Serial Drillers…

By Jorge Capestany, RSPA Master Professional & PTR International Master Professional.

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How group lesson programs are killing American Junior tennis.

I have been teaching for over 40 years and have logged over 65,000 hours teaching on the court and another 15,000 hours watching my players compete in either tournaments and/or league play.

Something has changed… Today’s junior players are not playing enough sets.

I am fortunate enough to travel the world as a speaker and coach, and everywhere I go, American coaches tell me they have the same problem.

Kids who take drills (group lessons), private lessons, special events, but avoid match play like it was the plague.

In my own program, I have seen the shift as well. When I taught players in the 1980’s, they could not wait to get out on the court and PLAY sets.

Drilling was only one part of their overall training regimen, and it comprised at most 2-4 hours per week.

Back then, the good players also took private lessons and played tournaments on the weekend; if there was no tournament, they played practice sets.

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Recently, I was sitting with several fellow teaching professionals discussing this very topic. Many of them were expressing frustration with their inability to get their own players to play more sets.

I asked this group of teaching pros a question… “How many of you took a bunch of lessons when you first started in tennis, and how many of you just played a bunch of sets? I knew what the likely answer would be because most of this group played as competitive juniors in the 70s and 80s.

But I was surprised by the overwhelming lopsidedness of their response. Not a single pro from this group had taken any group lessons. They all played sets, and a few of them took occasional private lessons. After all, the only options for training back then were to play with a friend on some public courts or join a club and play matches there.

I got to wondering about this whole paradigm of how tennis is taught and learned here in our country, including how I learned it.

Could it be that group lessons have become the enemy of match play?

I know I have a ton of kids in my own program that take group lessons, private lessons, and just about any clinic or special event that is offered, but they stay away from match play. Playing in tournaments or just calling a buddy to play a few sets seems to be a thing of another era.

We should repurpose the role of the tennis pro in our country from a teacher to a creator of playing opportunities. From those opportunities, players can learn (from experience) what they really need to work on and then take lessons on that later.

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Do we have the order right?

I was discussing ideas with my own pro staff, and we realized that one of the problems is that group lessons are ultra-convenient. At our club, we feel like we do an excellent job with our group lessons. I own a website with more than 2,000 drills, so we run great drills.

But in analyzing our own players, we see that because they know the group lessons (drills) are well-run, organized, and purposeful, they feel like drilling is all they need.

They get to hit a ton of balls, get great instruction, and hear some awesome strategy advice. Besides, playing sets would require them to book other times each week, which may vary, and to secure an appropriate opponent to play. These two realities are hurting our club, and I suspect they are hurting other clubs as well.

The result is the development of an army of American kids that can strike the ball beautifully but cannot seem to win a match… If the game is the best teacher, then match play is the best game.

“Each time one prematurely teaches a child something he could have discovered himself, that child is kept from inventing it and consequently from understanding it completely.” — Jean Piaget….

Match Play can help players achieve this…

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So what is the proper role of group lessons?

As I said earlier, we have a great junior group lesson program. And these classes in and of themselves are not the problem. They are only a problem when they are the only thing that players do to train.

Group lessons should be part of a player’s overall training regimen, but I feel that for every hour of drilling, an equal number of hours of match play should occur.

So what is the solution for getting out of this mess?

It is in helping players develop an effective overall training regimen. I have started offering private lessons for families at my club, where we meet for an hour, and they can hear my thoughts on the importance of match play and exactly what their kids should be doing each week to get better.

Families are eager to get this right, and many don’t realize they are doing nothing wrong. I’ve started emailing our families to let them know about the new family private lessons, which do not take place on the court. I am serving as the family’s tennis consultant and helping them get their kids on a proper training regimen.

Often, they are surprised that I am recommending fewer drills and more use of their walk-on pass, which actually allows them to spend less at the club.

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Below are some guidelines to help you assist your families understand what they should be doing.

I believe it all starts with the big question… What do you want to do with your tennis?

That is the opening question I ask the player during our family meeting, and from there, we discuss the options I have laid out below.