Kelly Simons Total Tennis

Tennis Excellence in the Silicon Valley

Monthly Archives: July 2012


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How to Choose a Tennis Pro

When Selecting a Tennis Teaching Pro, It Pays to Do Your Homework

Tennis pro on phone

Checking a pro’s qualifications is critical, but so is watching her or him in action. If a pro is constantly on the phone or otherwise not present during clinics, camps, tournaments, or lessons, all the education and certification in the world doesn’t matter.

As I’ve noted, the Silicon Valley is rich with tennis teaching professionals, so that means there’s lots of access anywhere you’d like to learn. But, it also means you have to take some care in assessing and selecting a pro who’s right for you or your kids. Just because someone teaches on college courts or in a country club doesn’t mean he or she has particular depth in experience or education. Often, pro selection in these settings is a financial matter that highlights a marketable personality and administrative skill over genuine teaching experience and expertise. As I noted in an earlier post, the big money in tennis instruction is really in high volume clinics, camps, and tournaments in which there’s often very little learning going on. If you’re looking at a pro whose main focus is running camps, clinics, or tournaments, you really want to dig into his background a bit more.

Here are five questions that will help you to evaluate any pro, regardless of her or his teaching setting:

1.  What is your competitive background?

A good pro will have at least 5 years of competitive experience at the junior or college level. It’s okay to ask a pro about her or his rankings, and to ask for verification of this. Most pros are pretty honest, but some do tell stories. Recently, for instance, I learned that a pro in a local college program had wildly exaggerated his college ranking. While the pro you’re considering might, indeed, have been “Number 1 in singles and doubles” on his college team, it makes a big difference if that team was Division 3 rather than Division 1. Another pro used her sister’s college record rather than her own less illustrious one in ads on Craigslist. One of my former assistant coaches, whose responsibilities were mainly ordering uniforms and filling water jugs during matches, claimed on his website that he’d “coached at the college level” for several years. You get the idea. It pays to look at college websites and check USPTA rankings. Note, too, that competitive league play is generally not an adequate indicator because league rankings are not standardized from region to region. The number 1 player in Ohio probably wouldn’t make to the top 100 in Arizona, California, or Florida.

2. How long have you been teaching tennis?

A pro worth your time and money will have at  least 5 years experience teaching tennis under the supervision of a more experienced teaching pro. It’s okay to ask where and with whom a pro has taught and to request references. When you meet a young, energetic pro with a solid competitive background, it can be easy to assume that she or he will naturally be a great teacher. That’s very often not the case. Such players may be great hitting partners, but the very fact that they’ve mostly been playing with similarly talented players can mean that they’re not particularly good with beginners or kids.

3. What is your educational background?

John McEnroe and Kelly Simons

A good pro will have all kinds of amazing competitive experience. A great pro will enhance that experience with education and certification. Did I play with McEnroe? Yep! And, that makes for some great stories. But it’s my education and teaching experience that make me the coach I am today.

A qualified pro should have a bachelors or masters degree in a field related specifically to athletics and coaching: E.g., physical education, human performance, kinesiology, sports psychology. Think twice about pros with utterly unrelated educational backgrounds and educations focused more on the business side of coaching (e.g., marketing) than on coaching and teaching itself. Again, teaching tennis is not the same as playing tennis, even if you’re a very good player. In my practice, for instance, I work a great deal with kids with special learning needs. Approaching tennis instruction with these players is certainly not something I learned as a Division 1 college player. I actually studied how to adapt my approach to instruction to the different learning styles, abilities, and experience of different players. Generally speaking, that’s not something you pick up on the street.

4. What is your certification?

In a pro-saturated market like the Bay Area, there is no reason to work with a teaching pro without certification from the U.S.P.T.A. or P.T.R. Both organizations have “find a pro” databases that allow you to identify pros in your area and review their basic qualifications. ALWAYS verify certification before you talk with a pro as it is not at all infrequent to find pros listed on Craigslist, Google, or Yahoo who claim to be certified, but who have never been or who have allowed their certification to lapse. Pros will usually not be certified by both organizations, and though the USPTA is the more common certification, either one is credible. Certification is important because it (a) shows a professional commitment to tennis instruction as a career; (2) verifies teaching expertise; and (3) gives pros and their clients access to insurance in the case of accident or injury.

5. What is your court arrangement?

Legitimate tennis teaching professionals will not poach public, high school, or college courts, on which private instruction is usually prohibited without a contract from the city, high school, college, or university. Ask to see a copy of the contract. This is important not only because it ensures that you will be able to have a court for your lesson, but also because any insurance (if a pro has it) may be invalidated if he or she is not teaching on a court with appropriate authorization.

BONUS QUESTION: How do you display professionalism with clients?

This is actually a question that you’ll answer more though observation than direct inquiry. A high quality tennis teaching professional will exhibit a number of behaviors that have very little to do with experience or education but which make a big difference in your learning experience:

  • Returns phone calls within 24 hours
  • Is at the court at least 5 minutes before and after your scheduled lesson, clinic, or camp
  • Does not take or make phone calls or text messages during lessons, clinics or camps except in emergencies
  • Does not eat during lessons, clinics, or camps (You may laugh, but I once worked for a head pro at a country club who routinely would sit on a bench and eat a sandwich during lessons.)
  • Dresses in clean, professional tennis clothing



To check on these behaviors, observe one or more lessons and talk with other clients.


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Finding the Best Way for YOU to Learn Tennis (Part III)

Are Private Lessons the Right for Choice YOU?

In Part I of this series, I talked about tennis clinics, and in Part II, I covered tennis camps. In this post, I’ll go over the benefits and limitations of private lessons.

Man hitting tennis backhand

In a private lesson, the total focus of the time spent is on you and your game. Indonesian Davis Cup juniors team player, Albert, was coached by Kelly through his college playing career.

Private lessons tend to have the highest direct cost of all of the approaches to tennis instruction discussed so far. A qualified, experienced tennis teaching professional (click here for more on that) will charge between $75 and $125 an hour for a lesson. Typically, pros offer half hour and hour lessons, and they often offer discounts for multi-lesson packages. Semi-private lessons (which generally have 2-3 participants) and small group lessons (with 4-8 participants) cost more per hour, but less per person.

You can find less experienced pros—more often than not teaching on public courts for which they pay no court fee and also have no guarantee of availability for your lesson time—for as little as $35 an hour. But, if your main consideration is direct cost, youʼre better off investing in a good clinic or reputable community college course than taking a private lesson on the cheap from a less-qualified teaching pro.

Still, many great pros do teach on community courts under contracts with local municipalities and cities. This ensures, first of all, that you will have a court when it’s time for the lesson you’ve scheduled and, more importantly, that the city has verified that the pro has insurance to protect her or himself and clients in case of accidents or injuries. I teach in San Jose’s Willow Glen neighborhood, for instance, under a contract with the City of San Jose and carry insurance through my USPTA certification and membership.

Many tennis teaching pros do not specialize in private one-on-one, semi-private, or small group lessons. This is largely an economic reality: while $75 or $85 an hour might sound like it adds up to a pretty sweet payday, most pros pay between $10 and $25 for court usage fees. They also pay for balls, ball machines and other equipment. Since most are self-employed, they also pay for their own unemployment withholding, workers comp, retirement, health insurance, and other taxes and benefits.

Certainly, itʼs still a good living if youʼre passionate about helping people to develop skills for a lifetime of active, socially enriching tennis. But the real money is in clinics and camps, where teaching professionals can gross more than $250 an hour. Indeed, the high end of the private lesson market ($100 and above) tends to be populated by pros who would rather see you in a clinic or camp because theyʼre actually loosing money even on a very expensive private lesson. Also, many pros make much of their living coordinating local or regional tournaments from which they collect fees and draw players into camps and clinics. So, one of the first things you want to find out about someone youʼre considering for private lessons is how their teaching practice is set up. If the balance of their instruction is clinics, camps, and tournaments, you might want to look at other options.

Girl learning tennis stance

While clinics and camps do a great job of highlighting the social benefits of tennis, for kids who are under- confident as athletes, uncoordinated, or just plain shy, a clinic can be a nightmare.

Given the cost, why would you choose a private lesson over a clinic or camp—especially if youʼre just starting out in tennis? The main reason is that, in a private lesson, the total focus of the time spent is on you and your game. Youʼre not standing around while the pro explains the drill— again—to someone else. Youʼre not waiting in line to hit at the net or get access to the ball machine. Youʼre hitting balls and getting feedback for a solid hour or half hour. As I noted, in a clinic, you might get five minutes of direct instruction, but in a private lesson itʼs all about you. In the end, that means youʼre getting more value from the instruction than you might get in a clinic.

Even semi-private and small group lessons have more focused instruction because the client— you—have selected the participants, and these are likely to be people with whom you will continue to practice, play, and otherwise interact. Maybe theyʼre friends or couples with whom you socialize, colleagues, or members of your league team.

A good teaching pro will focus on who you are as a group in particular and how you can best learn together.

This kind of focused attention is invaluable as youʼre learning to play or striving to move to a more advanced level. Because of this, if your budget is limited, it may be a better investment to take a half- hour private lesson every other week with a clinic or community college class as a supplement.

For kids, private lessons have additional advantages. While clinics and camps do a great job of highlighting the social benefits of tennis, for kids who are under- confident as athletes, uncoordinated, or just plain shy, a clinic can be a nightmare. A series of lessons with a qualified pro can help kids who are new to the game or who are moving into a more challenging level of juniors competition to develop coordination, competence and confidence outside of what can often feel like the sandlot culture of clinics and camps. To be sure, a good teaching pro will almost always recommend that your son or daughter partner with one or more other players, take a clinic, or attend a camp in order to develop the social aspects of the game—both etiquette and appropriate competitiveness. But a good pro will also understand when your child is ready in terms of coordination, skill level, stamina, and confidence to make the most of large group instruction in clinic or camp settings. And therein lies another important distinction: Tennis isnʼt a mass production sport. A private teaching professional is your personal tennis consultant, experienced at assessing the unique learning needs of you or your child as an individual and at developing a customized approach to meeting those needs.

At the end of the day, tennis is about fun, friendship, and fitness for life. I hope I’ve taken some of the mystery out of how to go about finding the best ways for you and your family to get into the game!


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Finding the Best Way for YOU to Learn Tennis (Part II)

Are Tennis Camps the Right Choice for YOU?

In the first post in this series, I talked about the pros and cons of tennis clinics. In this post, I’ll cover another popular tennis instruction format–especially for kids–camps.

While a clinic takes up a specific issue or offers supervised practice for an hour or two a week, a tennis camp is usually more than a day—typically a weekend, a week, or more.

kids playing guitar with tennis racket

Tennis camps open to all levels of kids are much like traditional summer camps. Parents should look for a balance of activities during the camp.

Because there is more time available in a camp, they typically blend large group instruction with some measure of individualized or small group instruction, fitness training, and competitive play. Parents reviewing camps should look for a balance of activities and, as with clinics, talk with the head teaching pro about the experience and training of the pros who will actually be working with participants on a day-to-day basis.

Camps tend to fall into two categories. Some camps are pretty much open to all comers, from beginning to advanced players. These camps are more like traditional summer camps with a special focus on tennis. The best of them introduce kids to the game, help develop the skills of more advanced players, and give everyone the chance to engage in some healthy competition with a mini- tournament at the end of the camp.

Summer tennis camps for kids of all ages are a great way to encourage kids to take an interest in the sport (or in sports in general), to meet friends who are active, and pick up some basic tennis skills. They tend to be less valuable for more advanced players, who benefit more from individualized coaching.

Boy playing tennis

Advanced players, like this NorCal Juniors player, benefit from more specialized camps that will connect them with comparable players and experienced coaches.

For more advanced junior players, specialized summer camps are probably a better option. These camps have three primary benefits. First, they tend to have higher-profile, more experienced teaching professionals who are able to do more sophisticated and individualized assessment and coaching for each participant. Second, are more likely to connect kids to other advanced players for ongoing practice partnerships. Finally, a high-quality camp can help a very talented junior player to get attention from high- quality coaches.

Again, parents thinking about enrolling their kids in an advanced camp with a high profile pro need to do some homework in advance. Parents will want to make sure the pro is not just lending her or his name to the camp, but is actually instructing. The same goes for a high profile program: just because the camp is at an Ivy League university does not mean the regular coaching staff is involved.

Parents will want to check out the balance between group and individualized instruction and find out what are the qualifications of pros involved in all aspects of the camp. If youʼve been working with a private teaching professional, you should feel free to  ask for advice in identifying and evaluating camps for your kids.

In Part III of this series, I’ll discuss the benefits and limitations of private lessons for players of all ages and abilities.


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Finding the Best Way for YOU to Learn Tennis (Part I)

Are Clinics Right for YOU?

learning serve at clinic

Ask about the ratio of pros and assistants to students in a clinic. If it’s more than 12:1 for every pro or more than 8:1 for every assistant, you probably won’t be getting much instruction.

Whether youʼre an experienced league competitor, an energetic novice, or a parent wanting to promote an active, healthy lifestyle for the kids, finding the best mode of tennis instruction for your particular circumstances can be a challenge. This is perhaps particularly true in a region blessed with many superb tennis facilities, well-established programs, and talented teaching professionals to help you take advantage of a mild climate that allows for almost year-round play. In this series of posts, I’ll help you to sort through the options for tennis instruction and focus on the approach thatʼs best for your particular learning situation and goals for competitive or recreational tennis. Letʼs start by reviewing the pros and cons of clinics. In Part II, we’ll look at camps, and Part III will cover private lessons.

A tennis clinic is a group session, usually with between six and twelve participants. Some pros do take more than twelve people in a clinic, but I caution against taking clinics with more than twelve people for reasons I’ll discuss shortly. Clinics often focus on one particular element of the game—the serve, groundstrokes, or match play strategies, for instance – but some just offer supervised practice time.

Clinics are a popular choice for those just getting started in tennis because they appear to offer the opportunity to get acquainted with the game without the expense of private lessons. Generally, clinics cost about $20 for a one-hour session, and most programs offer packages with discounts of 10-20 percent when you pay up front for several clinics. Clinics also have the advantage of schedule flexibility in that many pros or programs offer “drop-in” clinics on a regular basis so you donʼt have to commit to a regular time. Finally, clinics are a great way to connect with other tennis players at your level of play. Tennis is a highly social game, and, especially for new players outside of league or other team structures, a clinic can give you access to this important aspect of the game. Indeed, if the social aspect of the game is a high priority for you or your kids, a clinic is absolutely a great place to start.

There are a couple things to consider, however, before you sign up for a series of clinics. First, although you will pay less for an hour of time on the court, in a clinic, you will also be getting significantly less direct instruction from the teaching pro. In a 60-minute clinic with ten people, you might spend ten minutes going over the instructions for the drills and queuing up for your turn at the ball machine, the net or the service line. Depending on how you do on the drill, you might get a quick tip from the pro on your performance in particular. But the focus of a pro teaching a clinic is, first of all, on the safety of everyone in the group and then on their common learning. So, you often wonʼt hear anything specific from the pro about your game. In essence, then, youʼre paying $15 or $20 for what amounts to less than five minutes of direct instruction. That works out to about $180 to $240 for an hour of instruction. So, if your priority is learning the game with a particular focus on your strengths and weaknesses, a clinic might not be the most effective or economical way to go achieve your goals.

Kelly giving forehand instruction

In a juniors’ clinic or camp, pay attention to how much time a teaching pro actually spends with kids on the court.

Another concern with clinics has to do specifically with junior players. First, juniorsʼ clinics often have a much higher participant-to-pro ratio than do adult clinics. I’ve seen prestigious juniorsʼ clinics with more than 20 kids. What that means is that kids are waiting around a lot for court, drill, or ball machine time, and theyʼre not getting lots of attention from the pro. Why does this happen more in juniorsʼ clinics than in adult clinics? Maybe I’m too cynical, but I suspect itʼs because kids arenʼt as likely to complain to the head pro if theyʼre not learning anything so long as there are lots of kids around to hang out with while they wait for their turn.

And that brings up another issue: juniorsʼ clinics are often coordinated by an experienced tennis teaching professional, but they are often directly supervised by college or even high school tennis players. While these young adults may be phenomenal players, it is unlikely that theyʼve had any training (beyond what theyʼve picked up from their own experience) on how to teach tennis or work with kids in particular. What youʼre paying for, then, is basically tennis-oriented babysitting rather than actual instruction. Now, that may be exactly what you want: a social environment with a sports focus that connects athletics to fun for your daughter or son. But if what you want is to provide your child with the opportunity to learn tennis as a lifestyle sport that theyʼll carry into adulthood, itʼs a good idea to stop by the clinic a couple times to see whoʼs on the court with your kids and how much time theyʼre spending in actual instruction. Before you sign your daughter or son up, talk to the head pro about her or his approach to tennis instruction, about the number of students in each clinic group, and about who assists at the clinics and how they are trained. Once youʼve selected a clinic, regularly ask your child, “Did the pro talk to you today about your game?” Or, “Did you get in a lot of play today?”

In summary, clinics have lots of advantages. For adults who are testing the waters with tennis, clinics offer a low cost, low commitment opportunity to try out the game. For both adults and children more interested in the social than the athletic aspects of tennis, clinics are a great option. However, as is often the case in life, you really do get what you pay for: for $20 an hour, you canʼt expect much by way of in depth instruction on your particular learning needs. The result may be that you spend more time and money on clinics without learning as much as you would with a short series of half-hour or hour private lessons supplemented by clinic practice. If youʼre serious about learning and playing tennis for recreation, fitness, or competition, we recommend that you sign up for clinics from time to time to meet practice partners you can play with outside of the clinic. Or, take a class at a local community college to get in regular practice with a range of players. (Note: In the Bay Area, the saturation of teaching pros means that many of the best also teach in local community college programs.)

In my next post, I’ll cover the ins and outs of tennis camps.

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