John Cavill

I think the heading of this article is very provocative in itself as what we define as ‘talent’ can mean so many things. Usually this term is associated with finding young tennis players who have good potential to develop further and this is based on several factors; physical, technical, tactical, mental and environmental.

The first 4 performance factors are regularly referred to in the world of tennis and are very important but the environmental factors which help shape a players destiny is usually the overriding power. Everyone is a product of their environment, whether they copy good or bad examples OR learning from examples how not to do something. The second born child is usually further developed by the age of 5 than the first born and there is no other reason apart from the younger child had to adapt and strive to keep up from a younger age.

Without the elder sibling, the younger siblings probably wouldn’t be as advanced. When you take this example back to the tennis court, if you have a player who is striving to improve against players who are better than them, they will usually improve more than working with players who are at a lower level. I regularly have this issue when dealing with parents who want their child to move up to the next group as they are the best, but the next problem is that if they move up, the player who was below them will also not want to be top in the groups and so the issues escalate!

It is important that no child is comfortable during their development and they should constantly be challenged and making mistakes. Through this process their decision making and ability to adapt will improve far more so that when they have developed all their skills by their late teens, they should be highly independent adults on the court.

Coming back to the subject of this article…how do we find talent? My belief is to start with the parents! If they are not going to commit to endless hours of bringing their child to the tennis club, sitting around at tournaments, paying for all the coaching and equipment, then that child will be limited. The parents also set the foundations for the child and create the standards to which they should live their lives. If the child is brought up on junk food and video games then you can’t reasonably think that they are going to be great tennis players.

Parents who are positive, set high standards and give unconditional love to their child are giving their child the best chance to achieve. Discipline, manners, confidence and self-respect are all vital areas that are learned at home and reflect on the tennis court. Unfortunately as coaches we have very little influence over our students in these areas as we only spend a fraction of our week with them.

During the holiday camps at our club I am constantly looking to find children who I feel would benefit from being in our competition programme. I always start with the person…do they love playing tennis? Are they attentive? Do they try their hardest? If the answer is ‘yes’ to these questions then they are invited. That they are athletic, coordinated and fast are also important but if there has been one thing that I have learned from my 21 years of coaching, that is to never label too young. It’s amazing how many players I’ve thought would go on to play at a higher level than they achieved and others who have by far exceeded my expectations despite not being  great athletes.

My approach to developing players is very simple…get as many playing as possible, keep the enthusiastic and dedicated players together, work them hard with high standards and be prepared to adapt / move players into other groups based on their individual progress.

The label of ‘talented’ is also a dangerous place as tennis players can assume they will win and achieve just because they have been told this. People who think that someone has talent probably haven’t seen the amount of hours and practice they have put into being talented! People assume that ‘finding talent’ is the process of finding people who are already good but I believe that coaches should be ‘finding potential’ as talent will be developed from potential after hours of hard work. Try and sow as many seeds as possible, cultivate them the best way you know how and watch the flowers grow!