time suddenly become much better players and we always have the same question from some parents. WHY MY KID IS NOT IMPROVING?

To tell you the truth, even if the coach is not good, just by putting hours into tennis, the kids should improve. Any kid, who likes tennis, should improve just by playing with his friends, on the wall or even watching tennis. The main thing here is…. DOES YOUR KID REALLY LIKE TENNIS?  In my 20 years as a coach, probably over 4000 kids have played in my court. From those 4000 kids, I could say that more than 70% like tennis, but there are a very high percentage of kids that play tennis because the parents like it. Any coach after 5 minutes in the court can tell which kid doesn’t really like tennis. This is a common problem when you have tennis programs running with a lot of students. There are always kids that improve really really fast and others who stay still into their learning. Normally this is not a problem of skills. I have seen kids without coordination, fat or with physical handicaps that run faster and better than other kids with full skills and also kids that have no sense of touch with the ball when they start and after a while trying hard, they become very good players. Tennis is like any other activity in life. If you try hard, you get better. Do not forget that PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT.

The fact of some kids are not able to improve doesn’t mean that they have no0 ability for tennis or other sports. It’s just that they don’t like it and they are not happy doing it. I give you a very clear example; Sports are like music. If you chose the right instrument for your kid, the one they like, they will learn fast, but if you chose the one that you like, they will learn very slow, right? Well, sport is the same; if you let your kids try several sports and wait until they ask you to go again to practice that sport, then you’ll find the sport they really like. I personally hate when I see the parents pushing their kids to do a sport that they don’t want to do…basically because with those types of parents, I know that sooner or later, a complaint will come about why their kids are not learning….

The best, let your kids choose the sport. Sport should be an exciting and healthy activity for the kids…not a torture.

PRIVATE LESSON, YES OR NOT?

There are many ways to answer this question. First…Children or adults

I personally recommend private lessons for adults if they can combine it with once a week group lesson. Adults are more able to assimilate and perform the coach teachings than the kids. Any adult that plays tennis is because is really interested in learning, so private training is much better for them.  For the kids, I will ask you to first read the answer to the last question and I also will tell you that the easiest way for your kids to hate tennis is to put them to learn tennis with a private coach. If you tell me that your kids are playing 4 or 5 days per week in a tennis program and once a week you combine that program with a private lesson, I will say GREAT. But you do the opposite, you will make your kid get slowly bored and more bored about tennis and in the end he will hate this sport for ever. As I say, in my opinion anything that mixes kids and sport should be fun and exciting. That’s the best way to improve and to get the best from the sport and when I say sport, I don’t only talk about tennis; I talk about any sport that your kids could practice.

WHY SOME KIDS SUDDENLY BECOME BETTER THAN OTHERS WHEN THEY ARE 15 TO 17 YEARS OLD?

I think I wrote about this before but I will answer once again because it’s important for some parents to understand why this happens with every generation.

I always try to convince the parents and the players to change grips or positions and attitudes when the kids are still young. I’m not the best coach in the world, but I’m the worst ether and I have seen so much that experience can speak louder. When I see a kid at 12 years old, I can tell you how good he will be at 17. The reason is very simple; I do not look at his scores in the tournaments, I don’t look at his ranking in the country. I look at him, the way he moves, his grips, his technique, his attitude, the way he walk in the court….

Sometimes when you go to the tournaments, you see little kids running around, hitting super high balls but not showing any technique at all. Maybe they are even winning the tournaments…but that’s BREAD FOR TODAY AND HUNGER FOR TOMORROW.  A kid that has not all his technique completed by the age of 13…will never be a good tennis player. There are exceptions, but6 this is a very normal way to know which player will be good at age 17.  Players improve a lot after 17 because they have done a good work before and other kids stay and go lower and lower because their worry was to win when they were young…not when they were older.  There is not other answer to this question…a player becomes better than others at 17 years old …because they do the right training in the years before and they target their goal as winning in the future…not in the beginning.

ONE HAND OR TWO HANDS  BACKHAND?

There is always this controversy around the coaches and parents. Should the player play one or two hands backhand? Well, in my opinion we should leave that to the player. If you check the history of tennis, you will see that it doesn’t really matter. There are players who extend their ability with one and others with two. The handicap for the player that uses two hand backhand is that normally they need to make one more step to adjust the position but at the same time that they develop their technique, the body learns to be a bit faster to get the right position, so this shouldn’t be an issue. Some players play with two hands for a while and then when they are o0lder, they decide to change to one hand backhand. This event shouldn’t be delayed more than 12 years old, since at that age we should already be working on semi professional skills and after that age there is not much time to concentrate in create a new stroke.  It’s a fact that players with a one hand backhand are normally more the type of attacking players in a way, and the two handed backhand are more like containing players, but of course not in every case. At this point we could take the best 2 players at the moment, Nadal and Federer. We can see that Nadal hit a very hard backhand but Federe’s backhand is more like an attacking weapon. I also would say that for the one hand backhand, the chance of having a great slice is easier than for 2 handed backhand but at the same time, a two handed backhand player will always have a better chance to play with the angles in an easier way.

TWO HANDS FOREHAND AND BACKHAND

I personally don’t recommend this type of game to any player. In our academy my try to change the 2 hands forehand for one right away. Especially in the case of boys. Girls can get around easier because of the luck of power in their tennis comparing with men tennis but even that, you don’t see many players like this anymore. There was only a case (Monica Seles) who could maintain there for a while but out of that, no more and especially lately when tennis has become more and more powerful sport.

I know that many people are thinking of NOK from Thailand but as Seles, these are special cases of tennis. Cases that confirm the rule, but again, to get to the top is really difficult because these players always need more steps to get top the ball than other players and in the end, the higher is the level, the more difficult it becomes to control the ball. I have seen many juniors playing like t5hat for years but the chance of these juniors to become high ranking players in the professional circuit is really limited.;

Players who play with both two hands have 2 big advantages. They normally have a very powerful return of the serve and of course they have a great ability to create angles all over the place. These players normally move very fast but they need to be extremely fit to manage to stay 100% the whole match.