Win Now or Win Later

One of the big knocks against junior tennis here in the United States is that the U.S. teaches kids to hit shots rather than how to play tennis.  Unfortunately, that reality gets reinforced by a lot of parents who look and say, ‘Oh that kid goes for all the shots and misses a lot.  That kid just hits the ball hard and doesn’t know how to construct points.” And a lot of those same parents call those kinds of players ‘mindless hitters.’ From my perspective, those people who call it mindless hitting are wrong and confused!   I think mindless hitting has a place in junior tennis; it should be a key component in junior tennis development. 

A mindless hitter is somebody who doesn’t have a context for when they’re trying to make shots.  They are more enamored with the ‘oohs and aahs’ that go along with making a high-risk shot than understanding where its place is in their overall game.  Here’s a story to help clarify what I am talking about.  Years ago, I was standing courtside the very first week Brad Gilbert was coaching Andre Agassi when Agassi was transitioning from Bollettieri’s (now IMG).  They were practicing, hitting balls together on a court in Key Biscayne when Agassi hit this running, down-the-line forehand winner and turned to say to Brad Gilbert, “I thought you said I couldn’t hit that shot.”  Gilbert said back to Agassi, “No. What I said is you can’t win with that shot. What happens is you make one out of 3, the crowd ooh’s and ah’s, you fall in love with the fact the crowd is screaming, and you don’t  recognize that you’re beating yourself with it more often than you are beating your opponent.”  At that point in time, Agassi would have been what I consider a mindless hitter.  He was playing what I refer to as ‘feel-good tennis’ -- it feels good to hit that big shot even when you’re missing it more often than not.  If you look at Andre Agassi and the example I just gave, and had he not had those types of weapons, Brad Gilbert would not have been nearly as effective a coach for him.  Gilbert was able to show Agassi how to use all these weapons he had at his disposal, which were developed through hours and hours and years and years of just ripping it.  Gripping and ripping it.

In American junior tennis, too many parents and too many coaches look for success early on and cripple players’ abilities to perform at the higher levels because many players don’t develop the skills that are necessary to get to that higher level.  There are too many kids, who win in ‘12 and under,” that when you ask them to stand at the base line and hit the ball to the fence at the opposite end they simply don’t have the ability to do that.  If you’re going to play at the highest level, then you not only have to be able to hit the ball in the corners you should be able to hit the lady with the baby that won’t stop crying in the third row behind the opposite baseline.  You want to be able to hit the ball.  One parent of a successful junior player, who was also a coach, said he was always telling parents you have to make a choice:  your kid will either lose now or they will lose later because they are never going to win at both times.  Junior players will either take the lumps early on so they can learn how to develop their shots, or they’re going to run around winning early on just to struggle later.  Understanding that doesn’t mean the coach or the parent doesn’t want a player to have success.

However, a player gets crippled when how they are told to play is by looping the ball around the court, rolling the ball around the court, and never learning to hit the big ball.  Unfortunately, that’s what some parents and some coaches are enamored with because that kind of player can win a lot at an early age.  Someone can win a 12 and under national tournament without being able to cleanly strike a ball.  They can win just on sheer athletic ability.  Often times though, the tables turn and the players who spent time honing their skills, even though they missed a lot of shots early, start winning when their shots start going in.  Now, the player who won early by rolling and looping the ball around the court and relying on athletic ability, is trying to figure out why those other players are beating him at 15, 16 years old.  By the time those other players go by, doing the things that will enable them to be successful at the collegiate level and beyond, the player who won early is trying to play catch-up by changing their game.  The reality is they will never be able to catch up.

And that’s what I would like to see change in the world of junior tennis.   I would like to see parents and coaches allowing junior players to develop in a way that from the very beginning is more focused on the end goal rather than immediate results.  When you start an 8 year old out playing tennis, the coach should spend 10 years developing the kind of game the player should be playing at age 18 rather than spending time developing a game for 12 and unders, and then get that player to unlearn those habits so they can develop new ones which work for 14 and unders, then unlearn those and learn new ones for each level along the way.  Why don’t more coaches take what they know are the necessary end skills and teach and work on those skills with a player from the very beginning and throughout their career.   

I watched a video that ran during the U.S. Open some years ago which showed Venus and Serena Williams practicing when they were nine to 11 years old. And what you saw were the same footwork patterns, the same strokes, the same everything you saw them using when they were winning grand slams.  Sure it looked like a 9 year old kid trying to do it; they looked clumsy.  But what the Williams did is they spent years perfecting the ‘right things’ they started learning at the very beginning of their training rather than learning one thing and dumping it to move to something different.  Their father, Richard Williams, said he took his kids out of junior tennis because he saw they weren’t developing.  He saw them getting tight at 10 years old because they didn’t want to lose and they stopped going for their shots.  So he pulled them out and said to the world, during an interview he pulled me into at the Sports Goods Super Show in Atlanta, that my daughters will start competing again when they are able to play on the WTA Tour and not until.  And that’s what he went about doing: teaching them to play pro-tennis.  He didn’t worry about junior tennis.

When I think about the development process, you can either teach a player how to hit the ball first and then teach them where to hit the ball or you can teach them strategy first and then when you find they need shots try to teach them the shots.  My belief is the best way to go is to teach people how to hit all the different shots within the context of how to use them (teach technique within a tactical framework).  You want to make sure every player has all the tools they’re going to need in their tool belt.  I use the analogy of having different shots as having different tools in your tool belt, or your tool chest if you have so many you can’t carry them all in a belt (let's call them skills).  Once they have the skills, then a player has to figure out which  to use for which combination of skills to deploy in order to accomplish what objective. 

When a player is given a great big shot, like a huge forehand down the line, they’re going to want to use it.  You might say it’s kind of like having a chainsaw in your tool belt and wanting to use it to cut a piece of wood, although it depends on the piece of wood you want to cut as to which saw you use.  You don’t want to use a chainsaw if you’re making a mantel piece. You need to use a coping saw.  The chainsaw, though, is often a lot more fun to use.  In the maturation process, what players often do is go for the big, glamorous shot first and then they realize they don’t necessarily have to be the best player in the world, they just need to be the best player on that court on that particular day.  If you teach players shots first, then they have the ability to hit the shots.  They go through life not being scared to pull the trigger when necessary.  When you go the other way around, teaching consistency first and shots second, we develop players who win early by chasing a lot of balls and getting them back with sub-optimal technique, but not by hitting the big ball.  When the moment gets tight, those players get tight and revert back to playing with much less than what is required to play at the highest level.

One of the quotes I heard two decades ago or more came from Andy Roddick shortly after he turned pro and about the time he was number one in the world with a big forehand and hitting 150+ mph serves.  Roddick said the difference between junior tennis and pro tennis is junior tennis is about how much can I do with a ball.  Pro tennis became about figuring out how much I need to do with a ball.  He went on to say juniors was always about hitting balls better and better, bigger and bigger, coming up with shots you didn’t have 6 months ago and sometimes missing, but knowing that was part of the developmental process.  And once he became a pro, he came to the realization he now needed to earn a living and had to leave the experimentation on the practice court and when he went out on the match court to not play quite as risky, to reel it back in some and not beat himself anymore.  Had he done things the other way around, not spent the time as a junior going for that 150+ mph serve and gotten to the pros without having his weapons – we probably would have never heard of him.