At my very first tennis coaching lesson I remember clearly that I went down to the court opened the curtain and I started watching the 4 kids warming up and I thought to myself: “What am I going to do for an hour and a half?”

I never taught a lesson until that time. So, I said to myself, I can’t just walk in and start out by saying: “Let’s do forehands for 15 minutes down the line and then cross court and all of that same old stuff. Therefore, I decided that I wanted to do something different.

I said: “Hey, guys, come on in. Look, my name is Carlos. I’m new here and I have the pleasure to be here with you. The next hour and a half. So, let’s have a good time. I was looking at you warming up. You guys are hitting the ball pretty well, but I noticed that, you missed quite a few overheads. We don’t really practice overhead that much. And overheads can actually win or lose a match if you don’t know which overhead to hit in certain times of the match. So how about if we start with a drill with overheads. So, I said, I’m going to throw them to each one of you guys and feed different lobs on different areas of the court so I can see what kind of overheads you’re hitting from, different positions on the court.

Let’s see who can make more than the rest out of the 10 lobs. So, the first kid came in and it’s 6. The next kid makes 5 and  now comes in a little chubby lefty kid with a red head band. I toss a ball way back and he goes out there and he spins a nice slice overhead from the back court. I gave him a shorter one. He came in and he put it away. Then I toss him another one going further back. when I tossed the third ball, he just raised his hands and he puts his hand on his leg and said “I’ve got a problem with my leg and I’ll sit out and wait until the drill is over and I’ll come back.”

I said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa”

What’s your name?

He said, “John.”

I said: “Come here. What’s going on? You don’t like the drill?

No.My leg, is not feeling well.

I said : ”Come on now. I saw you warming up and it is nothing on your leg. I mean, what’s going on? I’m a big tall guy, he was fifteen years old. So, I could be a little intimidating for a kid at that point.

So John kind of he shy looked at me and says: “When do we hit more than two overheads in a point in a match?

That hit me like a rock in the head and I said. “OK, drill is over. John is right, we never have more than 2 overheads in a row in a match. Why do we have to practice 10? Right. That makes no sense.”

So that’s why I refer to my first lesson taught me how to coach because, John was already that far advanced in his maturity as a competitor. Much more mature than the rest of us ever were at the age of 15.

That really started the whole philosophy of everything that I do in practice. The coaching philosophy is that everything I do in practice should mimic what goes on in a match. Otherwise, there’s no point in practicing it. Why would you practice something that you don’t do in a match? What’s the point? At the end of the day, you can hit 300 forehands crosscourt, but which one is the forehand crosscourt that you need? Let’s say at 3-3 30-40. It’s a different forehand at 4-1 30-0.

So, you might practice without practicing under such situations of a match. It makes no sense because every single point, yes, you’re hitting forehands, backhands, volleys and serves and returns, but they are all different according to the timing and the score in the match. They’re all different.