A New Teaching System: The Forehand Keying Process

[don_budge]

A Little Bit More on the Service Game...

I like the comments on MLB baseball. Don't know if you got the chance to watch that movie on the baseball pitcher - it was great how he talked to himself and was always thinking, thinking and thinking about what he was doing next.

Thinking about what he was doing next and all the while knowing what he had done previously. These guys keep a book on all the batters they face. They try to analyze where they like the ball and where they don't like it. Then they pitch around the plate strategically.

Serving is much the same sort of challenge. Understanding your opponent and reading him like a book. It's great to be able to overpower guys but even more satisfying to outsmart them and frustrate them with your tactics. Stan Smith lays it out in just a few minutes. Three spins...three locations from which to serve from...four targets...two speeds. That is a lot of permutations and combinations.

The perfect motion. Gonzalez, McEnroe and Sampras...more or less "natural" motions. Ilie Nastase in the same vein. But Stan Smith himself wasn't such a natural it seems...or looks like. Yet when you look at his motion it is every bit as good as the "natural" servers. Every bit as effective. He gets his rollercoaster car on track and throws the ball on the track and voila...there you have it. One of the most effective serves of his era.

The perfect motion is attainable. Nice to have the gift of the natural motion but in his video Stan Smith, himself an example of the made man, shows us how to develop the repeatability and reliability in a swing if you one is not so naturally inclined.

One of my favorite Wimbledons...the dark horse loses. The Petulant One.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddbyDGVtAnw

Look at the forehand volley at 5.12 to save match point. Nastaste really "collarbones" it.

[hockeyscout]

This is a video that I frequently recommend to practice serving with a purpose. I wrote the post to Ed Weiss regarding one of his students that he had posted on the forum. The whole motion is built on aiming...lining up. Great motions and great servers are clipping the lines constantly and the tactics are those of a baseball pitcher.



Serves with Stan Smith...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxcMr1Ya5w0

EdWeiss, …my only concern with this young man would be in screwing him up. I doubt that anybody has had to teach him much about this service motion so far so if you have the kind of sense that I think you do judging from your background with Welby Van Horn and Harry Hopman…you will wisely just nudge him in the correct direction and watch this thing grow. It's that good. Your best contribution to the motion is to have him running forwards which led him to toss the ball further in front of him and this in turn has set the wheels in motion to the fine delivery you see in front of you.

His motion is so free and flowing and natural…apparently that is the most difficult thing for tennis coaches to see. If it isn't broken, don't fix it. The motion reminds me of a nemesis of Stan Smith's back in the early 1970's whose name is Ille Nastase. "Project J"…has a beautiful little trademark flourish in his backswing that makes it his own. Leave it alone. All of it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with his tossing motion as he delivers the ball to the precise spot repetitively.

The way that he sends that racquet head speeding out of the loop behind his back and up and over the ball as if he is circumnavigating a huge beach ball is an act of God…an act of nature. No amount of human interference is going to improve it. Let it grow…let him evolve. Just give him the proper stimuli.

If there was one little tiny adjustment that I would make it would be in his set up. I would move that back foot more in line with the front so that the back foot is not so far behind him. This is simply an aiming device that I would want to impress upon him in his formative growth period as it is a fundamental device in my opinion…in my paradigm. But that's all. Then I go to work on his work habits…on his practice philosophy. There is no better method than the Stan Smith method here and it is one that I used when I was about 18 years old and teaching myself the game of tennis. I had a plastic bag of 25 balls or so and I would practice until I could get all 25 in a row in…at the targets.

Speed, spin and placement. These are the elements that make up a serve. Coincidentally they are the same elements that make a baseball pitched ball. Learning to "pitch" to the receiver like a major league baseball pitcher is what my emphasis would be now. You see…if you get him to practice with these elements in mind that Stan Smith is emphasizing he is going to be sending messages to every sector of his swing to make adjustments and this is how his motion is going to evolve most naturally.

Motions like Gonzales, McEnroe, Sampras and all of the rest of the great servers were probably more or less natural motions as evidenced by the great and perfect rhythms they produced. It is the rhythm and the aiming and the delivery. This kid already has two out of three…it is the aiming and the tactical side of serving that he should start to aspire to. Develop spin.

I notice that in every single one of the deliveries he is heading towards the net and this has greatly improved his motion. That forwards momentum is what the aforementioned great service motions were always founded in and I am a firm believer in this. Even if he isn't going to head to the net, if his serve evolves into greatness he will want to be moving forwards to aggressively mop up on some weaker returns. The roller coaster must go forwards…to the destination.

It is all about aiming now. He has the tools and a God given ability. Don't interfere with nature and just set up the targets and watch. Watch how he naturally adjusts his swing to get the ball to do what he wants it to do. It's an act of God…and a product of proper practice.

I like the comments on MLB baseball. Don't know if you got the chance to watch that movie on the baseball pitcher - it was great how he talked to himself and was always thinking, thinking and thinking about what he was doing next.

You know, you hit the nail on the head with "Motions like Gonzales, McEnroe, Sampras and all of the rest of the great servers were probably more or less natural motions as evidenced by the great and perfect rhythms they produced" ... with the program I am running (Armagedon) you've got to clearly have athletes who have the goods to begin with, and of course know how to evaluate that right off the hop. The big key in a lot of ways - and tennis_chiro pointed this out ... train them VERY safely for optimal hours so they don't break down. His athletes probably broke down after they left them because of motivational Rocky Inspired Training that these associations who eat up, and spit out players can afford to do with no reprocussions. If you are lucky enough to have a Gonzales, McEnroe, Sampras, the real key as far as training is keeping them optimal (and that is a big job), and healthy. Lots of bad trainers out there in every sport - and they are no good in my opinion because there athletes are not healthy, and injured. Again, tennischiro hit it right on the head - sleep is important - my oldest one gets 13-14 hours sleep a day. No kidding. She literally will put herself to bed at 5 pm, and get up early in the morning to go workout so she isn't bothered by Joe Fan. And, tennischiro is bang on about 3 - 4 reps. I don't want long rallies, ect, I want 3 - 4 great reps, and then a legit rest to get the system moving. I like video - my youngest one hits 6 seconds, and then watches the video for 30 seconds. Recovery is so important. Our pace is amazingly slow, and tennis player dont like it. But, you need to get the body time to recover, and the mind to understand what is happening. Generally coaches hate our rhythm of how we practice - but, I like diliberate behavior being the son of an asbestos miner who drove that home in me at a young age. The issue is people are rushed for time, and that is not the case with us, we live close to everything and are annal about schedules. You gotta have that setup to be successful, and not run around like a chicken with your head cut off. The one thing he did not touch on - food. I got woman who have that covered so well for my kids, and I think they are pretty above average in terms of being optimal because real care and thought is being put into that area of their development. don_budge again hits the nail on the target with his - "every single one of the deliveries he is heading towards the net" - and that is just common sense when you come from a sport like hockey. You get to the net. The same applies to tennis, every shot. It also allows a player to practice harder. I think Patrick McEnroe was insane when he puts all this value in rallies (I have been saying this for years) - he stated you needed to rally 50 times in a row. I am not really sure a lot of American tennis coaches really understand the game because that is insane, and your just going to create a dumb athlete. Its funny, this site gets some smart tennis minds like don_budge, tennis_chiro, EdWeiss, John Yandell, Klacr, Geoff Williams, 10splayer, bottle, ect, and I gotta admit I miss the worldsgreatesttenniscoach (or whatever his name was, he was a neat guy) -- and I just wonder how a talented group of coaches can end all end up here in a hotspot, and everyone else is out on the courts teaching some wacky, stupid shit that really isn't developing much. Yah, one guy I think is just nuts and off his rocker here, but, you can't agree with every guy. You guys teach and talk about a whole different game. I see this kids on the Challenger Tour come through our town, and I swear, they are like Junior Varsity basketball players. Its so incredible how bad they are as athletes. A lot of them hit great balls with their shoulders, and have good hand - eye coordination and rotator cuffs, but, below the shoulders its like no one has ever worked with them properly. Anyways, I like you guys and its really to bad the system is rigged against guys like you succeeding. Its really a nasty game for tennis coaches - I can see why so many guys are de-motivated and burned out. You really got to be a strong motherfucker to coach, succeed and make it in this game. More-so than hockey coaching, where everyone is encouraging and patting you on the back. If you have ability in hockey you move up, and you don't always have someone forcing you back down. Keep at it boys, you're doing a hell of a job here.

[tennis_chiro]

Anyone care to explain to me the Stan Smith - Steve Navarro 20 minute service deal please?

Serves with Stan Smith...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxcMr1Ya5w0

Short answer: everyone should have at least 3 different targets from 2 different serving positions for at least 2 different serves at two different speeds in each box. That's 24 serves in each box. If you hit 4 of each, that's 96 serves to each box. In the video, Smith comes up with 72 possible serves to each box and an interesting way of describing what serve he is hitting. It's a great way to develop a routine that requires a lot of focus and repetition without putting the student in the situation of feeling they have to hit 100 serves in each box, a daunting task. To me, hitting 4 of each of 24 different serves is a lot more palatable. And, since you are going to have to hit at least 5000 serves with any changes in your motion to have it even begin to be a solid habit you can count on, you need to find a way to make that service practice very palatable. Without rushing and with reasonable focus and targeting, you can hit a serve every 6 seconds; that's about 20 minutes to hit 200 serves.

don

[don_budge]

Anyone care to explain to me the Stan Smith - Steve Navarro 20 minute service deal please?

This is a video that I frequently recommend to practice serving with a purpose. I wrote the post to Ed Weiss regarding one of his students that he had posted on the forum. The whole motion is built on aiming...lining up. Great motions and great servers are clipping the lines constantly and the tactics are those of a baseball pitcher.



Serves with Stan Smith...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxcMr1Ya5w0

EdWeiss, …my only concern with this young man would be in screwing him up. I doubt that anybody has had to teach him much about this service motion so far so if you have the kind of sense that I think you do judging from your background with Welby Van Horn and Harry Hopman…you will wisely just nudge him in the correct direction and watch this thing grow. It's that good. Your best contribution to the motion is to have him running forwards which led him to toss the ball further in front of him and this in turn has set the wheels in motion to the fine delivery you see in front of you.

His motion is so free and flowing and natural…apparently that is the most difficult thing for tennis coaches to see. If it isn't broken, don't fix it. The motion reminds me of a nemesis of Stan Smith's back in the early 1970's whose name is Ille Nastase. "Project J"…has a beautiful little trademark flourish in his backswing that makes it his own. Leave it alone. All of it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with his tossing motion as he delivers the ball to the precise spot repetitively.

The way that he sends that racquet head speeding out of the loop behind his back and up and over the ball as if he is circumnavigating a huge beach ball is an act of God…an act of nature. No amount of human interference is going to improve it. Let it grow…let him evolve. Just give him the proper stimuli.

If there was one little tiny adjustment that I would make it would be in his set up. I would move that back foot more in line with the front so that the back foot is not so far behind him. This is simply an aiming device that I would want to impress upon him in his formative growth period as it is a fundamental device in my opinion…in my paradigm. But that's all. Then I go to work on his work habits…on his practice philosophy. There is no better method than the Stan Smith method here and it is one that I used when I was about 18 years old and teaching myself the game of tennis. I had a plastic bag of 25 balls or so and I would practice until I could get all 25 in a row in…at the targets.

Speed, spin and placement. These are the elements that make up a serve. Coincidentally they are the same elements that make a baseball pitched ball. Learning to "pitch" to the receiver like a major league baseball pitcher is what my emphasis would be now. You see…if you get him to practice with these elements in mind that Stan Smith is emphasizing he is going to be sending messages to every sector of his swing to make adjustments and this is how his motion is going to evolve most naturally.

Motions like Gonzales, McEnroe, Sampras and all of the rest of the great servers were probably more or less natural motions as evidenced by the great and perfect rhythms they produced. It is the rhythm and the aiming and the delivery. This kid already has two out of three…it is the aiming and the tactical side of serving that he should start to aspire to. Develop spin.

I notice that in every single one of the deliveries he is heading towards the net and this has greatly improved his motion. That forwards momentum is what the aforementioned great service motions were always founded in and I am a firm believer in this. Even if he isn't going to head to the net, if his serve evolves into greatness he will want to be moving forwards to aggressively mop up on some weaker returns. The roller coaster must go forwards…to the destination.

It is all about aiming now. He has the tools and a God given ability. Don't interfere with nature and just set up the targets and watch. Watch how he naturally adjusts his swing to get the ball to do what he wants it to do. It's an act of God…and a product of proper practice.

[hockeyscout]

Anyone care to explain to me the Stan Smith - Steve Navarro 20 minute service deal please?

[johnyandell]

Don,
Again great you have you back!

[hockeyscout]

Hey don, superb piece of work. Thanks, I am going to print this out and break it down. Hope you dont mind questions, I am sure a few other guys will post what they think as well. Thats a nice Xmas gift to get (-:

[tennis_chiro]

(cont from #35)

Okay, so the schedule is already getting pretty full. We are trying to get a lot of drilling in, a lot of point play/match play to practice the first three shots of every point. We have to get at least three 20-minute serving sessions in practicing that serve the way Steve Navarro has advocated (like Stan Smith). And we have to try to play 8 sets of good competition a week. If we don’t have time for full sets, we can make them no-ad or play sets to 4 with 9-point tie-breakers at 3 all. But we need to have the experience of playing competitive sets. Of course, that means you have to have equal competitors. If you don’t have equal competitors, use bisques. That’s how I made Huggy Bears such a great competition; we handicapped the teams. A bisque is a free point you can use any time you want. If you have two bisques, you can use them to take the game at 30-30; you wouldn’t use it at 0-30 because you may not have to. They can be a great equalizer and give a player that routinely loses 6-3, 6-4 to another player just two or three bisques a set and that stronger player is going to have to play his very best to get the win. That’s what you want.

Okay. So what do I have. Just 20 hours a week. At least serve plus one drills six sessions out of eight per week with at least three of those sessions serve and volley. Those sessiions take about 30 minutes for two players to complete as much as they can of the drill. You are doing a half hour to an hour per practice session doing drill that require movement and hitting patterns. You start every session with 10 minutes at the net to warm up the muscles and the eyes and hands. Maybe 20 minutes a day of hitting forehands and backhands down the line and cross-court. Half of those sessions should be with one player at the net and one player back. But don’t spend hours on end hitting forehands and backhands down the line or crosscourt. Get into the game situation practicing the first three shots of the point. And play at least 8 sets a week. The weekend days when you do two-a-days, the afternoon sessions can be just set play after a brief warmup. And every day ends with 20 minutes of fitness. Alternate between a medium day, a brutal anaerobic day and a light perfect technique day with more stretching. And I guess we are going to have to add 10 more minutes of cool down stretching every session.

Now your schedule in the Ukraine is more like a 30 or 35 hour schedule and you are doing a lot more fitness and agility to produce professional players. We can’t do that here in the states with kids that are in school activity and transportation from almost 7 am to 3 pm and also have at least 2 to 3 hours of homework. By the way, these athletes all need a lot more than 8 hours of sleep and they rarely get that. If they are really going to develop physically to their full potential, they need at least 9 hours of sleep a night. They would have to be in bed by 9. No wonder so many of them break down… or opt for home schooling. It’s probably less than one in a thousand that can actually be a professional athlete and maybe one in fifty that can earn a college scholarship, but they sacrifice their future when they get inadequately home-schooled and miss out on so much. Great if it’s done well, but I’ve seen too many home-schooled kids who couldn’t make it as tennis players and were totally unprepared for college. That’s a bad combination.

Fitness: HS, it sounds like you know a lot more than I do about getting the right kind of fitness program, but the recent research shows that a lot more can be done with HIIT (high intensity interval training) in a short amount of time than we ever thought. I really like using heavy ropes (1, 2, 3 and 4 pounders). They are a great way to build anaerobic tolerance and endurance. Stretching and flexibility has to be stressed; the modern pro player has learned the importance of good stretching. The right kind of core strength is developed with full body exercises; isolated exercises like sit-ups are a waste of time. Learn to hold your position extended on two-elbows and one foot on a super ball for a couple of minutes; or better, one hand and two feet and play catch with the other hand. Now that is real core strength.

I wonder what you think of this program on youtube, HS:
lower back workout with dr eric goodman

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lower+back+workout+with+dr+eric+goodman

I use it as a simple exercise program for my chiro patients and for my students when they will listen to me. Very nice morning warmup.

I also do a lot of Egoscue Exercises. These are postural isometrics that are great for realigning and strengthening the body. I have a list I give my students. You have to send me an email for me to send you the list of exercises.

I don’t want to see too much running on hard surfaces because we are already doing too much of that already. So bike sprints or elliptical sprints are great. And some of the standard footwork and agility drills are excellent. Things like the ladder drills.

But, and this is one of my pet peeves, I don’t like to see players hitting balls with an elastic strap pulling them from behind. It’s important to move across a tennis court like a ballerina in Swan Lake. She floats effortlessly across the floor in total balance when if reality, beneath her dress, her feet are going a million miles an hour in tiny steps. I don’t care so much about the tiny steps, but I do care about the effortless balance. A tennis player has to move across the court in perfect balance rarely letting his center of gravity outside of his pelvic ring and arriving at the ball ready to impart power from loaded legs. He also needs to be able to completely separate his upper and lower body so that hi legs can be going as fast as possible and, for a volley, his arm might be moving hardly at all. When you attach one of those elastic bands to a player as they move in to hit a groundstroke or a volley, you are completely distorting the balance that a player needs to take to a shot. If you want to overload the system, put a scuba belt around their waste or maybe a weight vest around their chest and shoulders, but don’t pull them off balance with an elastic band. Tennis players are not interior linemen. Different deal.

Anyway, that gives you a small sample of some of the ideas I would implement if I were running a full-time schedule for one of my students. The truth is, I don’t currently have a single student that sees me more than once a week and most of those are beginner adults. So it’s great fun to look in on the programs you are implementing in your facility.

don

[tennis_chiro]

(cont from #34)

You are asking about how I would train a serious player, so let’s assume they are somewhat advanced, say at least 13 years old (and it sounds like your 11 y.o. is a little older than her years but be careful). I want kids that age to still be going to school. World ranked top 10 in the 16’s? OK, now you can start home schooling and building your life around tennis. In the meantime, I want to build a 20 hour a week schedule on the court for a 13 year-old that doesn’t break them down. They can do a 2 1/2 hour practice four days a week and twice a day on weekends; that’s 20 hours. Ten minutes warmup and that can be the “slow balls/fast feet” at the net, an hour of drilling and an hour of serving and playing points; probably 20 minutes of nothing but serve practice if it can’t be adequately worked into a drill.

There is way too much emphasis on rallying. You have to practice grounds, but the vast majority of points are 1, 2 or 3 shots long. If it’s not serve and volley, it’s at least serve and concluder, usually a big forehand. They need to practice that much more; and of course, return of serve.

When I played, I always warmed up with my volleys, then did cross courts and down the lines groundies and then focused on a serve and volley drill. I taught Paul Annacone his serve in the summer of 1976 and then I coached him in summers occasionally when he was older. I was just one influence on his development, but I did spend a lot of time with him in the summer of 1986 just as he reached his highest ranking at 12. But I think the biggest influence I had on him was from him using a drill I developed when he practiced with one of my practice partners as he grew up in his mid to late teens. He also spend significant time at Bolletieri’s in his late teens, but that just helped him lose his “awe” for guys like Agassi and Wheaton when he lived with them on a daily basis. When Paul got to Tennessee, he had a different level of serve and volley skills from everyone else in college and by his third year there, he was college player of the year. I wish I had had the understanding of the forehand I got from Brian Gordon back in those days and I might have been able to help Paul with his groundies when it could have done him some good.

The drill is a simple serve and volley drill that has three stages where the server goes to the net after every serve and keeps serving to a box until he makes a first volley and plays out the point. In the first stages of the drill the receiver subjugates himself to give the server an easy volley, but as the drill goes on it progresses and returns are tougher and the server is able to use first serves as well. The point is played out and if the first volley is made, the server moves to the next service box. This keeps going until the server makes 10 first volleys/ boxes. Then roles reverse. If it’s done right, the server can get through his first ten volleys with just 10 serves; remember these are second serves. The second ten, the receiver puts the serves at the receiver’s waste and below the third set, the receiver tries to force the server to miss the volley, so he puts the ball at the server’s ankles and off to the side a little. If anyone is interested in the complete drill, private message me your email and I will send you a copy of the complete two page explanation.

The point is, we practiced a lot on the first three shots: serve, return and volley, but today that could be serve, return and first shot. Good players who have developed there basic strokes spend too much time just hitting the ball back and forth; they need to spend more time in the conditions created by the first three shots of the point. Today, since you wouldn’t serve and volley so much, you can simply insist that the third shot has to be an aggressive shot that takes control of the point; if not, you serve to that box again. But if I had players who are committed, and I had control of them, I would insist they spend at least 20-30 minutes three times a week doing the serve and volley version of the drill. The other days, they could do serve and forehand.

As for the drilling aspect, I would have the players spending at least an hour a day (the drilling portion of their two hours) working against my Twins. With those ball machines, I can create up to a nine ball pattern that the player can go through that includes movement and adjustment to different balls to rehearse proper footwork and balance. And I can push them tougher than any hitter. You should really consider trying to get a set of these machines from my friend Renzo Raiss in Delray Beach. He stopped marketing them, but I know he has a few sets in storage. At one time there were three or four sets in Europe, but they require someone to think before they go on a court. And the pro doesn’t need a racket in his hand; he has to actually be able to think and have something constructive to add or he feels like he is just a piece of furniture; unfortunately, not that many pros are able to feel useful without actually feeding balls. That’s another story. Imagine three players on a court with my machines. I’m running them through a 6 ball drill, maybe a four-ball Spanish cross plus a two ball sequence that finishes with a short ball or a volley; that takes less than 12 seconds. The next two players go and 24 seconds has passed and the player is up again. You need to train to be able to recover in 25 seconds for the ATP and WTA Tours and 2j0 seconds for the Grand Slams. How long do you think those three boys last when they are going full out for 6 balls every 36 seconds?! The advantage of my machines is the ball is fired from the corner to which the player hits the last shot; this creates realistic (not real) geometry. And the ball is manually fired by remote control so the next ball comes out of the machine as the last ball passes the machine; so you create realistic timing.

There are other things I can do with these machines because I fire the balls manually. When I want the player to react and move quickly and stop thinking so much about their stroke and react under pressure, I set them up on a two ball drill, for example at the center of the court and about a yard and a half to the left of center of the court. I want the player to bounce back and forth between the two balls practicing their move to the left for an inside out forehand to the backhand corner with an occasional inside in. I start them moderately and then I start firing the ball with greater and greater frequency. For example, when I want to take a false pause out of the second part of the swing (a lot of players make three moves instead of two: they move the racket to the unit turn position, then they move it down to where the shaft points horizontally straight back at the back fence, and then they swing forward; the result is they miss out on the SSC and the rackethead doesn’t drop enough below the ball), then I fire ball number 2 just as number 1 is bouncing on this side of the court. The player must complete the stroke, look up and find the ball as they spring back to the next ball; it puts tremendous pressure on that stroke, and that is before I start to speed up the ball or add a lot of spin. Another thing I can do is make the balls at different speeds, spins or heights so the player must adjust quickly. The idea is to make practice harder than actual play.

(cont below)

[tennis_chiro]

Mentality is a major problem ... frankly, I see a lot of coaches (if they call themselves that) and parents with there heads in the clouds (dreamers) saying everyone has a wonderful left arm raise, and there son has a world class backhand. They are only kidding themselves.

Hypothetically tennis_chiro, if you had people who were balanced and willing to work, what would you specifically do to develop that type of game.

It'd be interested in your thoughts - its always nice to see you post here as I respect your thoughts.

Here's a little idea of what I would do, but it's only a beginning of a thought:

If… was that Kipling? I’ve kind of given up ever having that chance but it sounds like you have an excellent environment for learning and development.

You sound like you have a great grasp of fitness and biomechanics and even the practical tools that can help you develop those attributes in your athletes. But the best training for tennis is still tennis; all the other stuff just allows you to train at tennis at a higher level. There is a much greater level of emphasis on off-court activities these days because it's necessary to develop the complete athlete. John McEnroe didn’t need that much of that because he was a high school varsity athlete in soccer and basketball in addition to playing tennis. So he had a lot of the cross training you design into your programs just by playing a variety of sports. I don’t think Brian Gordon would think too much of his the biomechanics of his forehand and backhand, but he know how to arrive at the ball ready to make it do what he wanted it to do. But I’m getting off topic.

If I had kids who were balanced and willing, what would I have them do? First of all, to have them succeed professionally, you need to have them start early and on the right things. Let me tell you in terms of a couple of my experiences, which were all incomplete because no one ever stayed with me long enough for me to take them through their full development.

I started to teach a lot again about 2002 when I got my prototypes of the ball machines I have now. I got the current actual units in 2003 and some of the software was upgraded. I have about $40,000 in those machines. Long story. Actually bought them for $26,000. But, in any case, at that point I was committed to doing more teaching. I was mostly trying to correct problems and habits that were allowed to develop by other coaches. I didn’t really want to teach beginners. But after a couple of years I got tired of trying to correct all these bad habits and I tried to go after somewhat younger kids instead of the 14-17 year-olds I was working with. In spring of 2007, I got a young student who was a little like your girls. She had just turned 9 and was ranked about 20 in SoCal 10’s. It was a big struggle for me because it was tough to get her to do “real work”. I would work with her for about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes three times a week. I felt good if I got 15 minutes of good work out of her the entire session. She was going to the USTA center in Carson a couple of days a week as well so there was other input, but she was listening to me about her strokes. What was striking about her as I look back was her eagerness. She would always run full speed from the parking lot to my court to get to her lesson. She couldn’t wait to get started. Of course, then it was a continuous battle to get a 9-year-old to work on the things I wanted her to work on.

Nevertheless, I always insisted the lesson begin at the net, as I did with almost all my students and in my own practice sessions. In the beginning that was very tough and very rudimentary, but eventually she got so she could handle the simple “slow balls, fast feet” drill that I used to warm up. That was always the first 15 minutes of the lesson. We did about 160 of those lessons in 18 months and at the end of that time, she was the number one 10 and under girl in SoCal. By the 12’s she was a dominant doubles player in her age group because she had a comfort level at the net that none of her contemporaries did. All those 15 minute sessions paid off. At the end of those 18 months she had excellent technique in her groundstrokes and she had a very sound Richard Krajicek like rhythm to her service motion. She didn’t hit it that well yet, but I wasn’t worried because she threw the football better than the boys in her class and almost better than I did at 10 years old. I was convinced I had her on the right path. She was too small to go to the net, but by 12 I thought I could have her doing things the other girls her age could only imagine.

After 18 months, I gave her up to a full time program at the USTA Center. She became one of the best female athletes I have ever seen. Athletes. But they overtrained her and she has been on injured reserve with knee, foot and arm problems for half the time the last 4 years. She had probably 5 different coaches at the USTA, all very good former players, but they took away most of what I had given her. This is in my view of course, but they turned her into a heavy topspin artist on the forehand and destroyed the basic mechanics I had given her on her forehand. She hits a very heavy forehand which will work great against lesser players, but I don’t think it will hold up when she has to face world class competition. On the backhand side where she had a wonderful natural two-hander, she relies heavily on the slice as a change from her heavy forehand. Terrible waste. And on her serve, Tom Gullikson decided it was too complicated for her to rock back and forth and converted her to a simple back to front rhythm on her serve. Most of when I’ve seen her play the last couple of years she had no rhythm on her serve because there was no connection between the forward weight transfer and the toss of the ball; it’s gotten a little better but she struggles with double faults. As a ten-year old with that Krajicek rhythm, she didn’t double fault much at all. It was funny. She had a video on youtube of that service motion when she was 10 and someone commented you couldn't learn a service motion like that; it was just natural. Well, she learned it by doing drill after drill after drill with me for all of that time and it took about a year, but then it looked perfectly natural.

This girl certainly benefited from all the exposure to top players and physical trainers courtesy of the USTA programs, but the coaches don’t know what they are doing when it comes to technique. Certain things have to be inculcated very early or at least from the beginning if the player starts at 12, 13 or 14. Later than that and they will never catch up with the elite players. They need to be pretty decent by age 14. I’ve heard the French say by 12, but I don’t buy that.

I’ve never had anyone who worked with me even 2 hours a day 5 days a week for any extended period of time, much less on a full academy schedule with at least 20 hours a week on court with instruction. I’ve had students who made it 3 times a week for 2 hours for maybe 10 weeks and seen tremendous improvements, but even then, they weren’t getting the other 6 hours of quality practice in that I was telling them they had to supplement the lessons with, including playing at least 8 sets a week. So all my pronouncements are strictly theoretical.

I believe in the 10,000 hour rule. 5000 hours to make a player and 10000 hours to make a champion. But I don’t thinks young kids should be playing 20 hours a week on tennis courts, especially hard courts like we have in CA. Even the USTA fitness guidelines recommend much lower training loads for kids under 14 and certainly under 12, but they don’t pay any attention to those guidelines when you see what they do with the young kids they have in their full-time programs. Those younger kids should be playing other sports or maybe even playing the piano or chess to broaden their horizons and strengthen their most important muscle, the one between their ears. But there I go again.

(continued below)

[hockeyscout]

The Teaching Paradigm...the development and education of a tennis player (creating a tennis player from scratch)

The development and education of a tennis player. You know the paradigm. The book is William Tilden. Richard Gonzalez is the model with the Don Budge backhand. Harry Hopman is the coach. Roger Federer is the Living Proof.

Reading through the posts from licensedcoach (Stotty), John Yandell and hockeyscout I become more and more content and satisfied with my teaching paradigm. John is a derivative of Tilden in that his analysis has only verified the teachings of Tilden. Everything that I have ever read by John Yandell or watched on his video analysis only confirms that fundamentals are fundamentals. Whether they are viewed at high speed definition or with the naked eye. Stotty brings many, many years of watching the greatest tennis tournament in the world up close at Wimbledon and he has seen all of the great ones come and go. Watching a tennis player live in competition is one of the best ways to learn and appreciate what it takes to hit a tennis ball and what is more how to play the game. hockeyscout now brings in an element of my paradigm that falls under the "Harry Hopman is the coach" heading. Hopman worked his players hard to insure that physical conditioning was not going to be a factor that they were going to buckle under.

What is more...hockeyscout brings up the subject about what comes first. The horse or the cart. Laying down the athletic foundation of a tennis player is going to pay huge dividends down the road. The current rage is to take mere infants from the cradle and try to get them to look like professional tennis players. I have yet to see one of these "wonderkins" make the big time. It takes one year to learn how to play the game of tennis, five years to be a tennis player and ten years to be a champion. These numbers haven't changed since they were written in the 1920's. The smartest thing a tennis coach could ever do with an eight year old is to get them to participate in as many sports as they can for three or four years along with some fundamental tennis training. Just rudimentary. Let the magic of a diverse athletic education take shape in the young one and then when their minds are ready for the game of tennis around 12 years old begin to get serious...if the student chooses to. Remember the ten years to be a champion. If the student has the proper foundation such as the one that hockeyscout advocates this number is reduce to eight. Eight years. When the 12 year old becomes 20 years old with the proper foundation and the wise tutelage of a Hopmanesque tennis mind this is the ticket.

All of these posters have some valuable intrinsic contributions. But in the end...I realize from my own background that it is the foundation that enables the game to come to you. I played several game pretty seriously before I ever touched a tennis racquet at 14 years old and very quickly I was playing with the 16 and under competition. Playing with mind you...not necessarily winning. But in the 18's there was some light at the end of the tunnel and it wasn't until I was in my 20's that I began to realize my potential. This was with sporadic training and without being religious about the sport spiritually. This happened later on in life.

This is an interesting thread at face value but I believe that there is much beneath the surface that is yet to mined. But in the beginning...this business of "playing around" in the inside of a ball in a pool is the stuff that children can sink their teeth into and therefore it will only pay dividends in the future when it comes to the education of the tennis player. Call in Hopman...or don_budge at this point. Engineer, sculptor...philosopher. It's a science. It's an art. In the end it is a philosophy. Most of all...it is only a game. A wonderful game however. God's gift to mankind in terms of recreation. Along with golf.

Superb post as usual don_budge.

[don_budge]

The Teaching Paradigm...the development and education of a tennis player (creating a tennis player from scratch)

The development and education of a tennis player. You know the paradigm. The book is William Tilden. Richard Gonzalez is the model with the Don Budge backhand. Harry Hopman is the coach. Roger Federer is the Living Proof.

Reading through the posts from licensedcoach (Stotty), John Yandell and hockeyscout I become more and more content and satisfied with my teaching paradigm. John is a derivative of Tilden in that his analysis has only verified the teachings of Tilden. Everything that I have ever read by John Yandell or watched on his video analysis only confirms that fundamentals are fundamentals. Whether they are viewed at high speed definition or with the naked eye. Stotty brings many, many years of watching the greatest tennis tournament in the world up close at Wimbledon and he has seen all of the great ones come and go. Watching a tennis player live in competition is one of the best ways to learn and appreciate what it takes to hit a tennis ball and what is more how to play the game. hockeyscout now brings in an element of my paradigm that falls under the "Harry Hopman is the coach" heading. Hopman worked his players hard to insure that physical conditioning was not going to be a factor that they were going to buckle under.

What is more...hockeyscout brings up the subject about what comes first. The horse or the cart. Laying down the athletic foundation of a tennis player is going to pay huge dividends down the road. The current rage is to take mere infants from the cradle and try to get them to look like professional tennis players. I have yet to see one of these "wonderkins" make the big time. It takes one year to learn how to play the game of tennis, five years to be a tennis player and ten years to be a champion. These numbers haven't changed since they were written in the 1920's. The smartest thing a tennis coach could ever do with an eight year old is to get them to participate in as many sports as they can for three or four years along with some fundamental tennis training. Just rudimentary. Let the magic of a diverse athletic education take shape in the young one and then when their minds are ready for the game of tennis around 12 years old begin to get serious...if the student chooses to. Remember the ten years to be a champion. If the student has the proper foundation such as the one that hockeyscout advocates this number is reduce to eight. Eight years. When the 12 year old becomes 20 years old with the proper foundation and the wise tutelage of a Hopmanesque tennis mind this is the ticket.

All of these posters have some valuable intrinsic contributions. But in the end...I realize from my own background that it is the foundation that enables the game to come to you. I played several game pretty seriously before I ever touched a tennis racquet at 14 years old and very quickly I was playing with the 16 and under competition. Playing with mind you...not necessarily winning. But in the 18's there was some light at the end of the tunnel and it wasn't until I was in my 20's that I began to realize my potential. This was with sporadic training and without being religious about the sport spiritually. This happened later on in life.

This is an interesting thread at face value but I believe that there is much beneath the surface that is yet to mined. But in the beginning...this business of "playing around" in the inside of a ball in a pool is the stuff that children can sink their teeth into and therefore it will only pay dividends in the future when it comes to the education of the tennis player. Call in Hopman...or don_budge at this point. Engineer, sculptor...philosopher. It's a science. It's an art. In the end it is a philosophy. Most of all...it is only a game. A wonderful game however. God's gift to mankind in terms of recreation. Along with golf.

[johnyandell]

Phil,
Ha! I knew it was someone of intelligence and knowledge.

[johnyandell]

HS, Like I said the water ball looks cool. Sounds like a lot of exercises drawing on other sports could be of real benefit in developing athleticism.

[stotty]

I agree with hockey scout on the concept of a "fast eye" that a coach develops. However, a coach is comparing what he sees with the template he chooses from the stored images in his brain's library. Sometimes the library of images are too narrow or at a too high level of performance to use as an effective template comparison. In these instances, high speed video would be especially useful.

This so-called fast eye concept probably doesn't exist. Fixing commons flaws and recognising them immediately, however, does exist. But this is more a product of 'past experience' than a so-called 'fast eye'.

Some things, such as hand, racket, arm rotation, cannot be seen with the naked eye. Coaches cannot diagnose and fix the unseeable, and in this scenario, the fast eye concept is completely ridiculous.

Some things are diagnosable with the naked eye, some things are better diagnosed with the benefit of high speed video.

As coaches, often we can see there is a problem with a stroke but cannot quite put our finger on what it is. This is often because the series of events is happening too quickly to see. Also, a lot of things that happen in a stroke are interrelated and it's impossible to look in two places at once. High speed video resolves this issue.

Without high speed video, in some cases, a coach may suspect a stroke is faulty but cannot pinpoint exactly where the fault lies, so ends up using guesswork, often treating symptoms rather than causes. This is very common.

Stotty