From Go to Pro - a Playing and Coaching Manual for the Aspiring Tennis Player (And Parents): Developing the Elite Tennis Player

By Mark A. Beede

Want to become a professional or elite tennis player? Know someone who does? Do you coach high performance players? From Go to Pro provides a pathway to mastery of tennis to the professional ranks. While at the very top levels, some talent is required; the primary prerequisite for mastering tennis at an elite level is work, work, and more work, combined with passion, commitment, and purposeful practice. From Go to Pro gives the technical, tactical, developmental, and competitive expertise to move into tenniss upper levels.
A manual for players, coaches, and parents, From Go to Pro shows the way to excellence in tennis, the sport for a lifetime. With sections on technique, organizing practices, handling the rigors and pressures of competition and practice, developing a competition schedule, and parenting, From Go to Pro guides in all aspects of mastering tennis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524503116

Mark A. Beede

John Nelson has coached the University of Hawaii men's tennis team since 2003, having previously coached at San Diego State, UC Davis, and Cal State Hayward. Nelson takes pride in player development, working to develop his players mentally, physically, and technically, nurturing their development and challenging them. John has coached multiple national individual collegiate champions and has won a national NCAA team championship. Nelson earned undergraduate degrees from Canada College and Cal State Hayward, where he was an NCAA tennis All-American, and a Masters degree in education from Stanford University. He is a USPTA member and former Intercollegiate Tennis Association board member. John has a third degree black belt in Jujitsu and has also studied Judo, Aikido, Kali, Shotokan Karate, and Taekwondo, and uses martial arts skills in tennis. An avid low handicap golfer, Nelson resides in Honolulu, Hawaii with his wife, Carol. Mark Beede is a USPTA, PTR, and ATPCA certified tennis coach, manager, and educator. Born and raised in Maine, Beede received his undergraduate degree from Brandeis University and law degree from the University of Maine School of Law. After practicing law Mark changed careers to tennis, moving to Hawaii to work with the USTAHawaii Pacific section and the Hawaii Pacific Tennis Foundation. Beede then moved to Istanbul, Turkey, to serve as director of coaching education and special projects at an international tennis academy for professional players and elite juniors. Sensei Tennis is Beedes second book, after publishing From Go to Pro, A Playing and Coaching Manual for the Aspiring Tennis Player (and Parents)- Developing the Elite Tennis Player. Beede is married, and has a grown daughter and two grandchildren. Now based in Hawaii, Mark loves to travel the world as an observer, tourist, consultant, and promoter for tennis, the sport for a lifetime.

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Copyright © 2016 by Mark A. Beede.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016908444

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5245-0313-0

Softcover   978-1-5245-0312-3

eBook   978-1-5245-0311-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 05/25/2016

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 Professionalism And Principles Of Coaching

Chapter 2 Principles Of Behavior In Playing And Training

Chapter 3 Stroke Production And Technique

Chapter 4 Drills, Feeding, And Practice Organization

Chapter 5 Tactics

Chapter 6 Physical Training, And Fitness

Chapter 7 Prepuberty And Pubescent Training And Competition

Chapter 8 Parenting The Elite Tennis Player

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

Dedicated to

Samuel R. Caldwell,

a magnificent human being

whose memory and spirit lives on.

Success depends upon previous preparation, and without

preparation, failure is sure.

---Confucius

Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

---John Wooden

Unless a man undertakes more than he possibly can do, he will never do all that he can.

---Henry Drummond

INTRODUCTION

I wrote this book primarily for advanced tennis players and tennis academy coaches working in the high-performance field. While hobby players will benefit by perusing and studying the material, this book focuses on what it takes to achieve excellence and maximize personal potential through tennis, and what it takes to become a professional player. To do so, one must rise beyond the hobby, or recreational, level and meaningfully commit to the sport. I agree with Matthew Syed's message in his book Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice and others, including Malcolm Gladwell, that ten thousand hours of meaningful practice and work is a prerequisite for achieving one's true potential.

This book's genesis sprung from my working with Australian coach Gavin Hopper at his academy in Istanbul over the course of almost four years. Gavin, who has coached seven players in the world's top ten, including the likes of Monica Seles and Mark Philippoussis, remains one of the world's best coaches---especially when it comes to technique, motivation, and focus. One day, while driving to work together, after discussing a number of topics, Gavin exclaimed, Mate, this should be a book! Over the course of the next year, I put together what I initially intended as a manual for our coaches, but the work expanded into something more. Much of the information comes from Gavin's mouth, daily discussions in the car, in the office, in the gym, and especially on the court. This information, and more, deserves to be put to pen and paper.

With this book and manual, I (and the people I've worked with) certainly do not purport to assert that we know everything about the sport of tennis. Everyone makes mistakes and is sometimes wrong. We are no exceptions; but we do have ideas, ideas based on experience and a modicum of intelligence. Experience shows that players improve when they commit to this system. This book provides our ideas and system, which we assert as a recipe for success. Additionally, as I make no claims to omniscience, I invite further discussion, dialogue, and debate on how to better train, perform, and win.

While this book is originally designed as a handbook for elite academy tennis professionals, as the work evolved, it developed into a wider exposition about what it takes to improve as a tennis player. Everyone can learn from this book, including coaches, players, and parents. In many respects, the answers to improving as a player---or improving at anything for that matter---are relatively simple: purposeful practice, purposeful work, some intelligent guidance, then more purposeful practice and more purposeful work.

Having said this, the beautiful paradox appears. What seems so simple is not, just as what seems so complicated is not. If you want to improve as a player, you can; if you want to improve as a coach or as a parent, you can. However, you have to work---which means that you will have to work hard, long, and intensely. Repetition, repetition, repetition. Hit lots of balls and you will improve. Hit lots of balls with purpose and you will improve even more. This book will help you develop that purpose in your game or your coaching so that you can follow the recipe for on-court tennis success.

The amount of time required to succeed at any endeavor is immense. Anyone who thinks less or can actually succeed with less is either deluded or a freak. Excellence is a long journey, and in tennis, it must begin early in life.

To make it from go to pro requires difficult life decisions at an early age. The parents and the child must decide on priorities, most notably between education and tennis (or whatever endeavor is involved). While this is a controversial topic, particularly from the Western mainstream perspective of the need for a balanced happy individual, our focus here is on how to improve and succeed. The fact in the world of professional tennis today is that those at the top have made decisions early in life to commit to excellence through tennis. It is a commitment that necessarily involves sacrifice, a commitment that involves a different than average life.

Coaching at an academy is