10 Minutes of Tennis: Advice for the Compete Beginner

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Welcome to the Atlanta Tennis Podcast.

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Hey, hey, this is Shaun with the Atlanta Tennis Podcast,

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With that said, let's get started with 10 minutes of tennis.

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[Music]

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Good morning. This is our 10 minutes of tennis at 10.04.

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We call that close enough in our world. This is close enough.

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I like the numbers full and I apologize to everybody for you pros at there.

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Don't be late. Be on time. If anything,

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the beginners be early. That's actually a good start.

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I appreciate that. Justin Yeo, our Aussie tennis pro in Puerto Rico.

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I am Shaun Boyce and this is 10 minutes of tennis.

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Today we're going to talk to the complete beginner.

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So that is a good starting point for the coach for the complete beginner.

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Please set a good example and be on time.

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Be early. Be there waiting. Be there ready.

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In Atlanta, we got a lot of pros that weren't trained like I was

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in the fancy country club setting where what was the phrase early is on time,

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on time is late and late is unacceptable.

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Yeah. Okay. Guys, you've got to be there waiting. These people are expecting you to be

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professional and if you want them to treat you that way, first starting advice is

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be on time to the coach. Now, Justin, for the beginner themselves, they show up.

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What are they thinking? What are they looking at? What are they looking forward to?

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They obviously like the sports somehow.

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Oh, they're looking for the benefits of the sport.

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We sort of have two beginners. One is that they just get thrilled

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by watching it on the court and say they want to give it a go.

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And then you got the other one obviously that really just wants to the health benefits

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because as I've said, a thousand times over, you'll do more calories on a tennis court

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than you'll do on a gym or anywhere else.

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And I've proved it over and over again that you will put more calories on a tennis court than anything

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else. So they're sort of the two beginners I see for my 36 years of coaching.

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And I'm probably going to get a little harsh if this coach is out listening,

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maybe block your ears or maybe get something out of this. But

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beginners need to really get a decent coach. The coach that knows real fundamentals and

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focuses on the fundamentals to start with because if they don't do it right, the person will drop out

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of the sport because as they're dropping out of the sport, they're because they're not progressing.

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They're not, when they go to play, there's so many fundamentals that are making them not

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grow higher and higher and higher. And what I see a lot up in just a high level of high performance

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coach is when I touch a beginner, I constantly are reversing the racket back, searing, theory.

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If I hear that, I have any coach want to punch them in the head because it's not the game.

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The game is turned. Rotate the shoulders, learn how to perceive the ball.

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Early as possible. If not, they're always going to contact late, they're always going to hit from the

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shoulder. They're never going to have the right fundamentals to progress the game. And then the other

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side of it too is that they're watching them on court. So what's the first thing a player does on the

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court? The shoulder is the same. The racket's not going back. So that's something if a coach is

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teaching away now, I hope he's listening in switches, turn his turn of the shoulder. The other issue I

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find is ready stance in all areas, adults and juniors. If the ready stance isn't done correctly,

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right from day one, it sets the tone for every ball, for where you're going, to get to the ball,

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to get back, it sets everything. If you don't get that ready stance, splits their company, develop

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either. I call it the ready step or the spring step. I don't call it the split step because split

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step commonly with junior development, they go down to their heels and they can't go forward.

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So I tend to say spring step so you're ready to go in all directions. But fundamentals, as they

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should spend three months, fundamentals, getting them right. Ready stance, how many times I see the

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elbows in the rib cage? It's not going to work. You can focus on grip all day, but at the end of the

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day, the government is going to pull in the court. So commonly, if you focus on the direction of the

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racket face and thinking about what they're doing with their hands in the racket face, the grip will

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tend to sort itself out. They will progress at being able to get the ball in court and then you can

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turn the grip around a little more to get more spin if you want to show them something extra.

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But at the end of the day, I see way to, and again, USPTA might be killing me right now saying,

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"Oh, you're talking about the bad ball." No, you're talking about the bad ball all day,

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and not seeing the ball and not putting it in the court. So I think that's where we've got to be

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careful. I've been caught a few times. There's a mechanical-minded beginner, and there's a very

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visual rhythm, smooth kind of player that works on function. And you've got to try to find which player

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that is. So you work with him the correct way. I've been caught two many times today. They're like,

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"China asked me about grip and about all these things." I'm like, "No, no, sit the ball here, right here."

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And they're bringing time. They want to know these things to put that together. So

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that was much since the coaches. For the players, fun to coach, that's going to teach you through

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fun, and that coach, because the player comes out and finds the coach, there's a big difference between

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what you see on TV and what you should be doing in your first few tennis lessons. And that's the thing

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we struggle with the kids. We struggle with the kids' parents. They say, "Whoa, I'm supposed to

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follow through and look what Roger does on his ball is." I'm like, "Whoa, your kids,

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seven." Relax. He's not Roger yet. So being able to see the simple, the coach that can teach,

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here's what you do now. We'll get out to that other point later.

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It's important. And as a player, it's hard to know the difference of what I'm being coached. There's

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a guy out there saying, "Well, nobaks doing this with his right hip." That's probably not day one.

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Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to mean I have to look at videos. Jogged Vich had a racket. It was too big for it.

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And he would just be cranking the ball. That forehand back when he was a kid is not the same boy

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hand now. So it's pretty obvious. Commonly we hear that a lot actually in the high performance area.

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My kid means that it's like, "No, your kid needs to get split step. He needs to learn how to get in

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the proper ready stance. He needs to be able to read the ball before it's coming and be prepared

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before the ball bounces." I mean, that many times I've seen kids not prepared before the ball bounces

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because they said, "Fuck this on." What the swings look like. You know? Yeah. You're now figuring out

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if their elbow is in the right place. And then come back to that engineering mind versus we see

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a lot of that engineering mind versus the Seaball hit ball mind. And as a player, is that the advice?

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If you're giving me the beginner player, the advice is, "No yourself a little bit." Give that a little

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bit of a 10-metre nose chair and say, "No yourself and what you're looking for. Go find a coach

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that can talk to you." Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you've got a kid or an adult who can see the chess game

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all over court and will just play games with you all day long. It doesn't care about it. The swing.

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It only pays best the outcome. Right? So build that game. Build that player. Don't be trying to, but

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again, no matter which player it is, the fundamentals is everything. If they are not loaded,

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if they're not ready, if they're not reading the racket up the other end, versus just reading the ball.

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There's all these little fundamentals that if you can get them right, that player whichever one it is

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can grow. And the more they grow, the more confident they get, the more long-term we have a player

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at the sport, you keep them there versus the other way around. It says, "No, there's nothing to me."

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And so if we were going to write this book and the advice to complete beginner and it had three things

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at the end, we go through all this advice and all these things. And we had those main three things.

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It said, "Okay, beginner player. We covered the coaches. They should know better." But in this case,

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the player, if you're going to give them three things to say, "Hey, focus on these three things in your

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first, what, 90 days? What do you set?" Ready, Stanks. Watch some whole rackets, a racket.

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Learn to move. I didn't hear anything about grip. Nope. I didn't hear anything about elbow.

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Nope. Because the key factor here is you'll start to learn to turn anyway when you want to hit the ball.

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You won't just hit with your arm. You'll turn anyway. If you move, you have to turn it as well.

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And this game, I've been in big conferences. This game is not gone. So don't let them stand still.

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They have to learn to move as soon as possible. And the split step or the ready stance will help that

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tremendously. If they don't have that, it takes so much. I've got a good guy. He's like 4045.

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And he won't get out of the five other for the reason that he's up vertical the whole time.

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And as soon as he gets down, he can do it for like 10%, 20%, and over side of these up again,

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frame the ball in the net. And I'm like, yeah, because you didn't get the fundamentals right from the

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start. He's back so he's too big because of it. It just comes down to fundamentals.

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And now he's reprogrammed, which makes it even harder because he's trying to stop coming back.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the beginning of their roar and get it right. Their progression.

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All right, so those three things first 90 days, Justin, you know, thank you so much. See you next week.

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Kiss my ad. Have fun guys.

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Well, there you have it. We want to thank Rejovenate.com for use of the studio. And be sure to hit that

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