Coaching

SPORTIME and The John McEnroe Tennis Academy (JMTA) today announced the appointment of Patrick McEnroe as Co-Director, alongside longtime JMTA Director Lawrence Kleger. McEnroe, the younger brother of JMTA founder John McEnroe, joins a team, led by SPORTIME Managing Director Bennett Schlansky. A world-class staff of directors, coaches, trainers and others support John’s and the Academy’s mission to stimulate interest…

The method of scoring a tennis match may have baffled you when you started playing the sport, but when the little yellow ball raced toward you, a deep organic passion compelled you to swing the racket and hit that yellow sucker with raw unbridled power … over and over again. Passion for the game won…

Many young players are baffled when their practice play doesn’t translate well to competitive play or to their performance during tennis team tryouts. What’s happening? A player may tense up on the big stage, with anxiety and nervousness that increase in direct proportion to the stakes of the game. There is also the possibility that…

Sports psychology has become a wide and diverse field. Not only do we work with an ever-growing variety of sports, we use a variety of approaches. Standard sports psychology uses what we called “suppressive techniques,” which help the athlete to control any unwanted emotion, such as anxiety, anger or despair. But the field is no…

What if a tournament player could play relaxed and anxiety-free while taking risks? What if they temporarily lost focus, but could get back on track and stay emotionally balanced? My sense is that they would perform their personal best because they would not be limiting themselves. So, what’s stopping a player from playing like that?…

The selection of a coach is one of the most important decisions a young player can make and can be the difference between tournament success or disappointment. While there may be variations in the skill level of coaches, there is no perfect coach or coaching style, as each relationship is unique and must be a…

For more than 40 years, I have gone onto the court on an almost daily basis, 20 years as a player and now 20 years as a coach. I am still in awe of the complexity of this game … its beauty, ugliness, joy and frustration. It’s all there, just like life. Roger Federer seems…

If you believe you cannot win, you won’t win. Focusing on the future will only take away from the process that will inevitably bring you to the final outcome. Think of the story “The Tortoise and the Hare.” The hare thought he was a sure thing before the race began, while the tortoise never thought…