loris bertolacci

Development and Tennis in Australia. How Young?

Teen shows how to move up from junior ranks |The Australian

Margie McDonald | January 07, 2008

said Liz Smylie, former Tour player and now tournament director of the …Tennis Australia, under CEO Steve Wood and player development director Craig Tiley …

Recently this excellent article was in the Australian. All good. But in sport there is a certain inevitability with maturation and ranking lists. It does take time. These types of articles are correct in general but subjective in nature and somewhat emotional even. Of course we want to get kids into ranking lists ASAP but history and raw hard data doesn’t support this.

Analysis of womens tennis rankings year in and out show simply that it takes until well into their 20’s to crack the top 100. Sure some real talents can shine early but very few.

tennis-ages-2005-aug-and-2007-jan-1.pdf

tennis-rankings-2003-aug.pdftennis-rankings-2003-aug.pdf

development-russian-tennis.pdf

These stats are a bit rough and I will update them soon for 2008 but simply show some trends with development and how long it really takes. A 15 year old who is not a star might have to wait till 2015 to crack the top 100 and be there for a year or two. Daunting but the stats support this. She would be 22! Still young.Close analysis of development in Russia shows they seem to be 2 years ahead with their girls but still 21.9 average age for their top 100 girils. This was a year ago as are all my stats and year to year these change a bit but not much. So don’t hang me as I will update this year soon.

Now one can even look at top 500/1000 russian girls and we dont see millions of teenagers as is often subjectively reported.

Then have a close look at actual ranking lists. Yes they change from year to year but not a lot. In the girls, on average they seem to drop out of the top 100 at 27 and go into the top 100 at approx 22. Forget superstars. Australia does not even crack it for heaps of “average” players these days given the world is playing tennis now. One constant in life is change.

What does it all mean? In AFL it simply takes till players are 25 on average to peak. Also teams in all sports. World Cup Squads in soccer are 27 plus.. Very few teenagers play in finals. Some do. Not many. Always happens. Takes 6 to 8 years to develop a team.

In sprinting 26 is the age! Males and females. And so on.

So in tennis we are imploring our 12 and 15 year olds to push into the elite level. That is OK. Yet when one assesses these kids that can play a bit some cannot even do a basic bodyweight squat. They play heaps of tennis with paid coaches in the suburbs but there is very little proper development. One sided development and biomechanical disasters. Some are ok with fitness but movement mechanics and core strength and stability. Well!

So all of a sudden our girls are miles behind. No use smashing them with runs around the TAN or PLYOMETRICS if they cannot do the fundamentals at 16 or 17 let alone 13.

Added to this is the fact that even with excellent devleopment schemes from 12 to 16 it will still take most girls till they are 20 plus to crack the top 100 let alone the top 500 sometimes.

I think the problem lies in the fact that in tennis the coaching of fitness is very very poor at the youth age with little emphasis ont the basics ( core / footwork / technique / weight training and so on). Thsi is a different issue to fitness. Also in my opinion our kids shoudl be encouraged to play many sports till 13 or 14 and then specialize.

Thus they would be naturally fitter and stronger and more balanced. But an industry lurls out in the suburbs that means tennis coaches may not encourage this multilateral development.

Even sports like swimming and gymnastics as well as netball/basketball and soccer should be played by these girls to make sure they are tough fit aussies and not one sided underdeveloped little girls.

The other problem is from 16 to 19. This is a tough age. this is when the “average player” will push through the rankings. By then though the parents are either bankrupt or divorced having funded their kids in tennsi for years. HA.

But at this age kids are growing up and it is tough to stay “bubbly” till 21 until they crack the next level. There are few professional clubs in OZ and systems at this age and people are often edgy and impatient for results.

So these are just general thoughts and I will redo the stats for this year soon and may be surprised. I am sure TA knows all this and also have fantastic steps in place.

But it is a different tennis world to the 50’s/60’s and 70’s. We seem to keep saying we have great sports science in OZ but I think that we may be a little behind in practical strength and conditioning. That is another story.

January 9, 2008 - Posted by Loris Bertolacci | Tennis