What you should be aware of in practices at tennis tournaments

Practices during tournaments is a really special kind of practice because it’s done in a very specific environment with limited conditions.

You typically get one hour per day with somebody that you don’t know. You have to adjust to that. Most of the time I see one typical tennis practice at tournaments. First, 20 minutes hitting from the middle of the court. Then it’s a warmup of volleys, a smash for 5 minutes per player. Then it’s 10 minutes serve and return. That’s the first 40 minutes and we have now only got 20 minutes left. Often, it’s only 15 as there is also the occasional water break. Then we play a couple of points before we finish the session.

What I (Nick) just described is plenty good for the players that are winning a lot of matches. Then this type of practice serves purely as a warmup that are winning a lot of matches. Most of their real practice is done on the match court.

For the players that are not winning that much. If they do like described above, there is very little chance for improvement. The conditions are that you get this one hour and you get the player on the other side of the court. You cannot always choose what you’re going to do on the court, but what you can choose is how you approach the practice time and what you are doing. This is the most important you can do. The thing we can change, is how we approach this one hour.

This is the perfect opportunity to use what we learned from Mario Ancic’s story on practicing with Andre Agassi and the fact that it’s not necessarily what we do on the practice court, but it’s how we do it.

It’s about the amount of focus and energy we give to what we are doing, nothing more. There are a lot of things that you can practice. Even when hitting down the middle, you can focus on many technical elements, situations or targets. Another suggestion would be to play more points. Sometimes it’s more efficient to warm up your serves and returns during the points than to spent the time before and then play just a few points at the end.

The last thing from a organizational point of view. Yes, you have to use this one hour that you get officially from the tournament and make the best out of it, but there are other options that you can do. For example, early mornings the site is often empathy. So, you can wake up a little bit earlier and go on site. There’s usually plenty of time to practice. There are indoor courts, there are often other sites nearby. This is a coach’s responsibility to research before going to tournaments and to put those repetitions of specific elements in, because this is important for all players. As a coach you need to be prepared for a first-round loss on Monday and the next match could be a week or several weeks away. You need to figure out how you are going to organize that week in order to not only affect the next match but also the future of the player’s career.

Is it always a mental problem on the tennis court?

People often say: “Oh, he lost it mentally”. So, is this only a mental problem when you miss a certain shot in a difficult moment? I’m not so sure.

Let me tell you one quick story. It’s a true story about a man whose name is Drazen Petrovic. He was the best European basketball player, and he was one of the best shooters in the game of basketball. My (Nick) university professor worked with Drazen as his physical conditioning coach.

And he said to us, Drazen was never the tallest or the most athletic or the strongest player, but he was by far the best player. Drazen gradually developed a routine of a shooting practice that he did every day after the normal practice when everybody from the team went home. He did 400 shots from different court positions. If he was not happy with some position he did or with the score in some position, he did it over again and he did this every single day.

So, the interesting thing here is this. There was one typical strategy that all the coaches from NBA and national coaches applied when Drazen was playing. When the difficult moments in games arose and when the team needed to score, the strategy was always to pass the ball to Drazen.

No matter if it was a free throw, a three pointer or a little shorter, his scoring percentage was through the rough. The question is do you really think that Drazen was so much better mentally than all other players?

Or was it also a question of his training routine and the finest invisible technical skill that he developed with the years and years of consistent practice?

When the emotions get involved in a tennis match, there are no easy shots. And if you keep missing certain shots, please don’t purely call this a mental problem.

Do the best tennis players in the world practice in the same way?

Mario Ancic got invited to practice with Andre Agassi in San Francisco when he was still a junior. Mario was naturally quite curious on how the best players in the world are practicing.

When they walked on court the first exercise was very simple; Cross crosscourt drill like every tennis player in the world has tried before. Mario and Andre hit cross court and then after 10 minutes Andre took his first break. They sat down and came back to the court and they started doing the same exercise again forehand crosscourt, but this time the intensity, the pace of the rally was really, really high. After 5 minutes Andre Agassi put his hand up and again, he needed a break. This time Mario was a little curious, and asked his coach very quietly: “What’s happening to Andre? Is he out of shape? He looks really tired.”

Mario’s coach replied to him: “Mario, I want you to learn a very important lesson today from what I’m going to tell. So, I’m looking at you two. I’m looking at how you practice, and I see a good rally ball and a high level. BUT I see also one very big difference. I see you moving inside of a one-meter circle and focusing on returning back to Andre without making a mistake. Then I look at the other side, I see Andre, he’s moving back and forth after each of his shots and touching almost the middle of the court, he’s hitting full pace and intensity in every shot. He’s trying to keep his body in the perfect position. You can feel the energy behind his game. In other words, the amount of effort that Andre gives each shot is much higher than yours, and that’s why he loses more energy and that’s why he’s a little bit more tired.

Many years later as Nick Horvat was the assistant coach of Mario Ancic, Mario told Nick that it took him a while to really understand and process what his coach had told him that day, but Mario Ancic also said that it forever changed the way that he approached his practices.

So, does the best players practice the same as everyone else?

Of course not!

They just use the same exercise as everyone else, but they do it differently. For them, the key is less about what they do and more about how they do it.

The mindset of a tennis player

In tennis you need to be there all the time, independently if you are down or if you are winning.

There is this point in a final between Djokovic and Nadal from US Open that exemplifies this very well.

Djokovic won the first set; Nadal won the second. Djokovic was 4-1, Nadal goes to 4-4. Nadal tends to struggle with Djokovic, because Novak finds Rafa’s weaknesses very well.

There is one point where Nadal is serving. Nadal is down 0-15 or maybe even 0-30 and there is this point where Nadal sleds on the court. He falls first on his knees, then the hip and then with his body on the ground. He is lying on the floor and he still wants to shoot the ball. Nadal has for sure lost the point, but he understands the importance of trying his best.

He then goes to 0-40 on his serve. Fights back and wins the game and the set 6-4 and the 4th set 6-1. The most important is his mindset of always trying no matter the situation.

Right now, we all have to deal with Covid-19. The mindset from tennis is that we are going to play this match until the end with the best effort.

Consequences and rewards

We like the kids to be on time. If they are not there will be a consequence. After matches we like players to fill out a match evaluation, if they don’t do it there will be a consequence. On the other hand, for the players who always do it there will be a reward. It’s important to recognize the role models.

If a player is always late, that is a habit.

How do we change the habit?

We need to motivate them to create the habit to arrive on time. To do the warmup on time. To do the racquets. There are so many small situations in the life of a tennis player where we need to help them develop great habits.

We try to convince the players as we don’t want to punish them too much. There always has to be consequences for what is important for them. You compete how you train.

Daily the coaches vote on how well the player have done on each of the values on a scale from 1-5. At the end of the month the players who have done the best on the values gets little stickers. Besides that, there will be one off rewards for players that coaches see is making a great effort. They come into practice even though they didn’t need to e.g. after a tournament. Those are the players that improve even though they are not playing that well.

When we are working with kids, we need to remember that it’s difficult for them because they don’t always see immediate results. They don’t have the patience for the development to take place over e.g.10 years. They don’t understand that doing some of these small actions day in and day out is going to create a habit for them that will help them incredibly much in the rest of their lives.

An example could be that we had a player that later on became an environmentalist. He ran from New York to Los Angeles in 6 months, every day was doing almost a marathon. He was stopping in every city trying to make the people aware about the environmental problem with plastic and so on. When he is interviewed, everything he talks about is the mindset of a tennis player.

There is an article in The New York Times on the Financial Times that the top 1000 traders in Wall Street there are 500 of them that played tennis in college. It might have something to do with trading and dealing with losing points. Continuing when you have setbacks and keeping up the effort even on the bad days.  The mindset of a tennis player is good for those situations.

There are many stories like this and what is important to understand and take advantage from is the effort and the things that you’re going to get through this process of trying to become a good tennis player, even if you don’t make it, you’re always going to have this way of living of the tennis player. You can be devasted and frustrated that you didn’t make it as a tennis player, but you gain so much more compared to your friends who will not have the same mentality.

Building character as a tennis coach

Here in the states we have the kids in the developmental stage when they are in middle and high school, so it’s not only about the tennis player and it’s not only about competition. We want to reinforce that the persons make the effort of trying to become the best that they can be.

Asking former players like Dimitrov, Murray and Kuznetsova what it was like for them to be at the academy, they all talk about what values they experienced. They talk about how it made them stronger. If you are a parent that is what you want from your kids. You want them to have strong values and a strong character to face adversity and difficulties in life.

Tennis is so demanding that it brings you to the edge every single time. So, if you get used to through shots, patterns, situations and practices to create good habits you are going to work on your character.

It’s about the hard work, the discipline and the respect. We embrace those values on a daily basis as they will stay with you for life. It’s not necessarily what is said, but it is what is done. Therefore, you need to be an example. You need to be a mirror. It doesn’t make sense that you praise hard work and you don’t show up. Discipline, if you arrive late. You have to go with whatever you say that you are and then show it every day.

The effort, even for the player who really desires to be top players cannot be taken for granted. They are doing normal school plus they are doing tennis. That’s a lot of effort for a kid. Already putting in maximum effort in school that is already very tiring and very tough. In some moments of course the kids are going to be very tired, some moments they are very off and some other moments they are very disappointed.

What’s important is that we are there on the court to help them give the best that they have in the situation. At the end the key is not to be the best on the days where everything comes out. The days where everything is flawless and perfect takes care of themselves. What happens when you have a headache, when you feel bad or when you have a huge problem are you then able to give your best on the day? – That’s what really matters. We have to learn how to do our best on the days where we are 50 or 60 percent of our maximum. We have to learn how manage ourselves to perform the best when we are not feeling the best. That’s one of the things that some of the better players are really good at. Even when they play terrible, compared to their own standard and level, most of the time they find a way to win.

Care + strong voice = good coach

Empathy is key. If a coach doesn’t emphasize with a player, he is not going to coach. There will be no connection with the player. The ideal coach for me has to care but also have a very strong voice because in some situations the humble and quiet voice is not going to work. There will be moments where the player is going to push you to the edge. The coach needs to understand that the person who needs to perform is the person on the court.

If you don’t have empathy and the player is not respecting you when you really ask them for the extra mile you will not be successful. Sometimes you have to have a louder voice. The best coaches are the ones who can raise their voice depending on the needs. There are people who have a very low voice and with some players they will not make a difference. Other have a very strong voice and they will also have players that they will not make a difference for. The best ones are the ones who are able to manage that voice and to convince the player in different situations.

In order to connect with a player a coach needs to emphasize with the player, and you have to be a role model first. As a player it’s tough to respect if the coach doesn’t respect you. It’s tough for the player to be disciplined if they see that the coach is not disciplined and put in the effort during practice. The same goes for commitment, you cannot ask for commitment if you don’t show it yourself.

It’s going to be a process for the player to joining the public and the inner voice and the inner voice is what comes out in the difficult moments when your opponent brings you to the edge. It’s a big part of how you are going to behave in that moment, it’s how crazy you are going to get, how blocked your mind is going to be. The moment that you go crazy you are not going to use your tools. If you don’t use your tools you don’t compete. If you don’t compete you don’t perform, which is the job of the player.

So, the most important is that you, as a tennis coach, manage to be there with the player to make him be there all the time with the best effort possible. Then winning and losing is not key, because normally if you work properly and normally in the long run, you’re going to be able to perform well and compete well. If you compete well you have tools, and if you have tools you are going to win a lot of matches because you are going to be ready for the key points.

If you look at statics for the world number ones for the past 10 years, they have on average only won 55 % of the points that they have played. That means that the number 1 player in the world is losing 45 percent of the points that they are playing. Therefore, they have to be able to accept the loss of those points in order to be ready for the points that is deciding the outcome of the match. The best players localize the important points extremely well. That’s why when the best players have finished a match, they can remember that match perfectly. They apply their best patterns on the key points. There is a small difference in the amount of points won, but there is a big difference in how those points are played.

As a Tennis Coach you’re behind the player

The mentality of a tennis coach needs to be that you are always behind the player because your success is always related to the success of the player. You as a tennis coach cannot be before the player. There are some coaches which are so strong and so powerful that they will go before the player and they are the ones leading the boat somewhere and the player follows.

It’s depending on the stage that you work, if you work in junior tennis under 18, 16 or 14, I think that is a different type of coaching. Then there are also the coaches that give lessons, for me they are not coaches, they are trainers.

For me being a coach mainly starts when you are outside of the court. It’s when you watch a match with the player, when you talk to the player about their overall game and there is an exchange of information. The best players are the ones who listen the most. In order to get the player to listen you need to have empathy with the player. If you get to the point where the player is almost playing the match with you, you have an opportunity. If the player plays alone and there is no connection, I don’t believe there is much of an opportunity of improvement.

I always believe that the best tennis coaches are the one that explains why you win, why you lose and makes the player always be ready to come out from their comfort zone to keep improving. The best players are the ones that are always looking to become the best that they can become every time they go to the court.

Communication and relations are keys to succes

The players must trust you.

In order for them to trust you, you have to be able to communicate with players in their language.

That means that it varies depending on what player you work with. Communication and a good relationship not only with the player, but also the parents and the whole environment is a big part of being successful as a tennis coach.

Sometimes less is more as a tennis coach.

It’s important to find ways to explain your message to the players that you are working with in an easy and short manner with high quality.

I (Peter) have sometimes made the mistake of providing too much information in a too short time span. Sometimes listening is more important than talking.

How golf has changed Peter’s mind on changing grips

I (Peter) started playing golf a few years back and then for my birthday my sons gave me some golf lessons. All of a sudden, I was a beginner again, which I think is important to experience as a coach.

As a coach I (Peter) like to teach what I call “functional tennis”, where I would not necessarily change e.g. a more old-fashioned eastern grip, but instead work around it because my (Peter) belief would be that they would never change it.

Then when I (Peter) had the lesson with the golf coach she told me (Peter) “I would like to change your grip, because now you played a few years and in order to further improve it would be a good idea”. I said: “Oh, don’t do that – my grip is very close to what you are suggesting”

Anyway, we changed the grip. At first it was awkward, but then after one week of practice it became more normal and I (Peter) slowly learned it. Then after 6 months more the golf coach said that I (Peter) had to change the grip again. Again I (Peter) was hesitant, but it worked fine with a little bit of patience and that made me (Peter) think that maybe I (Peter) could actually do that with tennis players as well.