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A coach is having his twentieth lesson with a club player called Hans. Hans misses a shot and the coach starts to tell him
something but pauses - Hans interrupts him says
“yes, I hit the ball late, I wasn’t focussed on the ball,
etc.” So the next time Hans misses the coach starts
to say something and Hans again interrupts him.
“Yes I know what you are going To say. I didn’t get
my feet to the ball, etc.” The same thing happens all
through the lesson - the coach is beginning to say
something but as soon as he pauses Hans jumps in
with his own analysis. In the whole lesson the coach doesn’t manage to venture a single opinion. At the end of the lesson, Hans is beaming with pleasure. “Thankyou so much,” he tells the coach. “That was the best lesson ever. I agreed with everything you said. I really thought you understood me today!”
Seven year old boy is talking to 7 year old girl in Summer holiday squad and not paying attention. Coach tells him to stop flirting. Boy says “She was flirting with me first. She wanted to know my shoe size!”
To be an exceptional player you must, at some period in your life, play an exceptional amount of tennis. There are no exceptions to this rule.
When reading autobiographies of tennis champions it is often the description of their early years in tennis which I find most interesting. They were all so single-minded in their desire to play - and this applies to all champions down the ages, past or modern.
So kids complain that they can’t play because they can’t get an indoor court, or a good enough opponent or whatever!
Stories to tell them:
Budge Patty, Wimbledon champion in 1950 talks about his junior days. He could hardly remember a day when he didn't visit the public park courts. He would play ten to twelve sets a day (not just drilling but competitive sets), many times forgetting to go home for lunch and often being late for dinner. Pauline Betz, the 1946 world champion lived nearby and Patty and she would play together in the park. There was an adults priority rule that said adults could throw juniors off, and so a twelve year old Patty would show up at 6am on Saturday morning to be sure of getting a court. Many were the mornings it was so cold they would play in gloves and overcoats.
Hana Mandlikova, a Wimbledon finalist, started off with a wooden paddle racquet made by her father. It still had blood on it from where he cut his hand sawing off the edges. Her first Winter's indoor training was
done entirely without a ball, doing shadow strokes
in a small gym withher wooden paddle.
Martina Navratilova’s earliest memory as a
five-year old is the feel of the red clay sticking in
her socks. She would spend the whole weekend
playing on the clay courts at her tennis club.
There's an American parent story along the lines of how to instil confidence in your children. A little boy is going on to play his first match in a tournament. "Make me proud of you, son," says his American father. "Be sure to win. You don't want to be a loser all your life." Great advice, especially if the father of his opponent is saying exactly the same thing. Imagine a tournament with 64 players and one eventual winner. At the end of the week there will be 63 kids who think they're going to be losers all their lives!
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