What Makes a Coach World-Class?

I'd like to hear from the people who weren't happy.

When I hired staff professionals, I used to ask candidates for their worst references. I didn't want the three people they'd hand-picked to tell me how wonderful they were. I wanted to talk to someone who'd had a bad experience with them and might tell a very different story.

If a candidate said they didn't have any bad references, I discounted them on the spot. Either they weren't being straight with me, or they hadn't built up the kind of experience I wanted in the building. Unless you've spent your career as Mr. Milquetoast, parked in the mushy middle, you've disappointed somebody, argued with somebody, or made a call somebody still thinks was wrong. I had no interest in hiring people whose biggest professional achievement was steering clear of all that.

What I wanted was the unhappy person's version, and what the candidate had learned from it. If the two accounts lined up, and the candidate understood why things went sideways and could show me what changed afterward, I'd learned something no glowing letter could tell me. Sometimes the criticism said more about the person giving it than the person receiving it. Sometimes it pointed straight at something the candidate needed to work on. Either way, I came out ahead.

I've come to think we ought to judge coaching reputations the same way.

## The Question That Started This

I recently wrote an essay proposing a five-day event for players eleven and under, their parents, development specialists, and some of the finest junior coaches I know. Three days of learning, then two days of competition, with the tournament serving as a test of what everyone had been learning.

In describing it, I used the phrase *world-class coaches*.

Ken Pomerantz, responding on Facebook, wanted to know what I meant. More to the point, he asked what percentage of a coach's players should improve their rankings before that coach could take credit for developing highly ranked players. He's been raising this subject with parents since the early 1980s. He was questioning an industry where coaches build reputations on a small slice of their students while parents get very little reliable information about everyone else.

I wasn't receptive. I told him I believe it's up to the player to decide what anyone brought to their development, and that trying to measure it is about as useful as checking your UTR every day. Ken came right back. Did I really think players and parents could accurately evaluate tennis coaches? Nobody in this business shows a coaching record, he said, and he wondered why. I asked what any of this had to do with my essay. Then I got a little sarcastic: "I'm damn good if what I'm doing is about deception. I even have myself fooled into thinking I'm being genuine."

The exchange stuck with me anyway. If the player alone decides what a coach contributed, then every coach is exactly as good as their happiest students say they are. That's the problem Ken was pointing at, and my first answer walked right past it.

In junior tennis, we tend to grade coaches by their best players. A coach who worked with a future professional gets to put that name on a résumé. A coach who developed a national champion gets to mention it for the next thirty years. I've done some of that myself, and I don't think there's anything wrong with acknowledging those relationships.

But what about the other players?

What about the ones who stalled, lost interest, or eventually left? What about the families who believed they were making all the right moves and learned years later that things hadn't turned out the way anyone expected? If we're going to judge a coach's ability to develop people, those stories belong in the file too.

## The Players Who Didn't Make the Brochure

Say a coach has worked with three players who reached the world's top hundred. That's an impressive association. It tells us less than we think.

We don't know whether those players arrived already well ahead of their peers, how long the coach actually had them, or who else had a hand in their development. We don't know what the coach did that made a difference, or how anyone would prove it. And we don't know whether there were twenty other kids in that program or two hundred, or what became of them.

Those are fair questions. I don't object to examining a coach's record. I object to pretending the record explains itself.

A ranking is the end product of a long and tangled development history. The coach may have made an enormous contribution, a modest one, or occasionally one less helpful than everyone assumed. The player's success doesn't tell us which.

A ranking-improvement ratio could be useful if we knew where players started, how long they trained, what resources they had, and what happened after they left. We'd also have to account for the fact that kids aren't randomly assigned to coaches. Some programs attract children who are already advanced, highly driven, or unusually well supported. Others work with children whose obstacles never show up in any ranking.

Then there's the question of what we're measuring. If the goal is to develop nationally ranked tennis players, results matter. I'd never argue otherwise. But if the goal is to develop young people through tennis, the scorecard gets a lot more complicated.

Picture a girl who learns to think for herself and take a loss without coming apart, and who builds the kind of judgment that eventually tells her tennis isn't her path. That may be an important developmental success. That isn't the same accomplishment as winning a national championship. It means we'd better be clear about what we're trying to accomplish before we decide how well somebody accomplished it.

## What Thirty-Five Years of Failure Taught Me

When I talk with parents, I've become more and more aware that some of the most useful things I bring come from watching development go wrong.

I've spent more than thirty-five years around junior players. In that time I've seen promising kids fall short of what everyone expected, and well-meant decisions produce consequences nobody intended. An approach that works beautifully for one child can work poorly for the next. Parents make choices they later regret, and coaches keep doing things long after the evidence says it's time to reconsider.

And I've made my share of mistakes.

I can tell parents plenty about what I've seen work. But I'm often more useful when I recognize something a family is about to do that I've watched other families regret. Sometimes the best thing I can offer isn't telling someone what to do. It's explaining why I'd be very careful about doing what they're considering.

Some of that knowledge comes from the players on the brochure. Much of it comes from the ones who aren't.

There's a catch, and it matters.

Watching something go wrong doesn't mean I understand why it went wrong. A player can fall short despite excellent coaching. Another can soar despite some terrible decisions by the adults around her. Sometimes what we later call a mistake was a reasonable decision given what everyone knew at the time.

Experience doesn't automatically produce wisdom. It can just as easily produce a collection of stories we tell ourselves about why we were right. When I told Ken I even had myself fooled into thinking I was genuine, I meant it as a joke. It's less funny when you consider it might be true.

The value comes from being willing to examine those experiences, question our own interpretations, and change what we do. That's the standard I'd apply to any coach, including myself.

## I've Known World-Class Coaches Who Never Coached Tennis

When Ken first asked what I meant, I mentioned Dr. Jim Loehr, whom I consider a world-class mental performance coach. I mentioned Bill Tighe, my high school football coach, and Coach Ernie Peterson, both of whom I consider world-class developers of young men.

And I mentioned my mother, who spent the latter half of her career as chairman of the middle school guidance department for the Concord Public Schools.

I meant every one of them.

My mother never developed a nationally ranked tennis player. Nobody kept a leaderboard of how many kids became better students or steadier young people because of her. That doesn't mean her work couldn't be judged, and it certainly doesn't make it smaller because it couldn't be boiled down to a number.

I'd want to know what she saw in children that other adults missed, and how she responded when one of them was struggling. I'd want to know whether the kids she worked with got better at making decisions without her, and whether she could tell the difference between what a child was doing and what that behavior might mean.

I'd also want to hear from the kids she couldn't reach.

That isn't an argument against measuring outcomes. It's an argument for looking at the work closely enough to understand what the outcomes are actually telling us.

The word coach is too small for what these people did. Each of them shaped how people would carry themselves long after the season, the semester, or the match was over. Tennis happens to be the place where I've watched that work most closely. It isn't the only place it happens, and the standard shouldn't change with the setting.

## Show Me the Work

If a coach tells me they've developed three national champions, I'm interested. I'd also like to watch them work with a child who isn't ahead of the pack, isn't progressing as fast as expected, or doesn't respond to the coach's favorite approach.

What happens when that child doesn't understand an instruction, or makes the same mistake for the fifth time, or simply disagrees? I'd want to know whether the coach can explain why they're doing something and what evidence would change their mind. I'd watch for whether they see differences among children or run everyone through the same formula, and whether their players grow more independent over time or more dependent on having the coach close by.

And I'd want to know what happens when things don't work. Does the coach get curious, or blame the player? Rethink the environment, or just demand more effort? Can the coach tell a child who isn't trying from a child who doesn't understand what's being asked?

Most of what I'm describing comes down to observation. It's a coach watching one particular child closely enough to adjust in the moment, then asking the question that child needs right then. I've come to believe that kind of attention is where much of the real work of development begins. It's also the hardest to see from the outside and the hardest to keep up across a full roster of kids, which is exactly why it almost never shows up in anyone's record.

I'm not suggesting every bad outcome is the coach's fault. Parents make decisions, players make decisions, circumstances change, and sometimes things just don't work out.

But I'd be suspicious of a coach who credits every success to great coaching and every failure to somebody else's shortcomings.

That sounds less like expertise than a remarkably convenient accounting system.

## What Would the Worst References Say?

This is where my old hiring habit earns its keep.

If I were evaluating a coach with several highly ranked players, I'd want to talk to those players. I'd want to know what they believe the coach contributed and how that looks to them years later. I'd also want to talk to players who left, families who were disappointed, and people whose experience with that coach wasn't good.

Not because I assume the unhappy people are right.

An unhappy parent may have had unrealistic expectations. A player may resent a coach who made a sound but unpopular call. A family may have wanted guarantees no responsible coach could give. Criticism deserves examination, not automatic acceptance.

So does praise. The champion may sincerely believe one particular coach was responsible for everything. That doesn't make the champion's read accurate either.

What interests me is where the accounts overlap, where they contradict each other, and how the coach explains the difference. Most of all, I'd want to know whether the coach learned anything from the relationships that didn't work.

If someone has spent twenty or thirty years developing young players and can't name real mistakes, failed approaches, or relationships they wish they'd handled differently, I'd have trouble believing they've looked at their own work very hard. That doesn't automatically make them a poor coach. It does make me wonder what they've been using all that experience for.

## The Coach I'd Want in the Room

Which brings me back to the event that started this conversation. When I said I wanted world-class junior coaches involved, I wasn't necessarily thinking of the coaches with the most famous former players or the longest list of national titles. I was thinking of people who understand some part of developing young players exceptionally well and can make that understanding useful to others.

One coach might be extraordinary at building tactical awareness. Another might know how to teach movement to young children. Someone else might have spent decades learning how to build training environments where kids become independent thinkers. I'd want to see what each of them actually does, understand why, and hear what they've learned from the times it didn't work. And I'd want them willing to have their thinking examined by other accomplished coaches.

Picture two coaches watching the same session and reaching different conclusions about what a child needs. Instead of arguing from reputation, each has to explain what they observed, what they concluded from it, and how they'd test that conclusion. I suspect that would be worth more than an hour-long presentation from either of them about all the champions they've developed.

A famous résumé might get someone invited into the conversation. It shouldn't settle it. And someone without a famous résumé might have exactly what the rest of us need to understand.

## So What Makes a Coach World-Class?

I'm not interested in inventing a numerical formula, though I understand why people want one. An industry that runs on reputation and testimonials ought to be willing to offer better evidence of what its people actually accomplish.

Ken's concern about coaches taking credit for a small share of their players is legitimate. The answer isn't to wave off accountability. It's to ask better questions about what we're holding people accountable for.

For me, a world-class coach shows exceptional understanding of some important part of development, produces meaningful results, and can explain the work well enough that other accomplished people learn from it. Plenty of excellent coaches clear that bar.

What separates world-class from excellent is how thoroughly that knowledge has been tested, especially against the things that didn't work. A world-class coach should know a great deal about the limits of their own methods. I'd expect them to have studied the players they couldn't help, the decisions they'd reconsider, and the situations where somebody else's approach might have been better. They don't need to have all the answers. I'd care more about the quality of the questions they've learned to ask.

And I wouldn't expect every player or parent who worked with them to sing their praises. In fact, I'd be a little suspicious if they did.

I started this essay with a hiring habit. I asked for worst references because I wanted people who'd been in the work long enough to make mistakes, run into disagreement, and learn something worth bringing through the door. I also wanted to see whether they could look at an uncomfortable piece of their own history without needing to rewrite it. That seems like a fair expectation of anyone we're prepared to call world-class.

So if you tell me you've developed three national champions, I'd like to hear about them. I'd like to know what you contributed, what they contributed, and what you learned along the way.

Then I'd like to hear about the ones who didn't make it.

That's probably where we'd learn the most.

*Written with Reggie, Claude, Gemini, Otter, and 64+ trips around the sun.*