Patience and the Waiting Game in Tennis

As a player, coach and as a parent, I have learned over the years that exercising patience is a wise move in most cases, especially when you are dealing with children. As a junior player, I was asked constantly by my coach to be patient both on the court during matches, waiting for the right shot to attack, and to be patient when it came to the big picture—my expectations.

“It’s a long road, we have to stay the course, and in the end, it will all click,” he would say to me. “The goal is not to be good now, but when you move out of the junior circuit into the men’s game.”

Even as a young junior, I was always led to believe that there was a long-term plan, one that was devised for me to keep developing my game and not get too caught up with results … not let the bad periods shake my confidence. Part of that is to not become too overconfident and cocky during the good periods because you never “own the game.”

As a junior, I was lucky, I had a very good coach who was not only competent, but he also believed in me and helped me believe in myself—a key ingredient in any good coach. Without the belief that things will work out well, it is very difficult to achieve long-term success with juniors because there will always be bad patches when things go wrong, such as injuries, tough losses, mental letdowns and personal issues. In a time of crisis, the strategy of exercising patience can be very helpful. A teaching pro needs to be able to look the player in the eye and assure them that they are on the right track because the road ahead may be filled with heartbreaking losses and frustrating practice sessions.

When I first started coaching, I was young and eager to see quick results. As a former pro player fresh off the ATP Tour, I expected my students to have the same passion, discipline and athletic ability that I had, and it frustrated me when they didn’t show visible improvement in a short amount of time.

I found out quickly that, in reality, each player has their own goals and the vast majority of players end up at the college, high school and/or club levels because many play other sports and have other activities. Although they love tennis and try hard, they cannot achieve a high level until they reach their late teens.

Therefore, I had to re-set my expectations from my students. Over the years, I have come to realize that it takes months, sometimes even years, to implement good habits and there needs to be a lot of repetition. With kids who play one to four times a week, it could take years until they start to look, move and compete like true tennis players. Like I said, patience is needed because in many cases, it can look pretty ugly until it becomes watchable.

Over the years, I was often surprised at the level that some of my students achieved. Some players whom I had very low expectations of actually reached levels that I never thought they would achieve. It took longer than usual, but once they got the idea, they excelled and surpassed their own expectations. Again the key was patience, as they were given all the time in the world to develop without pressure.

Furthermore, when you are dealing with coaching juniors, you have to take into consideration many aspects and allow the kids to grow into their game. Certain children mature late both physically and emotionally, and as a coach, you need to be aware of such things and are often forced to look the other way if a player cannot handle themselves on the court. As we have all seen, teenagers can get pretty emotional and irrational at times, and as a coach, it’s easy to give up on a kid who throws tantrums often or cannot push themselves hard enough in practice. I have found that most kids, if given a chance to come around, will actually improve as they get more mature, provided they love the game enough. The other layer to this equation is that they need the support of coaches and parents who don’t put too much pressure on them. Psychology has a lot to do with it, and as a coach, I always try to find a way to get inside the student’s head. Each player is different, so it can become a bit tricky.

Once the child gets to that stage where they are playing for their own benefit and not to please the coach or parent, I find that my job as a coach becomes much easier. This process can take a few years, so it takes a lot of patience from the tennis pro, but when that hurdle is passed, it’s well worth the wait and you just may have a player who is going places on your hands.

The patience aspect of tennis must be projected to the child early on both by the parents and the coaches. Young players need to know that playing tennis is a long-term process, kind of like a marathon where when you finally finish, you can hang up the racquet.

Tennis is an acquired, sophisticated, yet simple, sport and practicing and playing lots of matches is a huge part of the growing process. Primarily, it is about experience, attitude and how you can learn about the game and improve your own game every time you step on the court. I must admit that even at the age of 46, I am still learning new things about this game every day.

I’ve had a long enough career as a coach by now that some of my students who started with me as kids are now in their 20s and even in their 30s. They tell me that it took them years to fully implement the techniques I tried to teach them as juniors, and most of them played their best tennis in their 20s when it actually counted.
There is a huge difference between doing something in practice and doing it in an actual match. It takes thousands of repetitions and it takes the guts to execute these techniques in a real match, and in the process, you may even lose a match here and there.

I often hear parents reporting to me that their child reverted back to old habits when things went wrong during a match. That is a very common and natural occurrence. Moving up from each age group is a process, and there is an adjustment period. The job of the teaching pro is to predict those transitions and prepare the student for each stage. This means that the kids must be forced to practice things they are uncomfortable with, such as taking the ball early, coming to the net or adding more variety shots to their game. These kids need to be given time to experiment and need to exercise patience and realize that it will take time to perfect their craft.

Do to the patience required to excel in our great sport, I do not put too much emphasis on results and rankings in the junior age groups. For me, those results represent a short-term outlook. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against winning and achieving a high ranking, but that should be a byproduct of good, methodical hard work and not a goal. I have never met a player who worked the right way that did not improve and achieve good results. It just might take a little longer, but it will be worth the wait and will last for a long time.