For tennis_chiro

[julian1]

Greetings,
I have found a following quote about teaching methods.
I would appreciate your comments
regards,
Julian


“American tennis is in the sorriest state it has ever been,” said Tim Mayotte, a former top-10 player.

Mayotte resigned as the head of a program in Flushing over what he called “very openly spoken reservations” about the U.S.T.A.’s approach. In a recent interview, he criticized “antiquated coaching methods” that emphasize long hours swatting balls rather than learning technique and movement.

A quote is from

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/sports/tennis/some-see-decline-in-us-tennis.html

[tennis_chiro]

Tim Mayotte's comments

Greetings,
I have found a following quote about teaching methods.
I would appreciate your comments
regards,
Julian


“American tennis is in the sorriest state it has ever been,” said Tim Mayotte, a former top-10 player.

Mayotte resigned as the head of a program in Flushing over what he called “very openly spoken reservations” about the U.S.T.A.’s approach. In a recent interview, he criticized “antiquated coaching methods” that emphasize long hours swatting balls rather than learning technique and movement.

A quote is from
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/sp...us-tennis.html

I am in almost complete agreement with Tim Mayotte. The one thing the USTA development program has proven is that it is the graveyard of promising juniors who have never made it into the upper echelons of the sport despite great promise. This has not happened just once or twice. The successful players we have had have come from private coaching. Tim is exactly right. In Europe, the associations support successful private coaches. Here, they take their students away and put them in the care of coaches who may have had great playing careers (usually mediocre) and may be good "tournament coaches", but they simply do not have the tools or experience to be "developmental coaches".

Martin talks about the money going to regional programs. Can you imagine if the USTA took a couple of million dollars a year and handed out almost automatically renewable $20,000 grants that would be reviewable at 2 years how many more good kids we might have in the pipeline. (Basically, I would take 60 kids in the 12s, 40 kids in the 14s and 20 kids in the 16s). Plus, Alexios Halebian shouldn't have to give up his youth with his family. How many kids have done what he has done and gone down the rabbit hole of anonymity by the time they were 18?!

It takes a lot of money to support the development of a player in this game. Generally speaking, the kids with the parents with enough money simply don't have the necessary drive. Certainly some do. But the vast majority of promising kids we see simply don't have the resources to afford to take a couple of lessons a week and hire hitters to give them the kind of quality practice that is necessary to lay down enough "myelin" to excel.

But convincing me of the need for an alternate approach is not the problem. You have to convince the USTA president and board that they need to take another approach. The USTA should spend more of its money supporting the coaches that have shown they can produce champions. They should have Lansdorp on retainer. Go out to coaches like him and say, "We'd like to support some prospects you would like to pick who need financial assistance. If they improve, we will continue to support your work with them. If they are great, we will take them on our traveling developmental team when they are 16 or 17. They will have to fulfill minimum requirements along our guidelines to maintain the support. And we will offer technical support to help them develop physically as well."

Great word, if...

don

[stotty]

Developing players is expensive, no question. But you can spend buckets of money and achieve little. The LTA are richer than any tennis organization in the world and have spent more money than you can imagine, yet made no world-class players.

In the end you can only blame the coaching and the LTA need to tackle it big time in this country.

Key problems are:

Most coaches are only capable of coaching to the level the played at themselves - an uncomfortable fact but true. It takes confidence and sheer knowledge to coach players better then you. Yes, it can be done, but very few coaches can.

The LTA try to do everything from publishing a magazine to funding clubs, promoting the game, training coaches, the competition structure, etc. They cannot hope to cover as much as they do.

The funding of independent performance academies is the way to go (as in Spain), and the training of coaches needs reviewing too.

Seems you in the US have similar problems to us Brits

[tennis_chiro]

Good US Open Juniors for Brit boys!

Developing players is expensive, no question. But you can spend buckets of money and achieve little. The LTA are richer than any tennis organization in the world and have spent more money than you can imagine, yet made no world-class players.

In the end you can only blame the coaching and the LTA need to tackle it big time in this country.

Key problems are:

Most coaches are only capable of coaching to the level the played at themselves - an uncomfortable fact but true. It takes confidence and sheer knowledge to coach players better then you. Yes, it can be done, but very few coaches can.

The LTA try to do everything from publishing a magazine to funding clubs, promoting the game, training coaches, the competition structure, etc. They cannot hope to cover as much as they do.

The funding of independent performance academies is the way to go (as in Spain), and the training of coaches needs reviewing too.

Seems you in the US have similar problems to us Brits

The LTA must be having a good time with 3 Brits in the junior boys semis and Golding the champion. But not a single Brit girl in the main draw of the juniors?! US had one boy in the quarters, Halebian. And a bunch of girls in the later rounds as well as the champion, Grace Min.

I think that says something about coming up with competition.

don

[stotty]

We have often had good juniors...but they never seem to make the transition into the pro tour..