Indian Tennis Coaches need to concentrate more on the 10 & Under age category

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.