Bigger Better Tennis - Paul Dale

Should you be practising with players who are better than you to improve? Well, yes, sometimes. One of the problems many coaches have to deal with when they train large groups of players is this myth amongst players and parents that to get better; you need to practice with players who are better than you. By practising with better players, you are automatically required to move faster on the court, make quicker decisions, and be stronger mentally.  But I've seen significant progress in players who have practiced against players who are not as good. Here's why working with weaker players can be beneficial to your game. Offense & Defense Even a dominant player like Noval Djokovic, during his best years, only won 56% of the points he played. That means he lost 44% of the points he played when he was at his best! Tennis is a game that involves three conditions when you are playing a point; you are either in an Offensive mode, a defensive mode, or you are Neutral (neither Offens...

The number one question I get asked whenever a player needs help with something is how to improve the mental side of their game. Many of us are excellent in practice, but transferring those great strokes into real-life matches can be difficult. So, here are my suggestions on improving your mentality in matches and becoming a mental giant during competition. The "Ego" and the "Task" motivated player As a coach, I used to love the hard worker. I felt that I had the suitable material to mold a future champion if given a young player who worked hard. But often, these hard-working players, I call them Task motivated players, never fulfilled the potential I thought they had. The good results I expected just didn't materialise. Task-motivated players worked harder and longer than anybody else but often lack the ability to clinch close matches and will sometimes  lose to players who don't work as hard or train as well as them. So what's going on? I began to cal...

A no-nonsense look at what it takes to be a professional tennis player After what many would consider a successful career, Jo-Wilford Tsonga recently retired from professional tennis. But I felt he could have done a lot more with his talent. I could observe Tsonga off-court quite a bit, and over the last few years, he had become just a shell of the player he was when he first burst on the scene. He seemed to have accepted the role of a journeyman tennis player, a player who was merely going through the motions at each tournament and wasn't willing to put the extra work in to maintain his position as a top 10 player.  Many players, men, and women, merely show up each week to make up the numbers. Becoming a professional tennis player is not easy, and it's perhaps even more challenging to stay at the top once you get there. If your goal is to turn professional one day, there are 3 essential elements that you might not have thought about much. Watch out for outdated training method...

I have recently joined a team of coaches at a large club. During my first week, I noticed two very different approaches to coaching beginners. The club we all work at has a thriving beginner coaching program. It's been a long time since I've worked with beginners, and it's  my first coaching experience using the "Coloured Ball" system. We use balls with varying degrees of pressure, making it a little easier for young children to control the ball.   The "Blue" balls are used for very young beginners, followed by Red, Orange, and Green, and eventually, players use the standard yellow tennis ball. Working alongside young players and many different coaches has uncovered two different teaching philosophies used worldwide, not just at our club. The first philosophy, and most common one, is; 1. Function Follows Form Coaches who adopt this philosophy believe that students should be taught the correct form of the stroke from the beginning and that function (the a...

If you feel like your tennis is not going anywhere, but you practice super hard every day, here are my suggestions to get you out of your tennis slump.  PUT THESE THINGS IN YOUR PRACTICE IMMEDIATELY! Mental pressure... Whatever you do during practice put pressure on yourself to do it as best you can.  Take the warm-up as an example. It's easy to arrive at practice and begin your warm-up slightly unfocused. You've warmed up a thousand times before and you probably think you don't need to focus much anyway, you think the warm-up can be performed in automatic mode.  But you're wrong. By focusing more during the warm-up you are awakening your brain and preparing it to work at a higher level when you do start hitting balls. It's also important to focus any time you're in the gym, because you'll get more benefits from a focused gym session than an unfocused one. Another time to increase the mental pressure on yourself is when you're drilling or playing points....

What would you do next? You've rallied strongly and managed to put your opponent under pressure. They've dropped the ball short in the court; it's time to finish the point with an aggressive winner. Can you finish points like this confidently? Do you finish with a winner, or do you get the jitters and embarrass yourself in front of everyone? If it's the latter, you're in the majority.  The inability to finish points is a problem for tennis players worldwide. How well do you react when finishing the point? I've coached players of all levels, every level of player suffers from nerves; it's just that the best players somehow have ways to overcome them.  THE MIND SCALE: 0 - 100 I need you to use your imagination for me.  Try to remember what goes on inside your head when you want to attack that half-court ball and hit a winner. Imagine that your thoughts are like a straight line.  Picture a mental scale in your mind from 0-100. 0 is when you decide to attack th...

  As I broke the news to the best player in the country that I was not selecting him to play in the Davis Cup tie the following week I expected a huge backlash. One of the toughest tasks you perform as a tennis coach is selecting players for teams. Sometimes you have the luxury of seeing the player compete under pressure in matches before you decide, as I did when selecting national teams, but often you don't.  In the case of College coaches in the US, many times you have very little to go on and must make recruitment decisions that at Division 1 schools have repercussions lasting for the next 4 years.  Once money has been committed to a new player, that money can't be used again on a better player later. Picking players for teams is one of the most difficult tasks you will do as a coach  (Thai Davis Cup Team) Selection mistakes made by college coaches have long-term repercussions. Making informed selection choices comes down to three important factors, the cand...