The Most Important Aspect of Coaching Tennis

If you want to teach your students how to play tennis, you are going to need to grasp their interest in the sport. Just as with any sport, watching the professionals on TV will spark any person's interest. It entices them to enjoy the world's best tennis players to battle it out for the title. The hard-hitting and extremely talented players often put on amazing shows in the NBA Playoffs and especially during the Grand Slams (on that note, the French Open/Roland Garros is currently underway in the red clay of Paris, France).

But even with all of this entertainment aspect of tennis, there lies a hidden tool for coaches. If you can encourage your students to not simply watch a match to see who wins or loses, but to prod them in seeing the strategy that each tennis player employs to win a point. Tennis is a sport of strategy as well as skill. Only with the combination of both entities can a player truly succeed.

The best example of this is Roger Federer, notably the world's best tennis player, perhaps even of all time. Next time, tell your student or child to watch the match on ESPN or ESPN2. Sit down with them and tell them to pay attention to how each professional tennis player hits the ball. More importantly, focus their attention on the way pros play each point, how they hit each shot, and where they hit it (relative to their opponent of course). If you can succeed in doing this, you will have undoubtedly make a vital influence on the rising student's tennis game.

I will keep this post rather short because the message is simple. Make your students watch tennis on tv whenever there is a tennis match on. Make sure you do not force them to watch, but merely suggest it. But even better, take them to the United States Open in Flushing Meadows, New York. Have them watch tennis up close and truly appreciate how beautifully and majestically the professionals play. Like I said, this is the a key part of being a great coach. Sure there are numerous tips and drills that you can run with them, but the progress made from those are slow. Make them watch tv and you will a huge improvement in your student's tennis skills. Try it out and I will post more concepts that are hugely overlooked in coaching tennis.