Play

Coaches, it's my view that the professionalization of instruction is ruining play and ruining childhood. 

With parents wanting "what's best for their child" and without the option of just sending the kid outside to play with other kids, they turn to adult professional teachers and instructors (of tennis, golf, baseball, basketball, chess, piano, you name it) to teach their kids how to play. What a bad joke. 

Now both parents and instructors are invested in the system, the professional instruction system. "I know I'm something of a car salesman, but I have a mortgage, a wife and two kids," said a local tennis professional to me. "I know this system sucks, but it only has to last about ten more years then I'll be done," said another.

Does the current system produce great players of these games, great athletes and musicians? Sure (see here). But all that excellence hides what is not seen.  All those who achieved greatness in this hyper-professional system stuck it out. What's not seen are the millions of kids who quit playing, because they weren't ever really playing. What's also not seen is the developmental damage done to children who grow up in a system where almost all play is structured and supervised by adults (lots of information on play and development here).

Kids who come to professional instructors are not coming to play. They are coming to work. Just like we are.

Service Academy Tennis

TennisRecruiting.net goes back to the high school graduating class of 2004. I grabbed the top 10 in each class from 2004-2007 and pasted them below. The class of 2004 has been out of college for six years. The class of 2005 has been out for five years.  Those players would have finished their five-years of guaranteed military employment if they'd chosen a service academy. Perhaps they would now be in the civilian work force. The classes of 2006 and 2007 would be serving in active duty.

Treat Huey makes a living playing doubles. Any other players on that list that have covered their expenses playing tennis?

Most of them probably went to college. Some won NCAA titles and a lot competed for conference and national titles. I'm not saying they all made a mistake not going to Navy, Army, or Air Force. But even for the highest rated recruits, playing tennis at a service academy while setting themselves up for the next five (and possible 20-40) years of their lives looks like a pretty good option relative to pursuing a career playing tennis.

If it's true that the top 10 should reasonably consider playing at a service academy, is it any less true of the rest of the top 50 or 100?

In the current environment where a) college tuitions are outrageously high and scholarship money for men in tennis is limited (the academies pay 100% of the cost of attendance for every student), b) prize money in the minor leagues of tennis is not sufficient to cover the costs of playing (service academy graduates have among -- and specifically Navy the -- highest average salaries five years after graduation), and c) the job prospects for college graduates are not great across the board (all academy graduates are guaranteed a minimum five years of full time employment in a field for which they are trained), I think EVERY male junior tennis player should take a look at what the service academies offer and see how that matches up to your life prospects outside of a military career. 

A military career, even one as brief as five years, isn't for everyone. But it is a great option for many of the top 100 players every year.  At the three NCAA DI academies, there are at most nine slots realistically available each year. Those slots should be very coveted by players inside the top 50 every year.

2004

1		Phillip Simmonds	VA
2		Daniel Yoo	FL
3		Brendan Evans	FL
4		Scott Oudsema	MI
5		Treat Huey	VA
6		Robert Cameron	TN
7		Yevgeny Supeko	MT
8		Gregory Ouellette	FL
9		Travis Helgeson	KS
10		Monte Tucker	AL

2005

1		Michael Venus	FL
2		Matt Bruch	IL
3		Clancy Shields	CO
4		Andrew Orban	NC
5		Sasha Ermakov	TX
6		Marek Czerwinski	MI
7		Bryan Koniecko	NY
8		Brett Helgeson	KS
9		Conor Pollock	TX
10		Kevin Fleck	NC

2006

1		Marcus Fugate	NY
2		Kallim Stewart	CA
3		Dylan Arnould	MA
3		Attila Bucko	FL
4		Holden Seguso	FL
5		Jamie Hunt	TX
6		Mike Gurman	CA
7		Nathaniel Schnugg	OR
8		Alexander Kharkevitch	TX
9		Christopher Racz	PA
10		Justin Kronauge	OH

2007

1		Danila Arsenov	FL
2		Kellen Damico	CO
3		Clint Bowles	FL
4		Jeff Dadamo	FL
5		Adam El Mihdawy	NY
6		Jason Jung	CA
7		Reid Carleton	FL
8		Jordan Rux	TX
9		Dennis Lajola	HI
10		Gonzalo Escobar	FL

Losing Good Points

The better you get at tennis, the more comfortable you must become losing well-played points.

Assuming you're playing competitive matches you will lose at least forty percent of the points you play. A sixty-forty match is a beat down. The winner has won fifty percent more points than the loser. Yet the winner has still lost a ton of points. How has he/she lost those points? Well, the better the player the more often the lost points were won by the opponent through good play.

Good players play good points by definition. You don't see tons of double faults and unforced errors in matches between good players. Most points end with one player hitting a fair number of winners and most often forcing errors from the other.

I see a lot of junior players and pretty good college players who have trouble coming to grips with playing a good point a losing it. They even have trouble distinguishing a good point from a bad point independent of who wins the point. Too often the mindset is simple: My point = good point. That's not even close to correct.

Winning tennis, in my view, is the accumulation of small advantages. Like the casino in Las Vegas. In every game in the casino, the house has a slight advantage. People win and lose all the time and the casino draws as much attention as possible to the winners. But over time, the casino's small edge means dollars accrue to the casino, not to the gamblers in aggregate. Same with tennis. Points are won and lost throughout the match. The player who plays slightly better will win the vast majority of matches. That advantage accumulates over points and games. Upsets happen, of course. Better players can have bad days. Lesser players can play above their level. More irritatingly the better player on that day can lose. The player who won more points does sometimes lose the match. But over lots of points and certainly over lots of matches, tennis identifies the better player extremely well.

So the better you get, the more comfortable you have to become playing good points and losing boatloads of them. The trick is not to become too emotional when you lose points. Play good shots. Play good points. You'll get good results over time.

USTA Player Development

Minor league tennis players want more prize money. The men and women who toil on the Futures circuit play for purses of $10,000 and $15,000 per tournament, unchanged from thirty years ago. They claim that many of them must stop playing prematurely because they cannot fund their continued play from prize money.

Meanwhile, the USTA spends $15 million per year on player development. The $15 million goes mainly toward coaches' salaries and the operation of national and regional training centers.

What if?

What if the USTA got out of the player development business and got back simply to running tournaments and leagues like it did for most of its history? How would that $15 million look in tournament purses for the minor leagues of tennis?

I assume entry fees could cover the operating expenses of minor league tennis tournaments just like they do for tennis tournaments at all other levels. So for $15 million the USTA could double and triple the prize money to $30,000 per event and host 500 more tournaments per year. Or they could raise the purses to the $50,000 paid at many Challenger level events and host 300 of more of those tournaments each year.

Anyone think USTA Player Development's current use of $15 million per year produces more and better professional tennis players than all those tournaments would produce?

Shot Location Charts

I grabbed a few more shot location charts off of recent tennis telecasts. I thought I'd post them here for purposes of easy access.

Nadal

Dolgopolov

Gilles Simon

Djokovic

And below, for reference, is Naomi's Circle. Naomi's goal is to hit balls that land outside this circle and inside the court. My error rate shoots through the roof when I try this.  

Naomi's Circle

(More like Naomi's Elipse, roughly (x^2/110.25 ft) + (y^2/225 ft) = 1)

Perhaps such hitting outside this circle is necessary, at times, to succeed at the highest levels of tennis. My collection of ATP Tour players hit far more inside the circle than outside it, but perhaps they are able to hit outside the circle when the opportunity arises. They do hit a lot of shots outside Naomi's Circle.

Here and here are a couple of old posts showing more shot location charts.

What does all this mean for a player? I'm not sure. I think aiming neutral balls outside Naomi's Circle is suicide. Aiming outside Naomi's Circle on easier incoming balls where your goal is to seize control of the point makes more sense – if you are tremendously skilled. I think for the vast majority of tennis players, ever aiming outside Naomi's Circle is a bad idea. Getting an easy ball and taking an enormous risk looks like a recipe for failure to me.

Instead, my philosophy is to aim for the center of the ATP Tour player's shot location scatter diagram. There are two distinct areas they aim for: roughly five feet inside the sideline and six to nine feet inside the baseline on each side. They do not appear to target in the middle very often.

By aiming for these relatively safe targets, players will reduce their own errors. This alone is enough for most players to win most matches. By win, I mean allow the opponent to lose.

For players who need to hit winning shots to win points and matches (less than 20% of all players at a minimum), the conservative targets still make sense. As their shots miss their targets and scatter, roughly half of the misses will be closer to the sidelines and the baseline. Those happy accidents present a chance to take control of the point with more forceful shots, but still aimed for conservative targets. Perhaps those happy accidents will produce balls short enough to attack and finish at the net. Perhaps they will elicit looping replies that can be taken out of the air with overheads or drive volleys from the mid-court.

What about the half of the errors that stray further from the sidelines and the baseline? Well, for 80% or more of players, those are just fine. They are still in play. Sure they may present the opponent an opportunity to take control of the point or attack. But most players lack the skill to do that, so such an opening does them more harm than good! For the highly skilled players, some of these errant shots into the middle of the court will put them on the defensive. That's why we practice defending with looping balls, slices, passing shots, and lobs. Defense is part of tennis, too.

If you aim near the lines, you had better be very highly skilled or comfortable with losing. And from the looks of those charts, the best players in the world only occasionally hit, much less target, near the sidelines. So "very highly skilled" may mean "more skilled than Nadal, Djokovic, and Federer." If that's you, thanks for reading this, and start composing that Hall of Fame induction speech!

Instruction Delusion

We cripple our young, possibly for life, when we tell them "You need an instructor to learn" or "You need a teacher to learn."

Learning takes place all the time in nature. Humans live in nature, even a nature that includes television, computers, iPads, iPhones, video games, etc. So humans learn all the time. A tiny portion of that learning includes explicit instruction. A tiny portion of that explicit instruction involves professional instruction. Yet, our young people today believe with all their hearts that learning takes place only with instruction, that instructors make us better at things. That's a delusion.

Three recent anecdotes from my tennis coaching life illustrate this delusion.

I still consider myself a tennis coach to some degree. That is I organize and participate in tennis practices. I encourage kids to play and to play better. I occasionally offer suggestions and offer my opinion as to how I think players should hit certain shots, position themselves, attack various opponents, and so forth. I also drive players to matches. Of all my coaching duties, only the van driving has measurable value.

However, I do not call myself a tennis teacher and I try to offer as little formal instruction as possible.

I want the kids to play the game on their own terms. I want them to take ownership of their own games. It's their hobby after all. They should play the game in a way that gives them pleasure. I want them to learn to play using the ample feedback that the game and their own bodies provide. For me to override or replace those sources of feedback with the sound of my voice seems profoundly wrong.

So I'm not your typical professional instructor.

I pointed this out recently to a kid I used to teach and he was dumbfounded. We were hitting together and he asked me for some advice about a particular shot. I told him I didn't have any advice to offer.

"Don't you teach tennis?" he asked.
"I try not to," I replied.
"But don't you teach in the groups you run?"
"I try not to," I replied again.
"Then how do kids get better?" he asked.

Then how do kids get better?

Now this kid isn't really a kid any more. He's in his early twenties. He's been fooled into thinking kids only get better at something through instruction. A lifetime of schooling and lessons and teachers has blinded him to the way people learn, the way people get better at doing things. He no longer even considers the possibility of improvement absent teaching.

He's not alone.

The word on the street is that a certain college tennis program "has so many players that nobody improves because players don't get individual attention." This statement is wrong on so many levels. The only part that's true is that the program does have a large number of players – a sign that it's good and popular, obviously. But nothing else in the statement is true. Players do improve. Players do get individual attention due to an extremely dedicated coach.

But I'm not writing about this statement to clear up a misconception about a particular college tennis program. I'm writing about it here because of what it says about the kid making the statement and about the kids perpetuating the message. They have all been fooled into thinking that in order to improve tennis players must receive individual attention. What a hideous, needless handicap.

Finally we have the case of a fifteen year old boy I know. Alex has improved tremendously in tennis over the last couple of years. He only plays a few times a week and has other interests, especially school, but he his very athletic, has good eye-hand coordination, and seems to enjoy playing.  How has he improved? Mostly by watching others and copying what they do to see if it works for him (I overheard him explain this to some kids a few weeks ago). If it works, he adopts it in his game. If not, he skips it. This is called rational trial and error and it has served humanity well for thousands of years. It serves him well, too. Unfortunately, he's continually bombarded by instructions from his parents and from the instructors they pay to instruct him. He comes from a culture that highly values rote instruction and formal schooling. Recently he's been conned into making a change by a professional instructor. "Bill changed my backhand," he told me the other day. Bill is a professional instructor. Note the phrasing, "Bill changed my backhand."

Bill changed a light bulb. Bill replaced my alternator. Bill fixed my water heater.

 Is Alex's backhand like a machine to be fixed? Inanimate? Inorganic? No. Only Alex can change his backhand. Alex has been experimenting with and changing (or not) every aspect of his game for the last couple of years. On his terms. Trial and error. Listening to the feedback from the game and from his own body. He's improved tremendously. Now he's abandoning this process and surrendering to Bill, the professional instructor. Now Bill will change one of his strokes to a form that Bill deems better. The new form may or may not be better. Time will tell. But Alex has become clay for Bill to mold. Alex is now inert, an object to be changed. He has bought into the belief that instructors cause positive change.

We know only one sure winner, or maybe two, in Bill's change of Alex's backhand. Bill. And Bill's banker.

As I said above, we are handicapping children for life by indoctrinating them with the view that all learning must come from teachers, that instruction causes learning. This is a relatively new experiment. Until the late 19th Century, schooling was not compulsory in most of the United States. Formal schooling was uncommon. Children played together and learned from each other (see Free to Learn for more). Formal instruction in hobbies was unheard of. Apprenticeships, watching and learning, were common when it came time to learn a trade, often at fairly early ages. Schooling and formal education were luxury items consumed by the rich. Now we think that schooling and education cause people to become rich. We have the causal arrow backwards. (See the book Antifragile, by Nassim Taleb for discussion of this point).

I find it ironic that this era of hyper-instruction coincides with the internet age. At no time in human history has it been so easy to learn any topic on your own. So while I'm pessimistic about the prospects of generations of people brainwashed to believe they must pay for instruction in order to learn, I am optimistic that instruction and teachers will be essentially free in the future via the internet.

Perhaps this century-long experiment with instruction, teaching, and especially schooling will end thanks to the internet and the worldwide spread of information outside of formal channels.

Every Game Went to Deuce

"I lost 6-0, 6-1, but every game went to deuce."

You got crushed.

Just because every game went to deuce doesn't mean the match was close. It's conceivable it was close, but very, very unlikely. Let's have a look.

If literally every game went to deuce, the minimum number of points per game would be eight, five for the winner and three for the loser. The winner won twelve games (sixty points) and lost one (three points) for a total of sixty-three points. The loser lost twelve games (thirty-six points) and won one (five points) for a total of forty-one points.

So the match consisted of a minimum of sixty-three plus forty-one points. One hundred four points total. The difference between the two players was twenty-two points (sixty-three minus forty-one). Is a twenty-two point margin over one hundred four points significant? You bet it is.

Ask Enrico Fermi, Nobel Prize winning physicist and tennis player. Fermi would not accept that he was the lesser player unless the difference between his games won and his opponent's games won was greater than the square root of the total games played. So a 6-3 set loss was not conclusive evidence that he was the lesser player since the square root of nine is exactly three.

In the above scenario, the Fermi criterion is amply satisfied. The two players played thirteen games. The square root of thirteen is about 3.6. The difference in games was eleven. A crushing. The winner is the better player according to Fermi.

Using points rather than games the result is the same. Total points played was one hundred four. The square root of one hundred four is just over ten. The twenty-two point margin more than doubles the square root of the total games played.

A beating.

My guess is when you hear someone say "every game went to deuce" it's more likely that not every game went to deuce than that any single game lasted more than ten or twelve points.

If every game went to twelve points (three deuces), the total margin of victory remains twenty-two points, but the total points climbs to one hundred fifty-six. The square root of one hundred fifty-six is only about 12.5. The twenty-two point margin still far, far exceeds the square root of the total.

Now if every game consisted of forty-four points or more, the 6-0, 6-1 match could have actually been competitive by the Fermi standard. Have you every played a forty-four point game? I haven't. And I'm fifty years old.

So if you get beat 6-0, 6-1 and every game went to deuce you got crushed. Enrico Fermi and everyone else says so.

Roger Federer and His Wall

Roger learned to play hitting "for hours and hours" against this wall. Maybe kids should try that before "lessons" and "classes" and other BS ways to learn tennis.

Tommy Haas, Quintessential American

I'm watching Tommy Haas playing the "last American", John Isner, at the French Open.

Tommy Haas was born in Germany. Born abroad like so many Americans over the years. He first came to the Florida to train at Nick Bollettieri's academy at age 11. He permanently relocated to the Land of Opportunity at age 13 to train in Florida full time.

Tommy Haas became a US citizen in 2010. He now lives in Los Angeles, California.

Tommy Haas was born in Germany and came to the US to pursue his dream of becoming a world class tennis player.

He fulfilled his dream.

What could be more American than that?

The Great (Costly) Lie

People need instruction to learn.

10 & Under Tennis and Burnout

I just got off the phone with a friend whose son played in a 10 & under tournament last weekend. The club had a ping pong table, but his son couldn't find anyone to play ping pong with him. The parents didn't want their children to waste their energy.

It dawned on me that we may be making a huge mistake in pumping up 10 & under tennis in the US. The goal of starting kids earlier is twofold, I think. First is the idea that if you get a kid to start playing tennis early that kid will stick with the game for life. The second goal is that we will have way more kids playing tennis so we will have a much greater pool from which future world champions will emerge.

The second goal seems reasonable (to the extent that anyone knows anything about producing world champions it seems logical that more players will give you a better chance), but I'm afraid that getting kids started earlier in tennis may REDUCE the number of tennis players at a later date. Why? Burnout.

Why would kids burn out on tennis? Parents, mainly. But tennis itself is a pretty rough sport mentally and emotionally. Add to that the effect of hyper parenting in the US and you have a recipe for a bad tennis experience for little Johnny and Suzie.

I didn't start playing tennis seriously until I was twelve years old. By the time I was twenty I was thoroughly sick of the game. And my parents were not problem tennis parents. They let me do my thing and I loved the time I spent hanging with my friends, traveling, messing around and playing junior tennis. Yet the game still beat the crap out of me mentally.

Combine the difficult nature of the game with the helicopter parents always at the sides of Johnny and Suzie, telling them to stretch, to stay out of the sun, to avoid playing ping pong or basketball or soccer or mini tennis with friends between matches, to eat the right foods (whatever the heck those are) and on and on. Then put yourself in that car ride on the way home from the tournament, a car ride where mom and or dad pound on the kid over and over about the kids failures. Good grief.

No, I think that starting later may be the better formula for increasing the numbers of lifelong tennis players. There's only so much abuse a young person can take. And tennis and especially tennis parents dish out a lot of abuse. Probably more than little kids can handle.

Percentage Tennis

Let's put some numbers to some categories of shots that players hit in tennis points. I'll divide shots into five categories:

1. Defense
2. Neutral / Rally
3. Forcing
4. Attacking
5. Finishing

I'm going to skip the first category, defense, for now. A defensive shot in this context is a ball that you hit when you're in deep trouble. These include defensive lobs, sliced forehands and backhands from off the court, returns of very good, well-directed first serves, etc. I don't think I can put a realistic percentage of these balls since so much depends upon the incoming shot.

So focusing on neutral, forcing, attacking and finishing shots, what percentage of these shots should a player make?

The most probable shots to make should be the neutral/rally shots and the finishing shots. Neutral balls are those that players hit when both players are in good court position, striking shots with the intent of keeping the opponent from hurting them. Missing more than one out of a hundred of these balls is unacceptable for good tennis players. So the neutral ball success rate must exceed 99%. Finishing shots are shots struck from a position in the court where it is very unlikely that the opponent will be able to get the ball back, almost exclusively high volleys and overhead smashes from the service line and in. I'm going to put a minimum success rate of 95% on these shots.  You can't win if you let your opponent escape certain death more than a few times out of one hundred.

In order to succeed in tennis, you simply must be able to make these neutral and finishing shots almost all the time.

Moving on to a forcing ball, the success probability necessarily drops. These are shots that are struck with the intent of gaining an advantage in a point. Players strike these balls with higher speed, lower trajectory and closer to the lines. Because of all these factors, players will miss these shots more often than neutral/rally balls which are not struck so hard, so low, nor so close to the lines. However, no player will be successful with a high error rate on these shots. Forcing shots must be consistently hit in the court or obviously no advantage will be gained. I think a 90-95% success rate is the goal on these shots.

Finally we have attacking shots. These are really the kill shots of modern tennis. They are usually struck from inside the baseline with the player's stronger side. These shots must hurt the opponent severely, if they are not outright winners. Often these shots are struck after strong first serves or after a series of forcing shots that leave the opponent off court after a weak reply. These shots will be missed more often than forcing shots, but not so often that a player throws away the advantage gained. The lowest I would accept for these shots would be 85%, but I think 90% is more like it. So, the range on these is 85-90%.

So, here are my summaries for percentage tennis:

Neutral/ Rally balls: 99%+
Forcing balls: 90-95%
Attacking balls: 85-90%
Finishing balls: 95%

So You Wanna Be A Millionaire

Andre Agassi's dad, Mike, wanted Andre to hit roughly a million balls per year. To do that, Mike set up a ball machine that fired balls at young Andre. Mike figured 2,000 balls per day would get Andre to roughly a million balls per year. I get over 2,700, but who's counting.

So how many hours per day must a player dedicate to various practice methods to hit 2,700 balls per day?

Two decent players rallying at modest speed, not missing many shots, can pretty easily each hit 17 balls per minute. I watched videos of me and Miikka rallying on YouTube and on both crosscourt forehands and backhands, that was our rate. We weren't killing the ball or ourselves. Just easy rallying. At that rate we'd have to rally for over two and a half hours for each of us to hit 2,700 shots.

My previous posts about hitting against a wall lead me to believe that a person rallying against a wall can hit at most about thirty balls per minute. For those exercises I was standing sort of close to the wall. At that rate a player would need to hit for about ninety minutes to hit 2,700 balls, but I think a more realistic number is 25 hits per minute. So to get to 2,700 hits against a wall, I think you should plan on hitting for about an hour and forty-five minutes. That's a lot of hitting. If you take breaks, tack those on to the hour and forty-five.

Since a very well struck ground stroke takes at least a second to travel from baseline to baseline, if you set up a ball machine to feed you balls, I'll assume that you want to see the result of your previous shot before hitting the next one. So a ball machine practice session can't really do better than one shot every two seconds (one second to watch your first and one second for the next ball to get to you from the machine). Maybe by moving the machine closer to the net, like Mike Agassi did, you could cut that down to a shot every 1.5 seconds. Let's stick with the more realistic 2 seconds per shot. That means a player hitting on a ball machine can hit about thirty balls per minute. So young Andre, let's say, hitting a ball every two seconds, would need to hit for about an hour and a half to reach 2,700 hits per day.

No wonder Mike Agassi chose the ball machine. That's pretty efficient, assuming you pay attention to where you're hitting the ball so you don't train bad habits and assuming you have somebody else pick up all those balls!! Since you don't have to pick up balls and reload the machine, maybe wall practice is the most efficient from a hits/minute standpoint.

What about match play? How many hits of the ball do you get if you play matches? The average set takes about thirty minutes and has roughly sixty points. The average singles point, being pretty generous, consists of about six hits. That's three per player.  So each player hits one hundred and eighty shots per set. Since a set takes one half hour, double that for three hundred and sixty hits per hour per player. So to get to our goal of 2,700 shots per day, our aspiring tennis millionaire would need to play for about seven and a half hours each day.

That's a bit much.

If your goal is to get really good at hitting balls, then set up the ball machine or find a wall and start hitting. It's probably the most efficient way to hit a lot of balls.

If your goal is to become a good tennis player, though, or a good tournament match player, then you'll need to play tennis and play tournaments in addition to pounding balls against that machine or against that wall. Hitting the ball well is just one part of being a good tennis player.

Rivalry, Motivation, and Tough Qualification Standards

The USTA has proposed changes to the tournament structure for 2014. I don't know the details, but the gist of it is smaller fields for national championships and more play at the sectional level.

I haven't had a strong opinion on this. I've read some of the complaints about the changes and some of the justifications for the changes. I'm beginning to side with the reductions in field sizes and the tougher qualifying standards.

I'm coming to this position after a recent discussion with a local high school tennis player. In Colorado, high school tennis is structure differently in two significant ways from the high school and college tennis that I played. First, the regions for qualifying for the state championship are not simply base upon fixed geography from year to year. Instead, the regions are balanced by strength. Two teams in Boulder, for instance, are in different regions every year because they tend to be among the better teams in the state. Second, the regional and state tournaments are flighted tournaments. Rather than competing in dual matches, one team against another, to determine regional and state champions, players qualify as individuals in three singles and four doubles positions. Points are tallied to determine team champions.

When I played high school tennis, the format was different in both those regards. The first is the most significant one for this post. In Minnesota, the high school regions were geographic. The Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area had a few regions due to the population density. Southern Minnesota was its own region. Duluth and St Cloud roughly had regions. Maybe the Iron Range had one and so did the northwestern part of the state. There were eight regions. Those regions applied to all sports.

In tennis, the metro regions, especially the region I played in, had a great many good tennis players. Yet only one team (we played duals for the team title) qualified for the state tournament. This made for fierce, quality rivalries. It also motivated us to play and practice more. If instead of just two singles players and two doubles teams making the individual state tournament every year from our region, new more balanced regions were set up allowing two, three, or four times the number of qualifiers, that would greatly reduce the struggle to get to the next level.

I think the same thing happened in our section for national tournaments in the summer. We usually only got two players into the big national tournaments (hard courts, clay courts, nationals in those days).  I was one of those two players from age fourteen to eighteen. The motivation to get to those tournaments was big when I first learned of them at age twelve. But the experience of playing in those events was far, far less valuable to me than the stress and struggles to get one of those two spots. The pressure was off at those national tournaments. I had no shot at winning those tournaments. In fact, any wins were gravy. We occasionally had players win rounds at nationals, but mostly we got beat.

But I think this system of highly competitive competition for scarce spots in higher level tournaments produced better players in Minnnesota those days than the more lax structure in Colorado and the USTA today.

So I guess I'm coming down on the side of reducing opportunities for national play being a good thing, as counter-intuitive as that may seem. I want kids to have to battle their guts out, feel disappointment, and get up and work harder to get those scarce spots in the national championships.

I don't resent rich people who take their kids around the country chasing points, looking for different and better competition for their kids. I get it. I think some of that is good.

I just think an environment that creates quality rivalries and motivates kids to get out there and beat people in their neighborhood, city, state and region before stepping up to play national tournaments produces better players.

10-Point Tie Break

I now dislike the 10-point tie break.

When it first emerged as a replacement to the third set I thought it was a good idea. I know several tournament directors and it greatly simplified their jobs. Scheduling was much easier without the full third sets. But with all due respect to tournament directors, tennis is not about them. It's about the players.

I began to have my doubts about the match tie break about a year ago when a friend lamented the decline in physical fitness as an element in tennis due to the elimination of the third set in matches. I no longer play competitive tennis so I hadn't experienced that personally. But I do remember that when I was playing, I thought the physical element of matches was important. I always prided myself on not getting tired and knowing that my opponent may tire was always an element in competitive matches I played.

Now I'm just a coach and spectator and most of the competitive matches I see don't have the match tie-break. They are high school or college matches that only use the match tie break if the team match is already decided (which I still think is fine). So I still see the effects of physical, mental, and emotional stress that comes with third sets.

It bothers me that in smaller tournaments, and in some cases pretty big tournaments, the third sets are disappearing. The two out of three set match defines tennis, to me. The three out of five set match is the pinnacle of the game. Anything less than two out of three sets is just messing around, whether it's playing tie breaks, games to eleven, or what have you.

It's a shame that tournaments are now resembling messing around.

One final tidbit. I was curious how many points are in the average set. Stats from the 2012 US Open showed that in both men's and women's matches, the sets averaged around sixty points. Games averaged six points and sets averaged ten games. I don't know how long the average 10-point breaker is, but let's just say it's 18 points. That's about a third the points of the average set. If it's fifteen points we're down to a quarter the length of an average set. That's just too short to decide a match between equals. That's not tennis, to me.

We Don't Know

A friend was recently asked to write a piece about 10 and under tennis providing some guidance for parents introducing young kids to tennis. Since English isn't his first language, and composition isn't among his skills in any language, I ghost-wrote a piece for him. You can read it here.

But this post, below, is what I (and he) really wanted to say. We didn't think the industry newspaper would publish it, but I will publish it here.

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I was asked to write a bit about ten and under tennis, provide a map for somebody starting tennis around age 5 or 6 who wants to become good at tennis. Unfortunately, there is no map. There are many routes to tennis heaven. And just as many routes to tennis hell. Anyone who tells you they know the way to tennis heaven or how you can avoid tennis hell is lying, either to themselves or to you.

I know people who love tennis and play it passionately and well. I know more people who love tennis and play it passionately and poorly.

I know people who love tennis and won grand slam championships. I know people who hated tennis and won grand slam championships. I know people who hated tennis and quit.

I know people whose parents pushed them to play and they're thankful they did. I know people whose parents pushed them to play and they quit the first chance they got.

I know poor people who've succeeded and failed, rich people who've succeeded and failed.

Tall, short, weak, strong, fast, slow, nice, mean, great competitor, choker, good coaching, no coaching, bad coaching, love tennis, hate tennis, rich, poor. What is better? There's no answer. Any of those qualities can be found among the greats, the hobbyists, and the failures.

Should you use soft balls, small courts, small racquets? We don't know.

Should you use yellow balls, big courts, big racquets? We don't know.

How much should I play, take group or private lessons? We don't know.

What's the right amount of competition? We don't know.

How should I work on mechanics? We don't know.

We. Don't. Know.

All anyone can do is tell you what worked and didn't for them and for people they know.

If you find anyone who tells you they know any of this with certainty, thank them and walk away.

Your Child Wants to Play Tennis

So you have a young child and you want that to introduce your child to tennis. How should you go about it? Private lessons? Group lessons? Tournaments? League team? If you just go play with your child should you use regular yellow balls, foam balls, red, orange, or green dot balls? Should you play on a full court or one of the smaller courts? What size racquet should your child use?

Wow. With all these questions, tennis seems like a tough sport to start! Luckily, all of the above will work out fine as you introduce your child to tennis. Sure, lower bouncing, slower balls will make tennis a bit easier at the beginning. Smaller racquets and smaller courts help, too. But you can introduce your child to tennis with old-fashioned equipment standing near to each other, either on opposite sides of a net or the same side, maybe rallying over a crack in your driveway.

Once your child can tap the ball somewhat reliably, or even before that, it's time to let them play the game, either with you or with friends. If your child enjoys playing the game, then leagues and tournaments with the 10 and Under format are wonderful introductions to competition. Your child will learn to score (sort of), serve (poorly), and play games. Your child's relative lack of skill at this stage is perfectly natural and shouldn't be an impediment to getting out and playing and enjoying tennis. We all stink at things when we start. Some of us stink for a lot longer! But the games are still fun and rewarding.

When it comes time to introduce stroke development, lessons can be helpful. Some people believe lessons should precede play, but I think you're better off getting your child hooked on tennis before you begin the sometimes tedious stroke development. A great modern tool for helping kids develop better technique is video feedback. Most kids (most animals) learn by imitation. Allow your child to see tennis played well. If you don't play well yourself, let your child watch great tennis players either in person or through video. Let your child see what high quality tennis looks like and let them try it.

If you own an iPad or iPhone, you can even let your child see what he/she looks like, at regular speed or frame-by-frame, with a cool, free application by Coach My Video (iTunes app store). Just use your iPad/iPhone to film your child hitting some shots or playing some points. Then have the child look at the video in the mobile coaching app and let the child compare what he/she sees with what he/she feels. You can even set up a professional model for side-by-side viewing. This is a great way to help kids learn better technique.

Don't let all the daunting questions slow you down. Introduce your child to the great game of tennis. If your child enjoys the experience, they'll play the game more and more and they will definitely get better over time.

Neglect

What happens to a tennis court when it's neglected? When nobody maintains it? That depends upon the surface.

Here's a hard court after five to ten years of neglect.

 Here's a clay court. Not sure how long this one's been neglected. Probably not more than a few years.

And here's the world famous Stonegate Academy after roughly thirty years of neglect.

Stonegate's still playable, among the best courts in the area.

Why do people install hard courts and clay courts again?

Great Shot

Keeping unforced errors to a minimum is a tried and true way to play effective tennis. You will still lose points and matches, but your opponent will have to beat you. You won't give away matches.

One way to monitor if you're playing effective tennis is to notice how often you think or even say to your opponent"great shot" after losing a point. Nobody wants to lose points, but if you're saying "great shot" after most of the points you lose, chances are you're playing a good match.

Frankly, at most levels of tennis, you're way more likely to win if you're saying "great shot" to your opponent than if your opponent is saying "great shot" to you. That's because most points and matches are lost and not won. Great shots win points. Great players hit great shots. Great players win matches.

Most of us aren't great players. And we don't face great opponents. So if you're forcing your opponent to come up with great shots to beat you, you're probably playing effective, winning tennis.

Rally Lengths, 2012 Roland Garros Round One

I often chart matches. Among the things I chart are rally length. I've never seen that stat among the ATP or WTA tour stats. Until today. The French Open site has rally length leaders (they don't seem to be aggregating unforced errors any more--boo!).

Here are the longest rallies through the first round for the men:

Here are the longest women's rallies from the first round:

The men's rallies were longer than the women's. That surprised me, but perhaps it shouldn't have. People have been telling me for years now that the women hit the ball lower and flatter than the men. Those shot characteristics should lead to shorter rallies. So perhaps those people are right.

In my charting I almost never see rallies of thirty shots. Twenty shot rallies are even pretty rare. I'm charting hard court matches while the above stats are from clay, but these are in the ballpark of what I see.

So, does it make sense to practice hitting fifty balls in a row, or a thousand? I think not. It makes sense to over train a bit, it's unlikely that any player will have to hit more than fifteen shots in a tennis point. Training beyond this is a waste of time, in my opinion.

Better to train players to see openings or to create them with their shots. Better to train players to be patient, but to recognize balls that they can hurt their opponents with.

Warming up with extended rally drills probably makes sense. But after the warm up, get after training players to play points.

P.S. If you don't want to play long points, you'd better hope you don't draw Lleyton Hewitt or Gilles Simon.