Coaching Tennis Technical & Tactical Skills

by American Sport Education Program, Kirk Anderson

Coaching Tennis Technical and Tactical Skills is a practical resource that will help you become a better high school, club, or college tennis coach. With the expert guidance of Kirk Anderson, director of recreational coaches and programs for the United States Tennis Association (USTA), you'll learn coaching and evaluating skills and then focus on technical and tactical skills of tennis, including quick tips on detecting and correcting errors in your athletes, cues athletes need to be aware of in various tactical situations, and key information your athletes need to know in order to make the appropriate decisions on the court. Skills are cross-referenced so you can see how they relate to each other and quickly determine how to use them in practice situations. Whether you are a veteran coach or just a beginner, this book will help you take your coaching to the next level by providing you with the tools you need to teach athletes the game of tennis. The American Sport Education Program (ASEP) is the leading provider of youth, high school, and elite-level sport education programs in the United States. Through its high-quality and easy-to-use programs, ASEP has educated more than 1.5 million coaches, officials, sport administrators, parents, and athletes. For more than 25 years, local, state, and national sport organizations have partnered with ASEP to lead the way in making sport a safe, successful, and enjoyable experience for all involved.

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Hank · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not entirely sure what the target audience is even though it is clearly stated on the front of the book :) I am currently a high school tennis coach for both boys and girls which encompasses a wide range of abilities. There is a bunch of useful information in this book but its format and presentation make it less useful than it could be.

If you are a complete beginner and are trying to learn tennis on your own or in conjunction with group/private lessons, this could be a good resource but I think that it is far too technical and idiomatic for a rank beginner to get much out of.

If you are more of the advanced/advanced intermediate then most of this information is already known and probably you learned it in a less bookish format.

This leaves the intermediate player/coach who has enough grasp of the lingo and has just started doing some more complicated strokes/lessons/strategy. This is probably the sweet spot, enough understandable information to push you to the next level.

The book does have some useful lesson progressions, my main problem was that it had a very propoganda like feel to it, i.e. there is only one way to do a certain stroke and this is the only thing you can do to fix it. I have found there are a myriad of ways to learn and form good stroke mechanics. One other problem found in many sports books is filler, when a student continually hits a ball into the net, you don't really need to add the tip "have the student hit the ball higher", not a lot of filler but enough to be annoying.