(Inspired by the podcast episode #3: “Tour Coach” w. Cameron Moore on The Adam Blicher Show — Dissecting High Performance in Tennis)

Q: “What do you consider the number one skillset for a Tennis Coach?”

Creating trust with a player.

You can be the most knowledgeable coach in the world but it doesn’t mean you can relate information. Sometimes you talk to tennis researchers and those guys are so smart they know how everything technically works, they know how you transfer the energy into the shot and they can tell you every single muscle that you’re going to use into the shot.

You tell that to a player and they’re like “What?” They’re just not going to connect to that coach. As a coach, I need to know all that information. I need to know what muscle groups are working and where they’re firing and where the power is coming from but the player doesn’t necessarily need to know how to do that, they just need to know how to load and transfer their weight into the shot.

I might tell them, I might show them or I might have them do something to figure that out, it doesn’t mean I need to give them the entire breakdown biomechanically of what’s happening, but if they want that, I at the same time need to be able to deliver that information in an easy to understand way that is relatable for the player.

Creating trust with the players you are working with is not going to happen overnight. You have to get to know the player and know what makes them tick and how to reach them. Every kid tics different, every kid has different factors on how you need to coach them.

So your role as a coach is almost like a psychologist trying to figure out how does this kid work? How does this kid think? How do I need to relate my information and how can I connect with this kid? On what level can I connect to them and how do I relate information to them in what way do I need to relay information to them?

It might be that I need to talk to one kid more than another, show examples to one kid, videos another and that’s where I think the art of coaching comes into play. You have to know people and you have to know how to relate information to those you collaborate with.

That’s to me one of the qualities of what better coaches do. They can figure out how to relay information better and they know how to get to know people better.

Q: Have you found any distinct differences in working with boys and girls?

It’s just different. Guys I think you can be a little harder on in certain instances, you can be a little bit more critical in certain aspects. With the girls, you have to take a different approach on how you relate information or how the training sessions are. I think the training session for girls and guys are just different. I don’t think you can take a singular approach to working with guys or girls or even one player.

So you really have to get to know the player; whether it’s a guy, whether it’s a girl. What’s going to work best for them. What drills are going to work best for them. What hitting drills might work best for them. What competition might work best for them.

Sometimes with the girls, it could be the week of the tournament, you play a match or having played a practice set, they play one bad practice and they’re just done for the week because they played a bad set, now it’s like they’re mentally like ‘oh I can’t play this week’.

With the girls I might be doing a little more cooperative hitting, trying to achieve something e.g. a certain amount of balls to one section; to make them feel better about where they’re at in their game. The guys, in general, might lose a set one day, the next day they go out and have a great tournament.

You have to manage the players, and the persons behind that tennis player be that a boy or a girl.