Method Tennis

Communication of What We Do and Why

Experienced coaches likely have deeply held beliefs or theories about the learner and the learning process that they are engaging in through their coaching methodologies.

I’m on court working with a player. I’ve designed a practice. She’s hitting forehands with her non-dominant hand. I’ve selected it because the two handed backhand leads to more ‘messy’ information for the athlete to navigate both haptic and inertial due to the contact with two hands rather than one.

A 285g racket also provides significant resistance the player using their wrist and forearm to create spin thus hopefully developing her action capacity within the relevant muscles.

Inside, one of the other coaches is engaged in conversation with a parent of another player I work with. ‘John teaches him good technique and Dan makes it fun and helps them love the game’.

On being told about this conversation I recognised that I rarely communicate why I do what I do with the parents. I’ll talk about their development, planning etc. but I rarely give them insight into why I design particular practices.

At the recent coaching symposium that question was posed - do athletes need to know what we are doing and why?

I also wrote an essay on my coaching philosophy at university, it was academically well received but one piece of feedback stood out - ‘how do you communicate this to parents players and coaches in a way that it connects.’

I think the marker was highlighting that talking about epistemological chains, ontology, axiology and informing them of decades of research into ecological dynamics, CLA and skill acquisition might not land with parents…

So I’m going to try actively commit to communicating more openly with parents about what I do for the rest of this block and perhaps beyond.

I’m open to ideas though. How do you tell parents about how you work? Presentations? Individual conversations? In the contracting when you commit to a new project (which could be a player)?

A couple weeks work in the life of a tennis coach working with 12U competitive players at a 6 court outdoor club!

1. A girls vs boys matchplay 👫
2. Answered questions on a panel at the SportScotland Coaching Symposium on Constraints Led coaching methodologies with academic legend Keith Davids and others 🤓
3. Working with a pair of 11U girls on serve percentage and direction - hit to the backhand! 💥
4. A new idea for my bag of toys for differential learning 🪀
5. A coach ed session with Phil Carson the Scottish Fencing coach on EcoD in fencing.
6. An individual lesson with Lily working on coordinating top create topspin on her forehand
7. Tried some creative solutions to help James have better coordination on the serve - in particular the elbow position.
8. Finished Conor Nilands book
9. Started on the Anatomy of Agility by Frans Bosch.
10. Tried some other creative stuff to help Eilidh with her serve leg drive.
11. Qualified for the Tennis Scotland Open Tour Finals.

I also went a bit wild on warm ups for the last few weeks…

12. Obstacle course
13. Wheelbarrow Hungry Hippos
14. Basket ball Turkish get ups
15. Simple Locomotion With Some Dodging
16. Mini red sponge team tennis

17. Oops

Looking forward to the last four weeks of practice for the year!

While I agree with recent posts about the short-sighted decision by the LTA to cancel Winter County Cup, I also think this is a chance to highlight that Scotland is getting it right for competitive players at core of the game.

Guilio, Euan and Mike, alongside referees, clubs, counties and tournament directors, have built a comps calendar that reduces travel, lowers financial barriers and provides consistent, high-level competition without leaving Scotland.

What’s on offer for competitor in Scotland in 2025?

TS Open Tour:
-7 British Tour singles events
-3 British Tour doubles events
-13 Grade 3 TS Open Tour events

The enhanced prize money make these some of the most competitive grade 3s in the UK attracting exceptionally strong fields along side often offering doubles and 18U to provide multiple opportunities for a junior to play.

On top of that:
-2 ITF Pro Circuit events held in Scotland this year
-Summer West/East Leagues and Scottish Cup remain staples
-In winter, NPL and NCL offer around 12 high-quality fixture dates
-Two county cup opportunities (hopefully next year too)

Junior only:
-2 x 18U junior ITFs
-Junior National Tour at the Scottish Open
-Scottish Closed National Championships
-Team events: 18U Tea Cup, County Cup, Four Nations, Inter-district Championships, Youth League

This week’s TS event saw a top 14&U girl push an O40s British #1 to three sets, the TS Tour #2 dismantle a talented junior who’d been talking a big game after a good result and a 39-year-old win the tournament and £700 dropping just 9 games in four matches.

And that is the culture of competition those events encourage every week in Scotland. Incentivising and exciting the 21+ year olds to go and battle it out with each other and the 21&U juniors and students.

There’s plenty work to do; facilities, programmes, coach ed, careers, other levels of competition. But at this level, they’ve valued participants and created a culture of competition.

While the LTA removes opportunities like Winter County Cup, Tennis Scotland proves that when you invest in the competitive core, the whole game can thrive.

Part 2:

Culture, attitude and coach platitudes like “you’re a great volleyer!” are nice, but they aren’t enough when the game tells young girls “the net is not a place I want to be.”

The court is huge and opponents can pass better than players can cover – true for all juniors. But as girls grow, their power:weight ratio worsens, making explosiveness and court coverage harder. After puberty this stabilises, and with strength training athletes like Muchova become powerful at the net.

By then, though, developing net skills is even less attractive. Groundstrokes are faster and little practiced volley skills lag further behind.

So the coaching problem; how do we constrain the game so coming forward is more appealing throughout development?

We can scale the game or the opponent.
Playing with wooden rackets reduces the ability to pass with speed and spin increasing the attractiveness of the net. As you can’t win the point as easily from the back players must explore other ways to end points. Graphite rackets changed the game but that doesn’t stop us using older equipment to constrain.

A smaller court is a simple fix. Doubles without tramlines encourages volleying. The lob is a great way to win against a volleyer, but shortening the court reduces its effectiveness and increases chances of a successful volley or smash.

One standout coaching moment was laying a court within a court: baseline 100cm shorter, sidelines 60cm in, with a rule: if you’re feet are inside the smaller court, your opponent must hit into it. Sophia age 11, a defensive player is suddenly charging into the net behind every serve!

Finally; changing the ball. Some fear getting hit, backing up worrying about the tag rather than the lob. An orange/green ball reduces fear. Lighter balls more closely align with the physical capacity to absorb the speed of passing shots and volleys will bounce lower giving more success.

Girls can volley. We must adapt the environment to enhance learning rather than complain they’re “out of position” or “missing opportunities” that we perceive but they cannot. And if they use the wrong grip… you might too if you’d to hit a volleyball into a basketball court.

Part 1:

This week is 2025 Scottish Women and Girls in sport week. I am privileged to spend most of my week working with a number of capable, hardworking, skilful, enthusiastic and inspiring female players.

However, the cultural barriers to their participation still persist. Locally, tournaments will more often put the men’s singles final on the most viewable court and the women’s wherever there’s space. Silent sexism persists too - I’ve had senior coaches privately joke women’s singles is ‘disabled tennis’ and sweepingly generalise that ‘girls can’t volley’ as one woman, misses one volley in one match.

These coaches would never say that to a girl they were working with but the comments quietly devalue women in tennis.

These cultural constraints are wide ranging and while hopefully some are on their way out others will remain unavoidable. Watching on TV, the ATP player 10th most likely to serve and volley (Mensik) does so on 7.9% of points compared to Noskova’s WTA 10th ranking 0.6%. Girls spectating see it less. Gone are the days of Navratilova finding her way to the net on over 50% of points!

The girls I work with love playing doubles. I think that’s a great place to start a culture around wanting to be at the net. It provides opportunities and a volume of volleys to get young girls behind the idea that ‘I’m good at the net’ and ‘the net is a good place to be’.

Coaches have a responsibility, not to judge or generalise but to create environments that build confidence in the skills we want to help develop.

Shifting culture won’t be enough though. In Part 2 of this post I’ll explore some of the ways I design practices to encourage girls to come forward more.

Does the court size and net height matter?

I’ve had a few discussion with parent’s coaches and officials about the LTA pilot of a modified green court (21m long, 80cm net) for 10U. Other countries have already implemented it and some research supports it.

I’ve spent time the last few weeks with some of Scotland’s best 10Us training on it and I’m a fan. I also got to watch some of those players compete on the court (and win 🏆 - go Krishiv!). I was impressed with the variety and style of play.

This contrasted with Augusts 9U National Championships at Nottingham where I watched fantastically skilled 9Us on full courts with green balls. Despite player skills rallies were often forced central moonballing.

Some benefits?:

The downward serving angle is more similar to the angle an adult on the full adult court (slide 3). It’s about .7° out for the average female and 1.1° for the average male affording the opportunity for aggressive serving strategies.

This nested opportunities to come forward to the net with in it. The distance to the net was more closely aligned to their physical capacity and the opportunity to do so increased in attractiveness with the lower height enabling aggressive approaches.

Rallies were shorter. Pro level rallies are generally shorter than junior rallies. Defence has to have quality - a nudge with nothing on it can’t go deep enough to neutralise.

The research agrees. Bayer, Elbert & Leser (2017) found the shorter green court produced play more representative of the adult game — serve dominance, rally tempo, and net points won. (Slide 3)

When designing practices, we need to think about net height & court size. What opportunities do they afford the players? Glad to see competition being scaled to match their capacities. Hopefully this is here to stay!

After 3 and a half years at Whitecraigs we are moving on to a new and exciting challenge. Zoe and I are delighted to be joining a forward thinking club and team with similar values and ideas. Giffnock tennis club were the UK club of the year in 2021 & their programme is headed up by Tennis Scotland Coach of the Year Mark Openshaw.

We are delighted with the way we have brought Whitecraigs forward over the last few years as the clubs Head Coaches. The junior programme saw huge growth from 50 odd players to a peak at around 270. And the adult programme also has seen an increase in both performance and participation.

There have been some fantastic achievements along the way and we think it’s good to reflect on a few that stood out to us

1x 🥈Mens Scottish Cup
2x Mens Team in the Premier League
1x QF of
1x 🥈Calcutta Cup
2x 🥇Winter KO
1x 🥈Clydesdale Cup
3x 🥈in West Premier League Mens
1x 🥈 in West Premier League Women
1x 🥈 in NPL Scotland division
1x 🥇14&U Boys West League

The selection of so many Whitecraigs members to GB, Scotland and County teams has been brilliant to see with players awarded spots in teams from 8&Under to 50&Over and in between!

Competitively it has been brilliant to see players on court at the back end of Junior National Tours, British Tours and ITFs to players playing the game for the first time in our internal super series events. A whole load of success and tournament wins across all levels but most importantly a huge number of players playing the game from the club.

We particularly enjoyed someone the events, club championships, the girls and women’s tennis day, parent challenge cup, Dan vs Zoe, junior+senior doubles, the UNICEF fundraiser, mens 4/5s vs juniors and friendlies with The West, Gleneagles, Giffnock & Hamilton

Thanks to the supportive parents who have trusted us with their child’s development on the court and to our coaches: Martin Lyttle, Ross Mackenzie, Jamie Martin, Jack Barclay, Mark Malcom, Craig Williams, Steven Struthers, Emily Gates

And our assistants
Alex, Logan, Roan, Noah, Mack Belch, Sorcha, Alex, Ben, Caitlin, Nick.

It’s been a pleasure!
Dan & Zoe

Lots of great competition experiences over the last few weeks! Plenty of runners ups as Whitecraigs have been silver medal specialists.

Sophia Hanif made her first 9&U county tour final at Newlands! Carmen put in back to back finals in 11&U grade 5s. And Zoe had her 4th final from the 5 Tennis Scotland ladies singles events in 2022 at Waverley as she continues to try find her first singles title of the year. Euan McIntosh took the men’s singles title in convincing style without dropping a set. Well done to all the juniors at the Waverley Open, many of whom were playing their first ever grade 3 competition.

The super series returns! This time for our 2012s and 2013s on an orange court.

Suitable for those who can serve and score to play their first match or any players out representing our club teams in 8 or 9 and under leagues!

6.30-8.00pm on Friday nights in October with a super series for the top players at the end of the month.

Enter week 1 on the method tennis app on the tournaments tab!