socallefty
G.O.A.T.
The good thing about coaches who were college players or pros is that they probably went through extensive coaching themselves when they were juniors. So, they have been personally exposed to a vast library of different drills or rally/point patterns to improve specific aspects of technique or footwork for themself personally and for other kids in their academy or club. They can use this knowledge to fix issues that they spot in their students.
If a coach has only been a low-level player, he likely has not gone through extensive coaching himself and while he might know how to diagnose a student’s flaws quickly, he is not going to have a vast amount of knowledge on designing hand feed/rally drills, different ways of communicating solutions etc. on how to fix the flaws especially if the adult student has ingrained bad habits from playing poorly for many years. Then, these coaches will just say cookie-cutter things and run standardized drills for all students - it might work for a few players, but it likely won’t work for most players. Unfortunately, most coaches who coach at public parks where most rec players play fall under this category and this is part of why there are so many anecdotal stories of ’bad’ tennis coaches.
Coaches who are still motivated to work hard to improve players whether it is adult hackers or top juniors will generally find a way to keep getting better as coaches, learn new skills and be open to teaching new techniques as tennis evolves. But, there are a lot of experienced coaches with decades of experience who have given up mentally on the struggles of improving adult rec players and look at those students just like a walking ATM cash machine. So, the coach’s attitude might be more important than what level they played decades ago.
If a coach has only been a low-level player, he likely has not gone through extensive coaching himself and while he might know how to diagnose a student’s flaws quickly, he is not going to have a vast amount of knowledge on designing hand feed/rally drills, different ways of communicating solutions etc. on how to fix the flaws especially if the adult student has ingrained bad habits from playing poorly for many years. Then, these coaches will just say cookie-cutter things and run standardized drills for all students - it might work for a few players, but it likely won’t work for most players. Unfortunately, most coaches who coach at public parks where most rec players play fall under this category and this is part of why there are so many anecdotal stories of ’bad’ tennis coaches.
Coaches who are still motivated to work hard to improve players whether it is adult hackers or top juniors will generally find a way to keep getting better as coaches, learn new skills and be open to teaching new techniques as tennis evolves. But, there are a lot of experienced coaches with decades of experience who have given up mentally on the struggles of improving adult rec players and look at those students just like a walking ATM cash machine. So, the coach’s attitude might be more important than what level they played decades ago.
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