No Blueprint to Fake It

Most people think authenticity is about "being yourself" and "following your passion." They're missing the point entirely.

Authenticity isn't a feel-good leadership principle. When you're disrupting established systems or walking into spaces where no one like you has succeeded before, authenticity becomes a survival strategy. There's no blueprint to fake when you're the first anything.

My grandfather Jim Evans understood this when he started Evans & Rossi Lumber in direct competition with his former employer, Friend Lumber. He couldn't fake his way through running a business against people who knew exactly what he was capable of. Every decision, every customer interaction, every business practice had to be genuinely better than what he'd learned working for them. There was no established pattern for a Black man competing directly with his former white employer in the 1940s - he had to be authentically superior or fail completely.

When you're plowing unfurrowed ground, everything gets exposed. Fake gets found out immediately.

I learned this lesson through contrast first. Rocky Jarvis, the head tennis professional at my club growing up, showed me exactly what inauthentic coaching looked like. My experience with him leads me to believe he was racist, and he made it clear that developing players who looked like me wasn't his priority. He taught me how NOT to coach - not through his methods, but through his selective investment in who deserved his best effort.

Compare that to Coach Ernie Peterson, who never played competitive tennis and authentically refused to accept low expectations for any player in his program. I only saw him hit one tennis ball - when I fed it to him for a demonstration and he laughed after hitting it. He taught unconventional technique (two hands on both sides), made kids create businesses in the summer, and focused relentlessly on college scholarships instead of unrealistic professional dreams. His methods looked wrong to conventional tennis wisdom, but his results were undeniable: multiple top 5 US juniors, his daughter becoming a multi-time All-American at USC, Jamea Jackson playing Fed Cup for the United States.

Coach Peterson couldn't fake tennis expertise he didn't possess, so he stayed authentic to what he knew worked. Coach Peterson knew his strength was teaching players to hit big from the backcourt - he even had a banner on the fence saying "Burdette Baseline Bombers." He welcomed interaction with coaches who had other strengths. At one point he brought me in to work on teaching angles. Missing fingertips from picking cotton, 6 AM wake-up calls saying "get up boy, you can't make money in the bed," showing me his personal finances as teaching tools - nothing polished or performed about any of it. Just authentic investment in development that produced results the tennis establishment couldn't match.

When I operated Samuell Grand and Fretz Tennis Centers in Dallas, I understood authenticity had to be systematic, not accidental. We held weekly coach meetings, and one series centered on identifying each coach's "authentic superhero." Coaches had to develop an avatar representing who they actually were as coaches, not who they thought they should be or who would look good in marketing materials.

They boiled their authentic coaching identity down to something simple enough to fit on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper, and we placed these on the wall in the area where we kept ball carts. The idea was for coaches to look at their authentic superhero before heading to court each day, helping them stay consistent with who they actually were rather than performing different versions of coaching depending on their mood or the client.

This wasn't feel-good team building. It was practical necessity. When parents are investing serious money in their child's development, they can spot performative coaching immediately. Kids know even faster. Consistency in authentic identity creates trust. Inconsistency destroys credibility.

My specialist team approach to player development works precisely because it's authentic to what I learned works, not because it follows conventional tennis wisdom. Like my grandfather competing with Friend Lumber, I'm disrupting an established system. I can't fake methods I don't believe in or present expertise I don't possess. Parents investing at elite levels will expose any contradiction between what I claim and what I deliver.

The tennis establishment promotes generalist coaching - one coach handling all aspects of development. I promote specialist teams because I authentically believe in Coach Peterson's approach: bring in the best person for each specific need rather than pretending one person can do everything at the highest level. My authenticity about the limitations of generalist coaching threatens coaches who can't admit their own limitations.

When you're authentic about disrupting systems, you make enemies of people invested in the status quo. But you also attract families ready to try methods that actually work rather than methods that look conventional.

The people who shaped me - my mother, Coach Tighe, Coach Peterson - weren't performing the role of mentors. They were authentically invested in preparing me for environments they understood better than I did. Their consistency in that authentic investment is why I trusted their guidance even when I didn't understand it.

Today, when tennis parents ask me to evaluate their child's current coaching situation, I tell them to look for authentic consistency, not impressive credentials or smooth presentations. Can the coach clearly articulate their authentic approach to development? Do their methods stay consistent across different players and situations? Are they authentically invested in your child's specific needs, or performing generalized coaching theater?

The most dangerous coaches are those performing the role of elite developer without authentic investment in the work. They're smooth, they say what parents want to hear, they have impressive backgrounds. But when you're investing serious money and years of your child's development, performance without authentic substance will eventually get exposed.

In tennis, like everywhere else, you can't fake what you don't have when the stakes are real. The question isn't whether a coach is tough or nice, expensive or affordable, experienced or innovative. The question is whether they're authentically committed to the specific work of developing your specific child, or just performing the role they think you want to see.

When there's no blueprint to follow - which is exactly what elite player development requires - authenticity isn't a luxury. It's the only strategy that survives contact with reality.