onehandbh
G.O.A.T.
In your opinion, who are currently the best tennis coaches?
Why are most Teaching Pros so terrible?
- Thread starter KYHacker
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Grafil Injection
Hall of Fame
How many learners really challenge their coaches? If I had the money and inclination to progress rapidly, I would draw up a plan of intensive drills I want the coach to do each session, and basically use them like a ball machine. Coaches understandably lack the inclination to train at high intensity because they are there 10hrs a day, 6 days a week. So if you are paying for 1-on-1 training that you hope will help you progress rapidly, you need to assess whether the coach is happy to be 'used' like that. In the end, it is a job, and they are there to provide us the service we want, but many people probably just wait for the coach to suggest what to do next.
Dragy
Legend
Coach is first and foremost a source of knowledge, tools to improve and one to give immediate feedback. Best position for the coach is near the player, not intensely running and hitting on the other side. Best setup is to either have a hitting pro or a high level hitting partner to share the coaching session.
Good coaches though are capable of producing intensity using basket drills, as well as giving you fits in a rally. It’s easy for rec player as there are enough strong young pros who can give you any intensity you can survive all day long
peoplespeace
Professional
Depends on for what purpose. Id be guessing. In terms of bringing a player from zero to pro, maybe Petr Korda?
5263
G.O.A.T.
That may be true, but those 2 heights were not going for the same positions were they? Not likely in HS, but either way, height is development as well and what MJ did as a result is outwork everybody including the coach from the then on....
onehandbh
G.O.A.T.
Not sure if this was the case with MJ, but sometimes when teenagers and kids are growing rapidly, they are temporarily a bit more uncoordinated and unathletic before the body adjusts.
5263
G.O.A.T.
exactly, but that doesn't negate the issue being discussed about being in need of good training with a coach.
onehandbh
G.O.A.T.
In some ways Djokovic reminds me of MJ. MJ obsessively worked on his game, studied those before him, maximized his physical conditioning and training and was one of the mentally toughest ever once his team got to the finals. 6-0.
Sampras was a bit like this in grand slam finals, too.
MJ was also somehow able to push his teammates in a way that got the best performances out of them.
socallefty
G.O.A.T.
Are you sure you are talking about MJ? The guy was famous for staying up late, drinking and gambling especially when the team was on the road. There are many stories about legendary games he had after partying/gambling late the night before. Quite the opposite of the monastic lifestyle of Djokovic and the way he treats his body.
Ronaldo
Bionic Poster
Thank goodness for MJ's straight edge teammates,
I'm going to assume he wasn't lying lol
jm1980
Talk Tennis Guru
LOL, no they don't. Just in the past month or so:
#1 Djokovic needed a 3rd set TB to beat #130 Machac in Dubai
#2 Alcaraz was taken to 3 sets by #139 Jarry, and beat #556 Alves 6-4, 6-4 in Rio
#3 Tsitsipas lost to #87 Thompson at Indian Wells
#4 Ruud lost to #125 Daniel in Acapulco and #97 Garin at IW
#5 Fritz lost to #97 Wu in Dallas
The difference between top level pros is minimal on the technical level, and is mostly in intangibles. Nadal once said you wouldn't be able to tell apart a Top 10 player from a Top 500 player if you just saw them practicing, because how they move and hit the ball is indistinguishable.
"If you watch the number ten player in the world and the number five hundred in training, you won't necessarily be able to tell who is higher up in the rankings. Without the pressure of competition, they'll move and hit the ball much the same way." - from "Rafa: My Story"
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Moveforwardalways
Hall of Fame
Upsets happen. The top guys have low interest sometimes, and sometimes get head colds, flu, etc and still play. But ranked 100 get routinely smoked by guts in the top 10 when it matters.
jm1980
Talk Tennis Guru
GOAT candidate Rafa Nadal got smoked by dudes ranked 100+ four years in a row at Wimbledon (#100 Rosol, #135 Darcis, #144 Kyrgios, #102 Brown)
Yes, upsets do happen but they can only happen if the levels are close enough
And it was pretty cool when Fritz lost to #193 Brandon Holt, son of Tracy Austin. It was his first career win ever on the ATP tour.
I have two six year olds that started the same day in the same class several months ago. First tennis lesson ever for both of them.
Now, Little Suzy's parents send me videos of her waking up every morning before school to hit a ball against her garage door. Forces her parents to play with her at every conceivable free moment. She loves tennis, knows all the big pros and makes her whole family watch tennis on TV. She always comes excited to play and always tries her best. The few times she acts up, her parents have quietly pulled her to the side, she comes back, apologizes and behaves.
Little Johnny, in a fit of frustration while refusing to pick up balls, chucked his racket at the head of another kid and then told me to f myself. His mom, (who saw the whole thing) told me I was too harsh because I gave him the consequence of sitting out the next game quietly on the bench.
Two kids in the same class, 95% the same instruction. Depending on who you ask: I'm either a terrible coach who hates children or I'm a total genius that might be the best tennis coach in the state.
Now, Little Suzy's parents send me videos of her waking up every morning before school to hit a ball against her garage door. Forces her parents to play with her at every conceivable free moment. She loves tennis, knows all the big pros and makes her whole family watch tennis on TV. She always comes excited to play and always tries her best. The few times she acts up, her parents have quietly pulled her to the side, she comes back, apologizes and behaves.
Little Johnny, in a fit of frustration while refusing to pick up balls, chucked his racket at the head of another kid and then told me to f myself. His mom, (who saw the whole thing) told me I was too harsh because I gave him the consequence of sitting out the next game quietly on the bench.
Two kids in the same class, 95% the same instruction. Depending on who you ask: I'm either a terrible coach who hates children or I'm a total genius that might be the best tennis coach in the state.
Wow, you're either brave or insane to try to discipline someone's kid
Not a coaching situation, but I'll sometimes hit off my ball machine in a park. Not uncommon to have young kids open the gate and run on the court while I'm hitting. Also pretty common to have them grab a few of my balls and run away. There was a time (and it's been a long time ago) that I would yell at these kids. Tell them how dangerous it is to run on the court with me hitting and my machine running. And that they can't steal my balls. But I've learned my lesson. It's at least as likely as not (and in fact more likely) that the mother "watching" her kid will start yelling at me if I say anything. Now when this happens, I just try to shut my machine off as fast as I can (so the kids don't walk in front of it and get nailed). Then I just start picking up my balls. Never say a word. Often times the parent is watching the whole thing and thinks it's "cute". They never stay long, so it's much easier to do this than have any kind of confrontation. If the parent is going to yell at their kid for running on to the court, they'll do. I just need to stay quiet.
As a coach, it's tough for you, because you need to be fair to the other kids (like the one that had a racquet thrown at them). But lots of parents don't want ANYONE to discipline their kid ("What give you the right to say anything to MY child"). It's tough. I don't wish your situation on anyone. It's impossible.
Those kind of moms need just as much disciplining as their demonspawn. What's she gonna do? Call the cops so that they can tell her off for letting her kid steal and wasting their time?
tennis_balla
Hall of Fame
That kid wouldn’t have sat out on my court, that kid would have ended his tennis career with me right there and then and his mother would of gotten a refund for the classes she already paid for. Had I not done anything and one of the parents complained, my club manager would have been on me why I didn’t take care of the situation, meaning go see her and just professionally have the kid leave the club, forever. Throwing rackets is dangerous and telling a coach to F Off at 6 years old is insane, especially with the mother not doing anything and blaming you.
The kid will just cause a difficult time for the others and possibly give you a bad reputation by still being in that class.
Shroud
Talk Tennis Guru
Kids suck. If only you go to just teach the milfs.
tennis_balla
Hall of Fame
Those suck too
antony
Hall of Fame
Agreed. Don’t waste time and money with lesser coaches
Bagumbawalla
Talk Tennis Guru
There is an old saying, "90% of everything is garbage. I was lucky to have found
a pretty good coach. College player who turned pro, got unlucky, began to starve,
Went to school to become an instructor, became a very good coach.
I knew some other good ones, but, yes, many are sub par.
a pretty good coach. College player who turned pro, got unlucky, began to starve,
Went to school to become an instructor, became a very good coach.
I knew some other good ones, but, yes, many are sub par.
Frank Silbermann
Professional
Most people become instructors because their only credential in life is that they're good tennis players.
Most good tennis players have little idea of what they're doing. They can tell a student, "Do this" and show them, but that works only with players who are good at imitation.
Most people have an occasional day when they're hitting far better than usual. Those who progress are able to remember that feeling and how to reproduce it. (I never could, so sometimes years would go by before I ever again hit a given shot that well.) But those who do remember and reproduce feelings and build on them -- become good. Such players cannot tell a pupil "This is what it should feel like when you hit the stroke."
Most good tennis players are good one style of play. Back in the 1970s the most common first lesson with a new pro was to have the student learn the coach's grips -- because the grip determines the stance and the swing, and instructor didn't know how to teach any style other than his own.
Most instructors cannot pinpoint the most important thing the pupil is doing wrong and needs to change, and will become obsessed with a triviality (e.g. "Step this way with your feet" -- when actually good players hit the ball with a variety of footwork options depending on the situation).
Most instructors do not know how something about the pupil's physical condition might dictate a style that is suboptimal for other players. For example, after struggling for nearly half a century as a low-level player, I have realized that because my eyesight is ****ty and I lack normal neck rotation, that I would do best using the techniques that were popular in the 1930s. (Players then didn't use nearly as much body rotation as players today; the fast, patchy grass courts limited the time they had to set up -- they couldn't predict until the last moment exactly where the ball would be. So now I minimize the backswing and switched to hitting extremely flat with a near-continental grip to maximize my chances of catching the ball in the racket's sweet spot. No amount of topspin will give enough margin for error to compensate for frequent mis-hits. No amount of racket head speed will replace the power lost by missing the sweet spot. And when you're 77 and, due to limited body rotation, cannot generate racket-head speed, not only can you not afford to divert much of it to the production of spin, but at low speed you even need topspin to keep the ball from sailing out. And I can cover more court if I can hit the ball with the same body orientation that I have when running after it. Even top pros often modify their technique to be somewhat more like this when their ability to prepare is severely stressed, e.g. when returning a first serve. The difference is that, with my ****ty eyesight, an elaborate preparation is _never_ an option for me.)
I don't agree with those who claim that the people who win are necessarily the better players. How good you are is measured by how hard you hit and how much topspin you put on the ball. Brad Gilbert made a career out of beating tennis players who were far better than he was. Likewise, Ken Rosewall not infrequently beat a younger top-of-his-form Rod Laver even though Laver was by far the better player. (Laver hit harder, with more topspin. In fact, Rosewall _never_ put topspin on his backhand.) Top pros such as Kramer and Budge declared that Bobby Riggs was the most underrated player of all time. (Riggs was the #1 pro for a while despite not being very good; i.e., he didn't hit hard.)
So you could say that I've given up on becoming a good tennis player and focusing instead on learning to win (low-level) matches -- by focusing on techniques that will maximize my control over the ball, taking into account the infirmities of age and my life-long overall severely below-average athletic talent.
(P.S. I just noticed that it lists "Professional" by my name. Not even close. I have no idea how that got in there. How do I change it?)
Most good tennis players have little idea of what they're doing. They can tell a student, "Do this" and show them, but that works only with players who are good at imitation.
Most people have an occasional day when they're hitting far better than usual. Those who progress are able to remember that feeling and how to reproduce it. (I never could, so sometimes years would go by before I ever again hit a given shot that well.) But those who do remember and reproduce feelings and build on them -- become good. Such players cannot tell a pupil "This is what it should feel like when you hit the stroke."
Most good tennis players are good one style of play. Back in the 1970s the most common first lesson with a new pro was to have the student learn the coach's grips -- because the grip determines the stance and the swing, and instructor didn't know how to teach any style other than his own.
Most instructors cannot pinpoint the most important thing the pupil is doing wrong and needs to change, and will become obsessed with a triviality (e.g. "Step this way with your feet" -- when actually good players hit the ball with a variety of footwork options depending on the situation).
Most instructors do not know how something about the pupil's physical condition might dictate a style that is suboptimal for other players. For example, after struggling for nearly half a century as a low-level player, I have realized that because my eyesight is ****ty and I lack normal neck rotation, that I would do best using the techniques that were popular in the 1930s. (Players then didn't use nearly as much body rotation as players today; the fast, patchy grass courts limited the time they had to set up -- they couldn't predict until the last moment exactly where the ball would be. So now I minimize the backswing and switched to hitting extremely flat with a near-continental grip to maximize my chances of catching the ball in the racket's sweet spot. No amount of topspin will give enough margin for error to compensate for frequent mis-hits. No amount of racket head speed will replace the power lost by missing the sweet spot. And when you're 77 and, due to limited body rotation, cannot generate racket-head speed, not only can you not afford to divert much of it to the production of spin, but at low speed you even need topspin to keep the ball from sailing out. And I can cover more court if I can hit the ball with the same body orientation that I have when running after it. Even top pros often modify their technique to be somewhat more like this when their ability to prepare is severely stressed, e.g. when returning a first serve. The difference is that, with my ****ty eyesight, an elaborate preparation is _never_ an option for me.)
I don't agree with those who claim that the people who win are necessarily the better players. How good you are is measured by how hard you hit and how much topspin you put on the ball. Brad Gilbert made a career out of beating tennis players who were far better than he was. Likewise, Ken Rosewall not infrequently beat a younger top-of-his-form Rod Laver even though Laver was by far the better player. (Laver hit harder, with more topspin. In fact, Rosewall _never_ put topspin on his backhand.) Top pros such as Kramer and Budge declared that Bobby Riggs was the most underrated player of all time. (Riggs was the #1 pro for a while despite not being very good; i.e., he didn't hit hard.)
So you could say that I've given up on becoming a good tennis player and focusing instead on learning to win (low-level) matches -- by focusing on techniques that will maximize my control over the ball, taking into account the infirmities of age and my life-long overall severely below-average athletic talent.
(P.S. I just noticed that it lists "Professional" by my name. Not even close. I have no idea how that got in there. How do I change it?)
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If a player is beating someone else regularly they are the better player. This is indisputable.
Now that doesn't mean that they're necessarily going to be a better instructor, maybe the player with better strokes would be better able to coach those strokes but there's no guarantee of that.
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
Had a kid crap his pants in a group last week.
I thought of this thread.
All these internet people are out here thinking I am shagging milfs and parading around in a lacoste polo, meanwhile Daniel just **** himself.
J
I thought of this thread.
All these internet people are out here thinking I am shagging milfs and parading around in a lacoste polo, meanwhile Daniel just **** himself.
J
Ronaldo
Bionic Poster
Those that can't do, teach. Those that can't teach, teach at my club
Ronaldo
Bionic Poster
That eye patch musta scared the **** outta Daniel. That or your lion
movdqa
Talk Tennis Guru
Teachers are complaining that some kids aren't potty trained by the time that they get to elementary school and apparently parents expect the teachers to teach them how.
The current generation of parents appears to be so stressed out that they're raising iPad kids and that comes with a lot of problems. It's a lot easier to hand a kid an iPad than it is to actually parent.
socallefty
G.O.A.T.
Complaining about coaches who teach adults at public tennis courts is like complaining about the quality of food at fast food restaurants. The better coaches are teaching at junior academies or working at private tennis clubs which typically offer a better income stream. If you want to get good at tennis, learn as a junior or join a private tennis club as an adult.
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Ronaldo
Bionic Poster
My Great-granddaughter has an iPad and my wife mentioned to our Granddaughter that it is time to potty train her daughter. She already pulled down her pull-up and sits on the pot. And she was two then. That was a year ago. Mentioned Headstart or pre-school last month. She is still three
Ronaldo
Bionic Poster
Weren't guys that taught at public tennis courts called tennis bums BITD?
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
Those were the guys who just hung out and played all day like surf bums for tennis courts.
J
Ronaldo
Bionic Poster
Know a couple, one is a musician, other worked for our city recreation department. Even had his own net after his department took the nets down before winter.
mtommer
Hall of Fame
Most of the ones I knew were actually high schoolers or college aged people looking for a summer job through parks and rec. Minimum wage. Did it myself for one summer. I was terrible at it.
Ronaldo
Bionic Poster
Schoolmate actually ran a tennis program for kids/juniors through the summer at a local park. Revived interest in the use of the park. Our USTA league teams used the facility while our home courts were re-surfaced. Recall getting to the courts an hour early to sweep/clean the courts before our match. Nearly 40 yrs ago
tennis_balla
Hall of Fame
Tennis academies offer a very bad income stream unless you want to be on court 8-10hrs a day or you’re one of the few main guys there and even then it’s a grind. Competitive junior tennis isn‘t always fun to coach and the regular coaches they hire are mainly used a slaves. Private clubs and country clubs is where the money is, even more so if you’re head of the program.
That's part of why I quit teaching. I got hired on somewhere for a summer gig that I really wanted to coach at. My goal that summer was to earn a permanent position there. I succeeded, but ended up turning down the job offer because most of my coaching wouldn't be hourly based on my on-court coaching. It was a set amount each week for 5 1/2 days scheduled (came out to less than $10/hr). I could survive, but wouldn't have been able to do hardly anything for fun (that cost money) and wouldn't be saving a dime. I could do private lessons for extra money, but even that I wouldn't have gotten a great percentage and would have to provide my own cart/balls for those. Just not the type of life I wanted to live, even if it was at a premier tennis academy that I thought was going to be my future.
I also taught a country club, but didn't like the culture of those. So, I took an office job and did a little teaching on the side at a local YMCA because I enjoyed it. And that was the beginning of the end of my coaching career.
I actually did a little pickleball work at the Y as well for a little while, got my pickleball teaching certification to do it as well.
L4S10s
Professional
Can they "develop" an adult learner coming in for an hour once a week? I would argue that the results won't be too much different from the "public park pros" for this subset of tennis learners.
A fundamental flaw of this thread is that the student pool is inherently heterogeneous - first you need to sort out the different groups of tennis learners and then separately outline the goals/problems each group possesses.
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
socallefty
G.O.A.T.
Yes, my wife started tennis only 4 years ago from scratch and she has been a strong 4.0 for a while. Apart from me coaching her, she has been taking weekly lessons with a coach - she plays every day including doing weekly practice sessions in addition to the coaching session.
In my case, I played a lot as a kid under coaching supervision through college and then played on-and-off throughout my adult life. When I turned 50, I decided to start taking weekly lessons again with a UTR 12 coach because I wanted to keep up my level as my joints and physicality/speed started getting worse while I still wanted to keep playing singles (plus doubles) with younger ex-college players. I initially thought it would be just a good hitting session every Friday that would prepare me well for my weekend singles matches.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well my coach has improved my weapons (FH, 1st serve, volleys), shored up my weaknesses (BH, slice, returning kickers), allowed me to improve many specialty shots (putting away short balls, handling low balls, passing shots, approaches) and made my footwork more efficient. I haven‘t played USTA since the pandemic, but play socially daily and my estimate based on social results is that I‘ve likely gone up higher within the same level (maybe 0.25 to 0.3 NTRP) in singles while I‘ve increased a level (0.5 NTRP) in doubles - in spite of putting on 20 lbs in the four years. I hit with a lot more topspin than before with changes in general to a more modern technique and I’m very happy that my coach can teach an old dog new tricks. I do at least one practice session in between my lessons along with playing matches on other days. So, you can improve if you spend a lot of time on court playing often just like juniors do.
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with someone like you... that's like taking free daily privates
presuming one is actively trying to apply changes. majority of folks i see don't want to make changes especially if makes them worse in the short term. i've seen folks on my team spend hundred$ on serve lessons, just to go back to the thing they were doing before.... citing they don't have the time to practice the new thing, and they don't want to stop competing.
L4S10s
Professional
your wife is not representative of most adult learners out there, group that I was referencing about in my post.
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
I once got coached by a certified coach who taught me double handed backhand. He uses a very light oversized racquet. When we did volley drills he's amazed that my volleys consistently went deep, while his volleys went short most of the time and he occasionally mishit the balls. I suspect it's because of his very light oversized racquet which has a very low twist weight.
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