Fiend at Court Unplugged
This weekend’s Fiend at Court Unplugged series has focused on the importance of building participation that feeds into the competitive Player Development pathways. To close out this topic, we are going to examine the initial consumer engagement model for two current Player Development programs. Over the previous two days, a case has been built that one of the keys to building elite level players is to attract and engage as many prospective players as possible. Not everyone will be a future Grand Slam Champion. However, increasing the numbers the number of players who pick up the sport and work through the competitive pathway increases the odds that someone from that program will emerge with a competitive chance to compete at the highest echelons of professional tennis.
The first program that we will examine is Tennis Australia’s Junior Player Development program. Tennis Australia has published a 6 stage Athlete Development Matrix and associated ages where that type of training is appropriate. The six stages in the Tennis Australia program are as follows:
- Explore (4–7 years)
- Development (7–10 years)
- Encourage (10–12 years)
- Enhance (12–15 years)
- Cultivate (15–17 years)
- Performance (17+ years)
There are specific development objectives outlined for prospective tennis players at every stage of development. For example, at the “Explore” stage, there is a list of “Locomotor” skills enumerated including jumping, hopping, and balance activities. In addition to putting the classic R&B ear worm “Locomotion” into my head, none of those activities require a tennis court. In fact, the “Fundamental Motor” skills associated with the “Explore” phase includes striking a ball with an implement. The fact that the word racquet wasn’t used sends a clear message that tennis equipment and a court is not definitely not a required element of those early stages of engagement.
The other end of the Tennis Australia Athlete Development Matrix is “Performance.” At that stage, the one of the development objectives for players includes a periodized tournament schedule. Specifically 20-30 professional tournaments annually are recommended. In short, Tennis Australia has a single integrated framework for Player Development that starts in pre-school and possibly carries players all the way to professional careers.
That is an interesting contrast with the USTA Player Development program. The earliest offering listed on the official web site is a one day “Early Development Camps.” It is indicated that these camps are to be offered at the local level, and the USTA Player Development program provides a pamphlet on how to correctly hit each of the strokes in tennis to assist the camp providers with the proper curriculum. That seems fairly ambitious for what is supposed to be the player’s first involvement with tennis. Placing players in situations when they don’t have the underlying motor skills to succeed is likely to drive prospective players away before they ever get started.
Additionally, when a child is enrolled in a one day tennis camp, the decision to play tennis had already been made. The fundamental question is how to you attract those prospective players in the first place. The USTA seems to have a significant blind spot that players will seek out opportunities to play rather than proactively reaching out for that engagement. There is a significant opportunity to engage with prospective players outside of tennis facilities that is completely absent in the USTA Player Development program.
USTA seems to be constrained by a historic attitude that literally boxes tennis engagement into a tennis court. All the Net Generation initiative did was shrink the size of the court and the equipment. The program did nothing to address and eliminate the barriers to participation to better attract new players to the game in the first place.
It is possible to generate new player engagement in tennis through early childhood activity camps. It is an opportunity to plant that seed of interest in tennis at the same time that the basic motor skills required to eventually play tennis are developed. Such a program would certainly draw new players to the game who are more likely to be retained. In any case, it would make those initial forays onto a real tennis court a little less daunting.
Early childhood exposure to tennis doesn’t have to look a lot like tennis. However, backing up that engagement model and focusing on age appropriate activities to increase the intake into the player pipeline could be transformational for the USTA.
- Athlete Development Matrix, Tennis Australia, viewed March 26, 2021.
- Early Development Camps, USTA Player Development, viewed March 26, 2021.
