do you have to be a good tennis player to be a good tennis coach i can tell you that intuitive
tennis which is my teaching methodology would have never been created if i didn't play tennis
at the high level and what was so helpful in developing this teaching methodology that i
could exactly feel with high level players experience when they go through their various
strokes and it turns out that high-level players are not conscious of several technical elements
that occur during all the strokes and if i didn't play tennis at a high level there was absolutely
no way of me finding out this information so the fact that high-level players are playing
automatic tennis meaning they're not consciously executing certain technical elements it doesn't
really help me as a coach i have to be able to teach the proper technique to the students
and this is what led me to do a tremendous amount of research and what i try to accomplish with
my research is find commonalities things that all high-level players have in common
which i call the technical fundamentals of all strokes so someone that's not a high level
player could theoretically use my methodology and teach others and in fact i teach a lot of coaches
they come to me to improve their own game and also to improve their teaching abilities so i don't see
any reason why someone who's a decent level player let's say 5.0 and above shouldn't be able to be a
good coach and there are many examples of coaches who are not very good players who coached some of
the greatest players of all time it turns out that usually these are parents of players so i'm going
to give you some names and these are incredible players some of the greatest of all time
so we have karolj seles who was monica seles's dad we have srdan ivanisevic who was goran ivanisevic's dad
we also have richard williams venus and serena's dad and all these players are some of the
greatest players of all time and since tennis is such a unique sport where coaching is actually not
allowed players could easily play matches without a coach i'm not saying by any means that players
shouldn't have a coach they can benefit tremendously from having a coach however it is
also true that players can easily play without one therefore when we're talking about coaching at the
high level theoretically the coach does not need to know how to play tennis in order to be a coach
and there is many examples of this when parents coach their kids to great success and see tennis
at the high level is quite unique because players play automatically in other words they need very
little technical work once they reach that high level it's very small things that need to be
corrected if there needs to be any corrections at all so most of the work is really mental work and
do you need to be a great player to teach this type of mental work well it sure can help if you
used to play tennis because if you for example played at the high level and you're coaching
someone who plays at the high level you can share your experience of playing at that certain level
what goes through a player's mind and even at the elite level you can see that often players hire
former elite level players because they go through the same experiences and this can be
extremely beneficial to a high level or an elite level player how about coaching at the junior
level and at the recreational level well i already talked about how high-level players have automatic
strokes so they don't really think about technique and you'd be surprised that even some elite level
players really don't know much about technique and some of the greatest players of all time who shall
be unnamed don't even know what the grips are called and i know it's hard to believe that some
of the greatest players of all time don't really know much about technique but it is absolute
fact because tennis is an intuitive game where players do not think about anything technical
now of course if these elite players or high level players go into coaching they have to familiarize
themselves with the technical fundamentals of the game and if they don't they're gonna have a very
difficult time improving their students game at the junior level or the recreational level so one
extreme is the former professional player who doesn't know anything about technique because
their game is intuitive now on the other extreme we have someone who's incredibly knowledgeable
about science about biomechanics and maybe these are former scientists or engineers and they know
everything there is to know about the human body and about the tennis strokes but unfortunately
they never played tennis or they're very weak players and as i said in the beginning of the
video experience will always have precedent over technical knowledge so unfortunately even though
these people have an incredible knowledge about the game they are gonna have a very difficult time
translating this into teaching on the tennis court because they do not know what a high level stroke
feels like so guys to answer the question of this video does a good coach need to be a good
tennis player and not necessarily someone who's a decent enough player let's say a 5.0 level can
be a great coach if they possess a great knowledge of the technical elements of the game and have had
a lot of experience improving players games as long as they're good enough to rally with their
students and feed balls i don't see any problem with that however i will say that the best coaches
in the world are ones who were high level tennis players and also have a vast knowledge about the
technical elements of the game and also have had a lot of experience in helping players get better