There are ways to improve your doubles play as a team, as you and your partner should always be on the same page. In this article, I will discuss the server’s partner while playing the net. Strong communication between partners is a must. In between points, talk to each other about the placement of serve…
A few years ago, I attended a seminar where Patrick McEnroe, director of USTA Player Development at the time, spoke about the future of tennis in the United States. He spoke of the demise of tennis as a youth sport and asked why there wasn’t something like Little League in our sport. The crowd, filled…
I have been working full-time at an academic institution. In my fifth year, academia has done something that I could never envision when I took on a full-time role as head tennis coach at SUNY Oneonta. I am exposed to great thinkers, doctors and professors from many fields on a daily basis. I attend lectures…
It recently hit me that I have been teaching tennis for more than 20 years. I have now taught tennis for more years than I have played the sport competitively, and I had a relatively long career. I am a totally different coach than I was 20 years ago. I did go through the ATP…
From his years on the ATP Tour winning 17 Grand Slam titles, spending 170 weeks as world number one and challenging the status quo, to his current roles as commentator, elder statesman and founder and leader of the John McEnroe Tennis Academy (JMTA), John McEnroe’s impact on the sport of tennis has been profound and…
As a sport psychologist, I have treated many athletes who have been injured. There are 30 million kids playing sports and 10 percent of them will get injured this year. Tennis is not quite as dangerous as football, soccer or ice hockey, but there are plenty of ankle, knee, elbow and shoulder injuries. The consequence…
In the spirit of exposing a group of high performance junior tennis players to “embraceable” challenges, I recently set up a good-natured exercise to see how they would react to a particular challenge often faced in matches: Dishonest calls. The activity was simple: I asked each member of the group in my session to take…
I remember not too many years ago, coaches and tennis teaching pros commiserating over the lack of growth in our sport and the recurring comment was: “Those darn video games are killing our sport and kids think they’re actually playing (exercising) these virtual games.” Well, kudos to USTA who has launched the best-in-class system that…
"So … does my child have talent?" I cringe when asked this all too frequent question for a few compelling reasons. First, I defer to child development experts who agree that, at a very young age, it's virtually impossible to distinguish between real physical talent and precocious development. Most talent evaluations are misleading because a seemingly…
Whether it’s money, health, work or sports, goal-setting is an essential component to success. All goals take time and effort to reach, and planning is required to make meaningful progress. Goals can be slow to achieve, but amazing when we succeed. Understanding this for tennis makes it all worthwhile. Tennis goals can be a little…