How to Create an Ideal Tennis Academy?
Let’s continue to discuss tennis academies and development of strong tennis players. So, there are more than 40 tennis academies in USA that provide full time boarding for their students, from the giant Nick Bollettieri tennis academy with 500+ tennis players to small family-operated academies with 15-20 players. Almost all of them use modern marketing techniques and include in their messages words like “our unique program, method… we are not like others”, etc. I think that some of them are much better at marketing and sales than at tennis coaching.
The main competitors for all of these private tennis academies are the USTA Player Development Program centers. “The mission of the USTA Player Development Program is to develop world-class American players through a clearly defined training structure and competitive pathway as well as through the implementation of a comprehensive coaching philosophy and structure.” That’s what it says on their website. I would like to see a list of these world-class American players, which were developed by USTA. For me “world-class American players” means at least top 20 in the world.
Both the private tennis academies and the USTA Player Development Program claim that they have the best coaches, as well as everything that is needed to develop great players and future American champions. They have worked for many years and the only questions I have right now are:
Where are these new American tennis champions, where are the new Evert, King, Agassi and Sampras?
The best American tennis players right now, like Serena and Venus Williams, Andy Roddick (if someone remembers that Roddick was #1 in the world?) aren’t very young and were developed many years ago. My personal opinion is that all of them are great players and they deserve full respect from the tennis community.
What about Ryan Harrison? He definitely has potential to become a top 10 player, but he needs to to grow emotionally. Steve Johnson and Jack Sock are another two players who have a lot of potential. They may reach the elite group in the tennis world, but maybe not.
In my opinion, this is a very modest result considering the thousands of tennis coaches, hundreds of tennis programs and tennis academies and the USTA Player Development Program.
Why did American tennis stop developing elite tennis players? I asked that question to many famous tennis coaches and specialists like Johan Kriek, John Evert, Taylor Dent and many others. All of them agree that tennis in the US is not very popular at the moment and global competition has increased.
But anyway, thousands and thousands of American junior tennis players compete in tournaments and train on regular basis at all these tennis academies and unique programs. Why are so few good players developed? Why are most good players in college tennis foreigners?
Oscar Wegner, author and creator of Modern Tennis Methodology told me that the reason is that:
“proper technical information is missing. There is too much false data out there, impeding real progress.”
Johan Kriek, two-times Australian Open champion thinks that American tennis academies almost do not develop world class tennis players:
“Because there are virtually NO former Grand Slam winners that even attempt to coach, they either are too rich, get involved with coaching a top end current player, or do not care or they just do not have the will to go into something that is actually very difficult to do well. Look around….is Agassi really doing it, Sampras, Courier, McEnroe..? Nobody is involved with daily coaching, every day!”
I asked Nick Saviano, a famous tennis coach and an author of the book “Maximum Tennis” whether he would be able to create an elite tennis academy that actually produces top 100 (or better) players consistently if he was given a $10 million grant (or whatever he needs). He answered “yes”.
So, maybe USTA should give money to coaches who proved their qualification instead of spending it on their program that has not produced elite tennis players for many years?
What do you think guys?
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Hello, my name is Radu Barbu and i am originally from Romania. I graduated fro Texas Christian University and for the moment i coach few players back home in Romania. I am reading with such an interest your blog. Well my opinion about tennis academies is that if you really want to raise elite players you just cant include them in a academy program with other 10 or 100 players. i think every kid needs their own program, every single one is unique so they have to train differently. I believe these academies are for average kids that maybe one day they will get a scholarship, or for kids that instead of being in front of the computer they do some activity. I came to this conclusion after working in US for these kind of academies, and after working back home for the paste 3 years with 2 kids. I just dont have time for more than 2 players, but trust me i and my team spend all our time in trying to develop their potential. Now my kids are nr 1 in Romania and top 20 in europe at 14s. We played Eddy Herr in 2010 and they reached quarters in a draw with 128 players. And its so frustrating to see that US is has infrastructure, great facilities, money and they cant have great players. And we dont have these and we are able to make the kids shine. Without coaches that are dedicated you cant make great players. There are so many coaches in US that make so much money and thats why the coach there…….give us a chance and maybe we can make it better, dont just do the same things and expect different results!!!
Thanks for your interesting comment Radu.I agree with you. I am confused when I hear from some coaches something like “I successfully have trained hundreds strong players”, or “I have developed dozens elite tennis players”. And it is an interesting question “How many strong players can be train by the same coach simultaneously?” I mean players who want (and able by nature) to reach pro level. I am going to write an article about that.
Radu, I wish you and your players to reach everything you want.
My son attended 7 different tennis academies; 3 in the UK, one in France, one in Spain and one in the USA. We have found that out of all of them there were only 2 that offered an individual program of tennis, fitness, and nutrician and all the other factors needed to produce a tennis champion. Many of them make promises they cannot keep with their aggressive Marketing techniques. Currently my son is attending University in the USA on a tennis scholarship. He still wants to make it as a professional player but has discovered that American tennis coaches don’t know how to coach; but they all seem extremely good at Marketing! He still wants to make improvements to his game. This dissatisfaction has lead him to move Universities twice in order to find a tennis environment where he can improve his tennis, fitness, movement and mind set. If we had our time again, we would not have gone down the Academy route and would have found a great coach and stuck with him. It all came down to finances in the end and affordability.
Leigh, I completely understand you. I know many people with the same story, including myself. But there is a market situation. Demand still higher than supply. So, many coaches want to make more money using this situation. If you just a coach you can make, say $5K a month, but when you are an owner of an “academy” you can make much more money. It does not mean that all academies are just money making machines. There are some academies with really good coaches who care about their players and show really good results. I know players from UCLA who go to a private coach for improving their play. I wish your son to keep training hard and reach pro level in the future.
Valery and Leigh
I would like to add a little additional comment. As I had stated previously concerning academies; most juniors that goes to academies are basically reguler players. Don’t get me wrong, some of these players are good players; but good players don’t get you into the pros. A junior player must show something unique and the coach should be able to recognize the unique assest of the individual. You also need to test the junior player on the ITF circuit. Now that your son is already playing on a college scholarship, he will now have another hurdle to go over. All college coaches will change the junior players game. The college coaches are all afraid to lose. I call it ” The fear of losing syndrome “. They will make you spin the ball in and try not to make a mistake. Then if you want to play pro after college, your son needs to be retrain. Well, I know what most people will say. What about Isner? Well, not every player is 6’9” with a massive serve. I can tell you I have seen many college player tried to play pro after they graduated and not one has made it. I think my friends son had made the right move. He played one year at UCLA. They tried to do exactly what I had discibed and he quit the team and turn pro and now being train by two very prominent coaches. After a player graduate from college, he or she need to wipe out that college player mentality. If the player plays college level tennis, they will be blown off the court. If I was to coach him to the pro level, there would be three aspects that I will look for first and it is not the way he hits the ball. Inorder to make it at the elite level there are certain criterias a player must meet. For my preference, hitting the ball is irrelevant until certain criterias are met. Yes, you will need to change the way you hit when you playing at the pro level. But, these criterias that I have will give me an indication if he has a chance in making it.
Alex, Physio Technical Tennis
Alex,
I know you don’t particularly like topspin, I discovered a method(a winner) to hit a certain number of balls topspin such as the ball could bound twice on the opponent’s court before even reaching that opponent. Not all players can do it, you have to be Isner type.
You have my email, we could discuss about it.
Marcel
You asked a very interesting question, Valery.
But what if creating a tennis champion were not a natural science? Isn’t it similar to producing geniuses through education? What if it had more to do with odds, more like playing lottery? Someone said (probably Einstein): “there is no recipe to create a genius, because genius consists of 99 % of talent and 1 % of luck”. By the way, Einstein was considered for many years as a retarded child. Thomas Edison and Eleanor Roosevelt were both considered in a similar way during their teen years.
Back to tennis. Europe has encountered similar problems. The French Tennis Federation had consistently failed to recognize future champions. Some 15 to twenty years ago, Sebastien Grosjean and Arnaud Clément were refused the federal training program only to become later French number 1 and 2 respectively. At one moment the best French women players were all coming from outside the federal system (e.g. Marion Bartoli and Aravane Rezaï). The British LTA has been pouring millions of dollars in the champion schemes for decades with no tangible results (now they have A. Murray but I’m not sure he comes from the federal system). Rafael Nadal is another example. Simply put, the return on federal money invested in the education of future champions is very low, not to say negative). It would be interesting to undertake serious scientific studies to try to discover real factors underlying future results of prospective tennis players. Strangely enough, I have not heard of any such studies.
I agree with Radu. High performance development to become top 20 is a personal process. After a general base from 5-8 years, the player has to be coached personally from 9-18 in all area’s: technique, tactics, physically and most of all psychologically. The right positive attitude towards competing is of the most importance. This skill has to be in place at the age of 10 and refined every year to instill absolute confidence and belief in their abilities. If this is done properly then the player is self reliant. Even college coaches cannot ruin their game and they would not try it because this kid can and loves to compete. They only have to gave him/her the opportunities to get stronger, faster and better opponents to grow!
Like Radu I coach one girl permanently, I can because she is my daughter, the other girls of her age are great hitters but my girl is a excellent competitor. With 2/3 of the tennis hours of the girls in the academies, my girl is still Top 20 in the U12. Next year she will be Top 10 in the U12 and growing!!
I will keep the high performance process going, but because of financial limitations I’m almost forced to let her apply for college scholarship so she at least can enjoy a topnotch academic education while playing her sport by competing on college level.