I have recently realized I am drawn to a rather narrow category of books. These are written by people who spent much of their lives with a deep connection to tennis, then retired from their professional careers and wrote a book related to the sport. Usually, the result is a memoir or an instructional guide.
Team Tennis: Building Better Players, Stronger Teams, and a Lasting Tennis Community by Darren Emerick fits comfortably within that category, although the subject matter makes it somewhat unusual. Emerick is a retired high school tennis coach from Nebraska who writes about the value of team-based competition and how to build programs that bring players together. It is a specialized subject, and one that I was particularly interested in exploring.
Part of my interest was timing. I am preparing to compete in Intersectionals, a USTA-sanctioned national team tournament that brings together some of the country’s strongest senior players. Team competition has always been an important part of my tennis experience, and I was curious how Emerick would approach it. Ironically, Intersectionals and the Donoff Cup are two prominent examples of team tennis that don’t appear in his discussion of established team events. That omission isn’t particularly consequential, but it illustrates how many different forms team competition can take.
Emerick makes a strong case for giving players more opportunities to experience tennis as part of a team. Much of the sport revolves around individual performance, but playing alongside others brings something different to the experience. There are shared goals, teammates who depend on one another, and relationships that develop through regular competition. For many players, those connections make tennis more enjoyable and give them additional reasons to keep coming back.
I think he is directionally correct about the value of teams in keeping people involved in tennis. Anyone who has played the sport knows that finding compatible hitting partners and regular opportunities to compete can be a challenge. Motivation can also fluctuate, especially when you’re left to make all those arrangements yourself. Being part of a team takes some of that burden away, and the relationships that develop can become an important reason to keep playing.
Emerick also argues that players improve faster when they train and compete on teams. I can certainly see how being part of a team might encourage someone to practice more often and with a greater variety of hitting partners. However, improvement ultimately depends on what happens during those sessions. A player focused on an intentionally designed training program tailored to their individual needs could easily make more progress than someone on a team whose practices lack structure or purpose.
The book also aims to inspire readers to create more team tennis opportunities. Emerick clearly believes that the sport would benefit from more programs designed around collective participation. He also wants the book to function as a practical guide for people willing to make that happen.
In pursuing that second objective, the book becomes less effective.
Emerick provides considerable information about organizing teams, selecting competition formats, communicating with players, and managing the practical aspects of team tennis. The book offers useful ideas throughout, and his experience as a coach is apparent. However, the material sometimes meanders between topics without establishing a particularly clear progression from concept to implementation.
For example, the book discusses creating individual teams before fully explaining how to develop the larger team-tennis programs where they would compete. That strikes me as putting the cart before the horse. If an established league or competition already exists, forming a team is the logical starting point. However, recruiting a team and then finding a place to play is not advisable.
I kept wondering what this book might have looked like if Emerick had organized it around general principles of team and program development, then devoted separate sections to the particular considerations associated with different forms of team tennis. Foundational decisions apply across almost every format, followed by substantial differences in how those decisions should be implemented.
The competition format also strongly affects team dynamics. If you’re trying to introduce people to team tennis, you probably want a format that gets everyone on the court and gives them a reasonable chance to participate. That changes considerably when the objective is winning a national championship. Roster decisions become more selective, playing time may be uneven, and scoring and advancement rules can shape how captains use their players.
Both approaches have their place, but organizers need to understand how the format they choose will affect participants. Emerick recognizes some of these distinctions, although I would have appreciated a more systematic treatment of how organizers should navigate them.
USTA League adds another layer of complexity. Emerick appropriately identifies it as an established example of team tennis and a resource for people interested in organized competition. However, its presence in a community can substantially change the case for creating something new.
In an area with a well-developed USTA League program, demand for additional adult team formats may be low. Creating another program could fragment the available player population without delivering enough additional value to justify the effort. At the same time, in a community without meaningful team competition, the same initiative might fill an important gap.
I noticed a few places in the text that suggest AI involvement, and the cover photo is absolutely AI-generated. Consequently, I would have appreciated a statement on how AI was used. That said, I wouldn’t characterize this book as AI-generated content. Emerick’s experience and enthusiasm for team tennis come through clearly. My concerns are more about the occasional unevenness of the prose and the organization of the material rather than the substance of what he has to say.
Despite these reservations, I enjoyed the book and appreciate that Emerick chose to write about a part of tennis that doesn’t get nearly enough attention. Being part of a team can change someone’s relationship with the sport. Emerick understands that friendships and a sense of belonging often last longer than match results. He makes a compelling case for creating more opportunities for players to experience it.
Near the end of the book, Emerick makes an observation that I think gets to the heart of his argument. In many communities, the missing ingredient isn’t interest in team tennis. It is someone willing to take the initiative to build it.
That is a worthwhile message, and one that extends beyond our sport. Programs don’t materialize simply because people would enjoy participating. Someone has to recognize the opportunity, organize the resources, recruit participants, and do the work necessary to make the program viable.
Team Tennis encourages those people and offers a collection of practical ideas drawn from Emerick’s coaching experience. I think coaches, club professionals, and other tennis enthusiasts interested in organizing teams or developing programs can benefit from reading it. The book is directionally correct, even when its tactical guidance meanders.
Readers looking for a complete, step-by-step implementation manual may be disappointed. Emerick provides many of the ingredients, but anyone serious about building a sustainable team tennis program will still have substantial work assembling them into a coherent blueprint suited to their own community. For someone willing to undertake that work, however, this book is a useful place to begin.
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