However, at a young age the worst thing I think you could do as a coach put a kid into grips! It is best in my opinion to take a long term approach, and let the young person "feel" out the process, and see what works best for them. Let the kid be BAD, BAD and worse, to get to good. Yes, I agree, one should learn all the grips, yes, I do not disagree with you, however, as I said again I'm against force feeding it like is so commonly done in the tennis industry. I think many players use many different kinds of grips, for many different reason's, it'a a creative process and the last thing a young one needs is someone interfering and advising what will work, and won't work. With that said, I might be in a different situation then a regular tennis coach working with a kid who has different learning values, independence, goals, aspirations, wants and needs.
I've got confidence in my eager beaver, and I think she'll make the right decisions, do a good job running her ship and find what is best suited to her style. She knows the grips obviously (again, it ain't complex like hockey's), and I am encouraging her to try everything, every shot, play, play, play and do what is best for her, and be as creative as possible.
Anyways, I guess you need a lot of time and patience for my approach, and hey, I've got that. What's the rush? I got a huge facility here, and guess what, no one ever goes to the place, and we can do whatever the heck we want. We blast skrillex loud, and play! By the way, I should write about that science on here on day, and how music can benefit training by shutting down certain parts of the brain you don't want activated in the learning process but I will save that for another day.
Now Don Budge, I do respect everything you say, however, my vision is to teach my kid to learn the value of being inventive, doing it the hard way, learning through trial and error, teaching like a mamma bear teaches her baby dear to hunt and just going with the flow. The playground approach, and unfortunately this model in sports is being forgotten, and based on what you say about the current state of the sport I think that is the reason why. The golden nugget I found in a research paper written about Bolletierri's early days at IMG talked about the grips, and he admitted he didn't know much at the time in that regards, and he was successful because of it because kids were allowed to be individuals without conformity, or trying to change them.
I understand the game is a lot more complex, and I do acknowledge coaching plays a part in an athlete being developed. However, I think a future champion in any field needs to be nurtured to be independent, think for themselves, inquisitive, highly analytic and praised for their ingenuity. One day, my kids will need to find mentors in life, and if they think differently, they'll learn better and be able to take better advantage of other people's knowledge. I found it interesting one tennis coach once said he was always worried to say something to Boris Becker, because he knew Boris Becker knew EVERYTHING about the game, and you'd better give him a 110% well thought out tip - plan or strategy or he'd run your ass out of town in two seconds. That's important for athletes (and every young person), to feel empowered, and to believe they are driving the bus.
Actually that was today's lesson, flow like water into your shots! Make it beautiful! Play, play, play! Bad shot? Why do you think it was bad? Great shot? What went right? How did it feel? How can you make it better? She mentioned something about wanting to improve the backhand, and I just said, hell I don't know, figure it out here on your own, go home, watch youtube and tennisplayer.net and play, play and play with it, and make it your own.
I had a kid once tell me at a hockey camp -- "You know their is always some coach or parent who ruins it for me." And you know, he made sense to me, the best times for me were on the pond playing with buddies with no coaches, no systems and no technique. We learned because we wanted to do it. So, that's my end system, and in fact, my lesson yesterday to my daughter and the 13 year old boy who came yesterday was simply this, "Me, daddy, and the hitting sparing partner we have (a kid who's ranked top 1500 in the world) are going to leave the court. I could care less what you two do when the three of us watch you. What is important is what you two do here right now when we walk away. Its about you two, and I hope you two love tennis, and are able to push each-other to new and improved heights. You may think you can fool me, fans, coaches, sponsors, teachers, and you will, and many have, however, when the lights go out at the end of the day, it'll be you their with yourself, and you will know what you put into it today, for you. Both of you are smart enough to know what you need to work on, and if you don't you can always ask on your own. Bye." Anyways, they worked hard, and then the hitting dude came out and beat the hell out of them in some short matches, and we asked them why this happened, got our answers, left them alone to play again, came back, played again, and then we all went for lazer tag and ran them into the ground
In a way I guess I am lucky I am a parent with the opportunity, age and freedom to have this sort of "educational" program in place with the young ones (I have two now). Glad I did not have kids at 20 to 25 when I was chasing dreams! I have never run out of time with my older kid, or had to be in a rush to do anything except spend time, and hopefully knock on wood, that will continue!
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