Bigger Better Tennis - Paul Dale

When I was a young coach coming up and wanting to eventually coach competitive players, a close friend of mine got the opportunity to coach a Davis Cup team. I thought this was the ultimate, and I desperately wanted to pick his brains and learn as much as possible about his experience. Something he told me back then stuck with me. He said, "Before you teach, you must first set up the opportunity to teach." This means not to presume that just because you're the "Coach", every player will be ready to follow your teachings without question. Far from it!  Advanced players can be very wary of any advice  from someone they haven't built trust with yet It's a common scenario for highly skilled players to be bombarded with advice on improving their game and ranking from every corner. In the realm of sports, it seems everyone is an expert. This reality further reinforced the need for a cautious coaching strategy. Advanced tennis players meet "experts" 

I've always taught strategy to players early in their development. For me, strategy is an integral part of a competitive player's toolkit along with stroke technique, fitness, and movement.   When teaching strategy to beginners, you'll need to tailor your instructions to suit the age and level of the player(s), but the teaching of strategy should be done early and not left to later.  I have recently been involved with college tennis in the US and have seen firsthand the lack of any prior introduction players receive on the topic of strategy.   Most of the players I have watched competing at college level have had difficulty implementing even elementary strategy in their matches.  The problem starts when, early in a players career, coaches believe that if a player has perfected their stroke technique, that will naturally transfer into savvy match-play. That certainly is not the case.  The fact is that college coaches are left to deal with this neglected part of a players de

Although the top male and female players in our game are mostly  baseliners, all of them have developed ways to conclude the point, to finish. If you haven't found ways to take opportunities during the rally and finish points on your terms, you're going to be using a lot of extra physical and mental energy to win points. Here are 4 ways to help you shorten the points and finish sooner. CREATE AN INSIDE FOREHAND An "Inside" ball is a term from Paul Wardlaw's "The Directionals" theory. It describes a ball which comes towards your body, and doesn't pass your outside shoulder. Whenever your opponent hits "Outside" your far shoulder (cross-court) you're under pressure because the ball is always moving away from you.  Inside balls however, give you options to dictate the rally by either hitting cross-court or inside-out to add pressure to your opponent. Whenever your opponent gives you an inside ball take advantage of it and start to apply p

  You can't worry too much about the present... because yesterday took care of that already. 'Stay in the moment', y ou hear it all the time  whenever someone is trying to tell you why you're not succeeding at something . While it might be great advice for someone facing immediate danger, it's lousy advice for tennis coaches to develop future champions.  I can honestly say that I have spent my whole coaching career living in the future, days, weeks, and sometimes months ahead. Here's why... 1. DURING PRACTICES Tennis Coaches should be constantly projecting themselves mentally into the future, that's why aspiring tennis champions are coming to us! What all young players are wanting from us is a road map showing them how to reach their tennis dreams, which can include how to win tournaments, be the best they can be, and how to continually improve their game.  As coaches, we need to help them by  designing a pathway for them to reach those goals by setting o

It's no secret that if you're looking for ways to improve your results, any improvement in your game will start on the practice court. Any positive change in your game will have to be practiced and worked on for at least several weeks.  But there are some changes you can make that will take less time, and that you will see immediate improvements to the way you are competing in competition. 1.  EAT BETWEEN CHANGEOVERS  This first tip may surprise you a bit but it has had a huge effect on many of the players I have trained. I encourage many of my trainees to take snacks during the changeovers.  Use the changeover to take in some food so that your blood sugar levels remain stable I'm not just referring to snacking at change-overs during matches either, I want players to snack during breaks in practice sessions also. I want them to operate at 100% during practice because I need them focused. There's a little bit of history to this particular tip which I think is important f

BECOME AN OUTLIER... I'm not a big fan of attending ITF coaches workshops anymore and here's why. Much of what is presented at these Workshops is standard stuff, and listening repeatedly to similar topics and similar points of view will, unfortunately, stifle your creativity.    Here's what I would suggest. Once you have attended several Workshops already, you should take yourself out of the workshop scene and begin to integrate your new ideas and methodologies from the workshops onto the court, with the long-term goal of developing some of your own philosophies for later. It's important to understand that workshops in themselves are a tool, and that to get the full value from them, the ideas you pick-up at workshops need to be implemented and tested on-court over time.  At the beginning of my coaching career, I joined a tennis company that staffed resorts, hotels, and tennis clubs all around the world. After training with that company for a short time I was dispatche