We live in a world where resources are limited and people are increasingly trying to find ways to squeeze more out of less. In a tennis match, there are a multitude of opportunities to extend rallies, points, games and sets to get as much as you can out of your time on court. Just like…
Any coach who teaches mostly junior players has had to deal with the parents of their students. It is a delicate job that requires a lot of psychology. As a parent myself, I know that when it comes to our kids, we all get a bit emotional and our judgment is sometimes clouded. When I…
Tennis is becoming an increasingly international sport every year. Though it is more readily available, there are still many noticeable differences in the background of the junior athletes being developed all over the globe. I took some time to interview three former top junior players from different backgrounds. Matt Belenchia from Atlanta, Ga.; Max Beliankou…
Tell us about your tennis background. Skip Hartman: I started playing tennis at the age of eight at camp and then in the public parks in Manhattan, specifically, a park that no longer is there on 63rd Street and York Avenue that I could ride my bicycle to. I was a good junior player, having…
I’m asked many times how power is achieved in tennis shots. We see on TV many players on tour with amazing power. While of the world’s best players are bigger, faster and stronger than in years past, and technology has improved the racquets, the answer to generating power is still in the timing of two…
I was asked this past spring by the parents of some of my five-year-old students if I would consider starting a class for two-, three- and four-year-olds. The younger children had been coming to my club as tagalongs to their siblings’ lessons and were feeling left out. Secure in my belief that Google would rescue…
"The highest reward for a person’s work is not what they get for it, but what they become of it."—John Rushkin Did you ever watch a professional tennis match and wonder how the players make their extraordinary shots look so effortless? Perhaps you even thought it looks so easy that you should be able to…
One of the first things we are told when we begin our journey in tennis is that the serve is the most important shot. Unfortunately, I ask many intermediate and advanced players about the simple biomechanics of the serve, and they become suddenly mute. We all understand that the toss is vital when trying to…
The tennis player is a person first and a performer second. This idea may seem obvious, since we are all born without a racket in our hands, and when we first walked onto the court to play, we didn’t miraculously change identities—we were the same person. Rafael Nadal, in his book Rafa, says, “Tennis is…
Walk around the grounds of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center during this year’s U.S. Open and you will see players from every part of the globe. Even multi-generations are represented in the junior and senior events. While the assortment of differing playing styles is vast, the fundamentals displayed by the world’s top…