Tennis Australia-How young should we start and why?
Tennis Australia is embarking on a massive youth policy. That is great. Having a broad base with kids who have the skills is a real need. But the evidence never stacks up that tennis is a young sport. The average age for women top 100 is always 24 approx. and for men high 24’s approx. Grand Slam fields are usually 24 to 25 average for men. Grand Slam male winners average out at 25 over many eras. Forget prodigies. Forget awesome talents like Hewitt. Tennis is the same as all other running “eccentric” sports. So why do we train 12 year olds like adults? Why don’t we track players into their 20’s? Junior ITF results keep a lot of coaches in jobs yet really are fairly meaningless like most junior sport is. Junior sport is about providing experiences and pathways. Not an end itself. Important for the player of course. But even there the average age of Male players is 17 plus and 16 plus forFemales. So when a 13 year old boy is missing out on school and not getting a multilateral physical development I cringe.
Tennis is littered with failures and broken dreams. When we will wake up. Training immature skeletons like adults is almost a crime. Parents want to see their kids flogged. It is just friggin the dumbest thing I have seen.
And when Tennis Australia encourages players to not attend normal schools what are we developing? Misfits? Do they tell the parents the truth? There is very little chance of making money in tennis? Unlike AFL where young kids earn hundreds of thousands. Where is the evidence. Who says a kid cannot play AFL till 13 then choose tennis. I think this might be a real problem.
Tennis academies throughout the world push all this of course.
Strength and Conditioning coaches need to be always aware they are dealing with children in tennis not adults.
Parents need to know that on average players enter the rankings in their 20’s.
Let’s think about all this? Maybe Australia has to hang on to players of the 15 to 20 year old bracket and keep them going instead of always going back to kids in the hope of finding a diamond. A good 18 year old male might take till 22 to go from 400 to 76 in the world. But in Australia it is too hard. Next and the same again.
| Women’s Rankings NOV 2009 | |
| 1 to 100 | 24.10 |
| 100 to 200 | 23.55 |
| 200 to300 | 23.55 |
| 300 to 400 | 22.39 |
| 400 to 500 | 22.21 |
| 500 to 600 | 21.23 |
| 600 to700 | 21.14 |
| 700 to 800 | 20.26 |
| 800 to 900 | 20.56 |
| 900 to 1000 | 19.58 |
loris bertolacci 