I recently attended the
10 & Under World Tennis Coaches Conference at the Hilton Head Island, USA.
I had a opportunity to meet some of the best 10 & Under Tennis
Coaches from across the Globe. Though the majority of the participants were
from the various states in USA a few of them have managed to fly from Europe
and Australia as well. Myself and two coaches from Japan were the only
representation from Asia.
During the conference there was a lot of things which were discussed about the
development of players
especially in the United States. For a moment I was surprised, that a country
like United States is now struggling to produce a decent players who are
capable of competing at the higher level. Not to forget that this is the
country which has produced number of Grand slam Winners in both Men’s and
Women’s Categories. You can find excellent tennis coaching facilities as well
as World Class Coaches at every corner of this country.
A lot was discussed about the development of tennis out of which I have come to
a conclusion that if a country like USA is able to restructure its whole tennis
coaching programme, so can India. We Indians are a masters in technique of any
given sports. The only problem is that our youngsters fail to take their
performance to elite level because of various reasons and there is a huge drop
out rate between the ages 16-19.
Though over the last 4-5 Years India has been able to produce some quality
players who can perform in Singles but these players are yet to prove that
Indians are really capable of competing against the best players in the World.
In order to produce a World Class players from India we need to bring in more
number of players to play tennis at the 10 & under age category and then work
on the player development from there. "I
think the local coaches needs to spend more time searching for talent. "We
need kids with hunger, and you can't tell that
there aren't plenty of them with the skills and the ambition to succeed. They
need to see tennis as a cool sport, they need to be drawn to it. Otherwise,
they are going to choose some other sport."
There is going to be no instant cure. It's a fact of life that
youngsters from Central Europe and Asia have more ambition to succeed at a
sport like tennis. It's also a fact that tennis life that Spain and France have
discovered the secret of producing a steady production line of talent. There is
no secret formula. It's just good coaching, clay courts and endless local
tournaments.
Its high time that coaches in India have to start working together
towards bringing in more number of players to take up the sport at the 10 &
Under age group and things will start falling in place over a period of time
else we will need to convince ourselves that to the fact that the likes of
Novak Djokovic will lead a Uzbek-Kazak-Serbian-Russian takeover of tennis. You have to love the sport — really
love it.
