Barn door with a shovel

As i contemplate the last few days over the coaches drink of kings, red wine,  i have come to the conclusion i have mastered the art of being a film editor.

I have spent hours putting together footage for doubles and singles tactics, basic psychology, and periodisation planning. I also have reams of footage of other stuff i will just turn into blogs and posts for the S9 business.

I did however wake up at 5 am and decide to grab a coffee and do some work on the orange ball course. In actual fact, write the questions for the test at the end, amazing how the brain works that time of morning. Perhaps i am best at 5 am, although admittedly back in bed by 7.30 for a few hours sleep before finally up again at 9 to begin the day.

To get away from the computer i spent some time outside on the Daimler i purchased at an auction, damn squeaky breaks that i am hoping i have now sorted. I like to take a gamble in life and this was the perfect gamble, 60,000 miles and at a cost of only £2000. Now it seems i look the dogs danglers driving to clubs to play the odd league matches.

Tonight's endeavours were at a club in Chelmsford, Essex for our second team. I figure with the Army vets championships coming up in September i had better get some match play in and second team was all i could muster.

Despite the eventual 5-3 win i dropped a set as my partner double faulted through serve games, returned like a pillock, volleyed into the net and generally couldn't hit a barn door with a shovel, in fact the winners he did mange were on the edge of the racket. As the team captain whatsapped in how are the team doing from his cruise around the Mediterranean i replied, ask Alan he is currently consoling himself in a corner whilst i ran more than Declan Rice does for West Ham in one set.

My tips to slice approach to this guys backhand and we are gold, serve to the body of this player and the match is ours were all worthless as in mid match he replied i think i need some lessons, when are you available 👀.

But having walked away with a win and feeling happy with the mileage i covered to run down missed smashes, volleys and passing shots i came to the conclusions

1. These players have no idea where to stand

2. How hard is it to work out an opponents weakness for this team?

and 3. Andy you are here to put some mileage in your legs, get some match play and move along.

Until next time happy shovelling

Andy

A New Beginning

Perhaps it is time to re-establish my blog again. Having left over 3 years ago!

Andy

The state of American Tennis by Tim Mayotte

Tim Mayotte
September 12, 2011

Now that we are at the end of another US Open, the sad news is that American tennis is in the sorriest state it has ever been.

After playing at the highest levels of the game and then teaching tennis for seven years and spending a year and a half running the USTA High Performance Program for Player Development at the US Open site under Jose Higueras and Patrick McEnroe, I am compelled to make a few observations.

A number of ideas as to why we are in this state have been suggested. From where I sit, the main reason we have so few good or great players is that there are relatively few top developmental coaches in our nation.

Other concerns about the quality of our athletes and suggesting our players are “soft” misplaces the blame on the youngsters and allows us grown-ups an excuse for not being smart enough to keep up with the rest of the world.

In the current situation an occasional good player may emerge like Christina McHale or Ryan Harrison, but to become a dominant tennis nation again we must first develop a large number of top coaches who can guide our players to be prepared technically, physically, mentally, emotionally to make a final assault on the highest levels of the game.

Only then will a steady stream top pros and champions emerge from our shores.

An advanced teaching method or methods must be crafted and then used to educate and develop a number of top developmental coaches who can lead our players through every stage to the top. This has never happened here, and the cost is now painfully obvious.

Sadly, the one organization with enough resources to make a significant impact on this problem, USTA Player Development, (PD) has for years, and continues, under Patrick McEnroe and Jose Higueras, to fail at this critical task.

This is not to say Higueras has not proved his mettle as a coach of players who are already pros. The critical point is that Higueras as a coach of coaches and McEnroe as manager of PD are the wrong people for the job.

One of Higueras’ cherished coaching guidelines is, “Don’t Coach How You Were Taught.” I suspect that he is teaching our coaches and players how he was taught. PD is using antiquated teaching methods and enormous resources are being squandered in the process, $60 to $70 million in the past three years is an educated guess.

In this new tennis world the most sophisticated teaching and coaching must be available to our players.

One of the USTA PD’s most ambitious projects has been to educate coaches both inside and outside PD, about Higueras’ “philosophy” (as it is known inside the program) and develop something of a unified teaching method for coaches nationwide.

Besides teaching the 30 or so coaches who train players at the 3 USTA PD sites at Boca Raton, Fl, New York and Carson, CA., McEnroe and Higueras have attempted this through the new Regional Training Centers. Higueras and other USTA PD coaches have been visiting these centers leading workshops while trying to identify top talent.

There are many problems in this plan, but most notably Higueras’ “philosophy” is so bare bones and rudimentary that it offers little insight into the complexities of getting and keeping our young players on track to be pros.

The very idea that you can materially educate local coaches across the nation with a few workshops a year reveals how simplistic Higueras’ thinking is. A telling indictment of what McEnroe and Higueras consider about the value of top coaching particularly in relation to younger players is that PD has hired as coaches people just out of college who have no other credentials than having played D-3 tennis.

This would be comparable to hiring green undergraduates to teach our nation’s most promising young scholars whether they be 10 or 12 or 14. (In this vein I probably should not have been hired to start and run a PD center with only five years teaching experience and no past working with high-performance players as well as having no training in managing a large group of players.)

That this is happening at the supposedly premier training sites in the nation is alarming.

By contrast, other nations demand that coaches study for years before working with players. (There may be budget concerns but this is hard to reconcile with McEnroe’s $750,000 plus salary.)

McEnroe has committed huge resources “educating” our coaches with Higueras’ “philosophy” without sufficiently critiquing the merits of its effectiveness.

Not surprisingly McEnroe has spent little, if any, time working with young players of any age and teaching them the building blocks of the game. (He and tennis would be well served by him getting out of the broadcast booth and on the court with young players for a sustained period of time.)

A teacher who is a close observer would come to understand that by working with players of all ages one becomes more prepared to teach those at all levels, including the top of the game.

Good coaching is enormously complicated. A good or great coach must understand and integrate (or at least be curious enough about to get help with) a wide variety of disciplines. A short list would include building and managing a culture of healthy discipline, helping players deal with frustration by using basic thinking about psychology, developmental physiology, working with and educating parents, besides the more obvious but critical elements of shot selection and finally, teaching technique.

A great leader to a large group of coaches must be a good organizer, systematic thinker and implementer and have the ability to convey that information effectively to a group over time.

Higueras, and McEnroe, who has been vigilant about enforcing Jose’s “philosophy,” have mastered very few of these skills.

It's sad that the USTA has in place a coach of coaches of who by his own admission is “not a technical coach.” This might be acceptable if our nation had in place a large number of coaches competent in teaching world-class technique.

This is not the case. In his three plus years on the job, Higueras has established only a simple set of parameters about the basics of technique. Understanding and teaching world-class technique is anything but simple. Grasping elements of vision, the kinetic chain, how movement affects racquet work and determining an effective progression of learning given the developing player’s physical abilities are all essential. (Just ask any teaching pro who has tried to teach a 50 year old a kick-serve.)

Finally, a great coach helps a young player learn in the most natural and non-conscious (for lack of a better phrase) way possible. And all that is just a start.

Thankfully, both inside and outside PD there are a number of good, (some great) solid, dedicated, hard-working and curious coaches who help young people become good and once in a while, great players.

In other nations those coaches would be recognized as such and financially supported to continue their good work. (The French Tennis Fed is an example.)

Here, the USTA has for years “poached” those players who were developed in private programs (Christina McHale is a most recent example.) and left the local coaches with no on-going recognition and financial support. (They have been trying to develop talent from the ground up recently with meager results given the price tag mentioned above.)

It is no wonder that many coaches I speak with find Higueras and McEnroe arrogant and that the rift between the private coaches and the USTA PD has never been wider.

They need to bring the best coaches in the nation together and craft a world-class educational program to train a core of top coaches. Also, they must also support financially and other wise those that are doing good work.

If McEnroe and Higueras, after their three-plus years on the job, still feel their methods are the best then I think they should be willing to compete. I suggest they allocate funds to a handful of top programs and see after a few years who produces the best players.

The worst that can happen is that we learn a great deal; the best that can happen is that they all prove me wrong and show us that they were on the right path all along.

PTR Workshop Details

Click here for UK dates and locations so far

New Appointment

We are pleased to announce that Andy Dowsett has accepted the new role of Coordinator to assist in servicing PTR members in England, Scotland and Wales. We are fortunate that Andy has the administrative skills, tennis knowledge and prior experience to support us in our transition. You may contact Andy at ptr@ptruk.net. The former PTRuk office is no longer operating so please bookmark the PTR International webiste on your computer at www.ptrtennis.org.
One of our goals is to improve efficiency. Thankfully, technology will enable us to have a virtual office in the UK. Phone calls that are not answered and go to voicemail will be returned within 24 hours. We will have established hours from noon to 11pm via the International Headquarters where you can email or skype.
As you know from my For the Record messages in TennisPro, PTR recruited Anne Pankhurst as our educational consultant 18 months ago, to assist us in revising our Coach Education Pathway. The new programme, which began in March this year in the USA, has been well received. Anne has done an impressive job in writing the syllabus, conducting workshops and training tutors. The recently received NCACE accreditation at Level 5 for the Master of Tennis Performance programme is one example of her work. According to the schedule, Anne’s focus will shift to duplicate her US efforts in the UK, other parts of Europe as well as Asia.
As you will see on the website at http://www.ptrtennis.org/ptruk/workshops, in mid-November this year, we will start conducting the first of the new courses in the UK. If you choose to add to your current knowledge as well PTR certification (Adult Development), Anne will be conducting Junior Development (10 and under) and Performance courses. Andy will be conducting Adult Development courses for new members who wish to choose that pathway. We are working to have our new website features operational by the end of August, so you will be able to sign up for one of the new workshops online.
One of the requests from the survey we sent you recently was that we run courses in all parts of the UK. So our plan is to train a workforce to enable us to do that. This will allow us to provide more workshops near you. If you are interested at hosting one at your club, please contact Anne: anne@annepankhurst.co.uk.
In conclusion, we appreciate your patience during our transition, and we always welcome your comments and suggestions. We look forward to providing you with unparalleled service, so you can continue to... Make a World of Difference.
My best,

Dan Santorum
CEO, PTR
P.S. If you have not already returned the member survey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PTRukMemberSurvey), please do so by September 2nd.
MAKE A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE
Professional Tennis Registry
Dan Santorum
CEO
dan@ptrtennis.org
PO Box 4739
Hilton Head Island SC 29938
tel: 800-421-6289 or 843-785-7244
fax: 843-686-2033
Skype: danptr

The end is nigh

Sorry guys i am going to concentrate on my other blog site tennismind.blog.com

Come and join me for informative articles and coaching

Andy