Am I Good Enough to Be a Tennis Coach?

Here I cover some of my own insecurities on whether I was good enough to become a tennis coach. I cover some different levels of players that you typically coach and how there are lots of different spaces for different coaches.

I had thought that to be a successful tennis coach will require closer to the ex pro status but this was an incorrect assumption. 

Transcript

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The art of tenant. The art of tennis art of tenant. Coaches, Rick here from The Art of Tennis. Welcome back to episode three. Hopefully, some of you have had a a look at episode one and two, uh, where I discuss my own playing background and how I became a tennis coach and the process of dropping out of university. So effectively, I went to American College Tennis, NCAA Div2, and I did a year there, come back, went to university in South Australia doing international business marketing for six months before I dropped out of university and moved to Darwin to become a tennis coach. So in this episode, I wanna I want to talk about how good you have to be to become a tennis coach. Because personally, I I definitely had some insecurities on whether I was good enough to to be a coach. I had a perception that to be a coach or you know a full-time coach or a senior coach, you had to really be a almost ex pro player. And I think when you're when you're a junior player growing up, you you're never really you're never really grateful for what level you get to, and you're more spending time looking at who's above you, right? Who's who's higher, who's better, who's ranked higher, who's rated higher. And so you you you go on this tennis journey, and constantly you maybe you're climbing the rankings a little bit, doing better in tournaments, but you you sort of forget about everyone you can beat, and then you forget about everyone else who doesn't play tournaments, who you can obviously beat easily. Uh, then you forget about the people who've never played. So you're always looking about what you can't can't do, and I think that's a really common thing in in tennis players. You might get the odd, uh, cocky, arrogant tickets on himself or herself player who believes that they are a level they're not, and believes they should be, you know, maybe they're a pro level, but they're only a state grade level, or maybe they're a division five level and they think they're state grade level, that sort of thing, but they're a few and far between. You might get one in one in fifty people who are like that, um, but mostly they've just into some sort of uh how would you say delusional uh thinking. But for most people, they're gonna be thinking about who's better than them and why they're not good enough, etc. So for me, thinking that I had to, that I wasn't a high enough level, so I I really scraped into Div2 NCAA college tennis. Uh on previous episodes, I talked about how I played a lot as a 14-year-old and didn't play much at 15 and 16. I played a lot as a 17-year-old, but didn't play mini tournaments. So I felt a little bit underprepared going into college tennis, but I think I belonged at that level. I was I was okay at at that at that level of play. Uh so I still thought maybe that's gonna, that's not enough to be it, to be a coach. Um, it certainly helped because it felt like, oh well, I played college tennis, it gave me something to say, uh, a little bullet point, which is important when you're coaching to to have those bullet points on your your background a little bit uh for credibility. But I genuinely didn't consider myself to be good enough to be a a full-time coach. Now, let's talk about different levels of play. So, really, if we use UTR, which we use in Australia now, I know it's used in the college system in America. Uh, it's I'm sure it's used in a few other places in the world. UTR, universal tennis rating, uh, you're a one. If you get going as a yellow ball tennis player, you're a one. And you're a 16 if you are Carlos Alcaraz or Yannick Sinna. So, and the top top ladies uh are around 14 in the 14 rated. You're I guess you you you could consider an intermediate level, maybe starting around three UTR to five, three to five, three to six, you could consider an intermediate level of play. And then you've got advanced play, maybe more like seven to seven to nine. Uh, especially the ladies who get advanced state grade players, seven to nine rated, and the guys at a state league level are more likely to be nine to twelve level. So that gives you the idea, and then you've got low-level tour players uh in the guys uh 12, 13, 14. So maybe they've got a ranking point or they're playing on the the low end of the circuit. So that's the level of the guys, the girls uh just a little bit lower. Uh, as I said, the 14 would be your your top players in the world. Uh, so you've got you've got players on the tour, I expect around 10, 11, uh, 10, 11, 12 would be uh tour players for the for the girls. So let's if we look at those levels and we think about what type of players you can take depending on what your level is. So if you've maybe reached that intermediate level of play, let's say it's the three five three, four, five, six UTR, you can play fine. You've got you should should be pretty close to the the right right group on the serves. The backhand group should be should be okay. Your forehand is is okay, it's sound, but maybe your game breaks down under pressure a little bit. Alright, so if someone hits harder, that level of player will will break down and they're probably a bit more inconsistent. However, if you if you become that player, who can you teach? Alright, now you're gonna have trouble at that level teaching all spectrum of a let's say a club player, whether it's a local community club or a country club, you're gonna have trouble teaching the whole spectrum if you're saying a UTR 4. However, if you're a UTR4 and you're a good teacher and you're a good communicator, then you can certainly teach beginner kids. So beginner kids, well, in Australia we call it hotshots, uh, America, I think, is ten and under tennis, the UK, who were early pioneers in this, were its mini tennis system with the red ball, orange ball, green ball. So if you're an intermediate level player at UTR 4, and you you are a good teacher, you must have good communication skills, then you can certainly help those who have not even reached UTR1. If you wanted to go further into the let's call them junior club players, where they start to get, you know, they're playing competition, we call it pennants in Western Australia, um, but any sort of tennis league, the UTRs will be well, let's say 1.52 to 3 to 4 to 5 to 6 to 7 for junior junior levels. Uh right at the top of juniors, you in junior league, you're gonna get guys who are 8, 9, maybe 10, but normally by that stage they've transferred from juniors and they're playing uh top division or high division senior centers. But if you're an intermediate player, you really are gonna struggle to to be able to help that level of player. The reason is is a lot of how they learn is going to be what they see you do. People are many, many, many, many people are visual learners, so they're gonna just watch how you hit your forehand. And if you're going and you get a bit of a funny technique, a little little jolt in your technique, then they might follow with a bad habit. If you're maybe just poking your backhand, you can't teach a junior club player to hit a backhand because they're gonna watch you poke and they have no idea how to hit a proper backhand. So I think you've got to know your place a little bit. Uh, I do encourage some of the great teaching types who are intermediate players, they should be jumping on and becoming part of a coaching team because they can actually be the best hotshots coaches. So, in my tennis academy at Scarborough Tennis Academy in Perth, we have two of our nine coaches who would be in that intermediate level, and they are probably the two best hotshots coaches. Reason, they know how to keep kids engaged, they keep them, they keep them excited. What's next? What's next? They don't let them get bored. All right, they don't they don't get stuck in in boring technique or boring instructions, so the kids start looking around and going, What am I doing? And they they understand teaching, so they're asking questions to the kids. Okay, that they're helping them learn by asking questions. So you've got that that intermediate level player. You must learn how to coach if you're that level, because that's going to help you iron out some of your own technical flaws, so at least you can teach the correct technique, even if you've got a few little flaws yourself. And at that level, some of the common flaws might be the backhand grip on a double hander, might be a little bit towards the forehand side, so it scoops. Uh maybe the forehand, maybe the forehand struggles to to create spin, or it's too extreme and slaps a little. And the and and obviously the serve is is normally a pretty good sign of a player's level on how well they can do that technically. So to do the coaching courses, whatever your national body uh is, you should be doing the at least that first level or two of coaching courses so you can iron out those flaws in your game so you know what to teach. So if we then go up to the next stage and let's call it uh so we go from that UTR 4, and let's push to say UTR UTR six to nine. Okay, so UTR six to nine. So these are going to be strong division one, maybe state league uh female players. Um they're going to be top few division guy uh male players. Uh, once you're getting to nine, you're starting to get to you know, maybe division one male players, and so at that level, your game is a lot more complete. You've unlikely to have many technical flaws, you may still be outpowered by people, uh, and you might have some tactical flaws, or maybe physically or mentally, but your game is gonna be pretty good. So, what that does is that means the visual learning from the people who you are you are coaching is gonna be a positive, so they're gonna see you hit, even if they don't listen to you. Some of the kids, especially ADHD kids, they are not hearing audio instructions, all right? It's going out this year. However, if they see you volley like this, then suddenly they might volley the same, they'll see it and go, okay, that's what we're meant to do. So the the visual is going to be great for when you're at that playing level. Now, again, you must learn how to coach and how to teach. So, must do the coaching courses. Don't don't rely on on your own game to be able to teach someone. You'd be surprised on how little you know on how to break up technique so it's easily learned. Because you might know how to hit an open stance jumping, jumping open stance return, but you have no idea how to break it up into chunks so people can can understand it easily. So you need to need to go through that, you know, it's progressions that are an important part of this. Progressions, how do we do it in bite-sized pieces? So if you are that six to nine UTR player, you've got a really good opportunity to be a good coach, and you've widening the net of potential players. So now we're not just hot shots or mini tennis players, but we're introducing the junior club players who who uh are competitive and they're looking for they're looking for uh more than just basic bounce hit and and things like this. So you're opening them up the uh the opportunity there. So this type of level, six to nine, can you be a career coach? Yes, yeah, you can be a career coach in this in this in this band of levels. You are going to be a little bit restricted for your absolute top end of club. So your your star juniors and competition playing adults are going to be are going to be a challenge for you to be able to help them. Now, maybe you're a really good tactical coach, or you've got a special interest in uh the psychology mindset side or uh maybe uh physical conditioning side. So you might be able to help them out from that angle, but let's face it that your junior who is 16 and they're a UTR 9 and you're a UTR six and a half or seven, that it's unlikely that they're gonna respect you enough to to take in your information. And it sounds a bit brutal, but it's it's just the way it is. They they want you to at least be able to compete with them in some points. Um, and I think that's just the way it goes. So that can definitely be you can definitely become that that club coach at that level, and possibly if you build up your pool of players, and you're not gonna get many players who are that high level, you're gonna get most of the players are gonna be in in the UTR1 to six range. Okay, well, in fact, hot shots before UTR1, so let's call it UTR 0 to 1 to 6, you're not gonna get many who pop up as nines and tens. And if you do, then maybe accept that they move on to somewhere else. You've done your job, you hand them to uh a different, maybe it's a state program or a different academy program who can develop them further. If you are that next level up, and maybe you've been a UTR 10, 11, 12, then you can take on those tournament playing juniors and at a state to national level. Now, for me, my UTR, I think the best was late 10s. Uh I'll probably fading now as a nearly 44-year-old, but you know, I think I was comfortable to reach, say, a 10. Uh, 11 would have been an absolute peak, and probably played a lot more as a UTR 9 type level. So I've taken a lot of kids to national level, um, 14 and international levels, 16 and international levels, it feels like I'm starting to, I'm almost starting to get out of my zone, and I would need someone who is further advanced. Now I can help them with different mindset strategies. Um, I might have a different way of explaining tactics so they understand it. But really, once they're at that that that national junior level or highly competitive adult level, you you need to have that, whether it's ex-college tennis, uh German club tennis is what a lot of top players do, um, low-level tour ITFs, and obviously actually playing on the tour. Now, if you're at that level, then you understand the the one percenters that make a difference for a player. So you understand how to take the player who's got almost technically perfect. All right, they can do everything, but maybe they they maybe they come unstuck with kickers out wide high. Right? So you can see the difference between that and teaching someone how to go drop hit. So it's a big scale of coaching. So to be a full-time coach, you really need to be that that UTR, that UTR uh say six to nine, and obviously if you UTR 10 plus, then you you're opening up another avenue of coaching. And so what you'll find is a lot of UTR 10 pluses, they like they want to work with the best juniors, um, maybe it's in the national state academies, national academies, and things like this. And that is most likely the best space they can be in. But if you're an intermediate player, you need to know your boundaries on on what you can take on. And as an intermediate player, if you had your own business, own academy, you could do it, but you would need to employ someone pretty quickly who is gonna look after that high end of play. So that's very possible. Or if you're that little bit more advanced player, then at most clubs, country clubs, community clubs, you can take on the full spectrum of players. So I think that summarizes how good a player you need to be to coach. Really important to learn how to coach, not just rely on your game. Learn how to learn the process of coaching, the process of teaching, and how in human behavior, how to get the most out of kids, how to get the most out of adults. And normally it's about simplifying things so they understand it easily. So I think that's it for today. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll uh chat again next week. Cheers. The art of debit, art of fit.