This Is So Cool

Hi Mr. Wegner. I don't know much about you but from the email that John sent us you seem to be a well known person. It's an honor to have you be a member of this site and I hope you can help me and the other members. I have one question that is really important to me right now. I have a coach right now. He has been teaching me tennis for about two years and I think that I have learnt the game rather quickly. Of course I know there is a lot I can improve on. For the past 6 months, I have been getting real frustrated. I didn't even want to play an under 18 tournament. He convinced me to play. He always tells me that I should play for fun adn that he doesn't get disappointed when I lose (which I do very often). After I played the tournament and lost in semis, he was totally disappointed. A lot of stuff that he does bothers me but I really can't tell him. These days the training sessions have been getting worse. i have no idea what to do.:(

Dear wcase23, I seen this happen over and over. Perhaps you can tell him you saw a neat website (www.tennisteacher.com), from a guy that coached Kuerten and Borg, and that you liked it and wanted to share it with him. Then you'll see what he thinks. With the old, conventional coaching way, unfortunately, you get stuck at a lowere level than your potential. I really want to encourage to copy the pros, perhaps one stroke from one pro, the backhand and seve from another. This way you'll keep progressing and you'll be enthusiastic about your tennis.
Let me know what happens.

I thought Borg was coached by Lennart Bergelin? To WCase23, sounds like you should change coaches-he doesn't sound very inspiring. Do emulate the pros, I would highly recommend a subscription to tennisplayer.net where excellent video footage of top pros can be examined and analyzed, you will get a years' worth of instruction for the price of a lesson or two. The site's founder John Yandell wrote a great book called Visual Tennis that has really helped my game by using visual imagery of pro strokes. Also, I highly recommend TennisMastery by David Smith and anything ever written by Vic Braden.

Dear JSpin, I coached Bjorn borg for his second comeback in 1992.
I also recommend the TennisOne.com website, where they have excellent video footage of top pros. John Yandell has done a great job also with video footage (he is the original guy that started it), but I consider his analysis and teaching a bit towards the conventional, and Vic Braden even more. these guys are having a hard time breaking away COMPLETELY from the misconceptions of the past.

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Originally Posted by Oscar

Dear JSpin, I coached Bjorn borg for his second comeback in 1992.
I also recommend the TennisOne.com website, where they have excellent video footage of top pros. John Yandell has done a great job also with video footage (he is the original guy that started it), but I consider his analysis and teaching a bit towards the conventional, and Vic Braden even more. these guys are having a hard time breaking away COMPLETELY from the misconceptions of the past.

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Ummm...Borg had a comeback? Wouldn't brag about that if I were you.:) BTW, I also have your book "Play Better Tennis in Two Hours" and I like a couple of tips you have in it. Yandell and Braden may be more "conventional" in teachings, but they also have excellent insight and analysis on the game of tennis, and have helped a lot of people, no need to put them down.

In 1991, after not playing tournaments for ten years, Borg attempted to come back. The first comeback was a disaster. Then he got with me in January 1992 and I coached him for close to 20 days. From losing to some of the juniors training at Bollettieri's and to Jimmy Arias, he went on to beat all the juniors, beat Jimmy Arias, and then he lost a close 7/5 7/6 to Pete Sampras, who was then #3 in the world, adn soon to be #1 for six consecutive years. Bjorn played phenomenal against Pete and had two set points in the second set tiebreaker. He was beaming after the match, having regained his confidence. From there he went to an exhibition in Los Angeles, beating John Lloyd in two sets, then player River Oaks, having two match points in his loss to Nicolas Pereira, #50 in the world, then went to the Riviera, where before his first match in Niece his wife attempted suicide. He still played decently there and in Montecarlo (I forgot the names of the French players he lost to), played one more tournament in Germany, but then stopped for about 8 months while handling an ugly divorce and stressful divorce. When he got the divorce finalized he went to Moscow, lost to Volvok after having match point (Volkov was #16 in the world), and left that night forgetting that he had an appointment to play with Boris Yeltsin the next morning. Yeltsin showed up and where was Bjorn?
Jimmy Connors convinced Bjorn to just stick to Connors tour, and the rest is history. My belief is that I helped him quite a bit, which is why I'm here as well, to help as many people as I can, and so try Braden, Yandell and Bollettieri. To help. Evereone tries their own was.
Thank you, JSpin, for your nterest.

Thank you for your clarification and the interesting story about Borg. As a young boy avidly playing the junior tennis circuit when he was in his prime I was a huge fan of his, I had to have the same Fila outfit, Diadora shoes and that terrible Donnay racquet of his (what a geek!), my very strict military father was not too pleased about me growing my hair long to emulate Borg though, that caused a lot of grief in the family.:)
Borg, as well as Connors, Mac,Gerulaitis, Ashe etc. were such great rivals and true sports heros. I was fortunate to grow up in what I believe was the golden age of tennis, when the pros played with style, intelligence and had colorful personality. Now tennis has changed to mindless topspin baseline bashing by pros whose names I can't pronounce-so boring. The kids of today have nobody cool to emulate and turn to other sports, especially golf. No wonder tennis is in decline in this country!

I'll try your suggestions. THANKS a lot!!!!

wcase23
Don't get discouraged, I have 2 daughters they started playing at the age of 9 and 13 the 13 year old got discouraged after a couple of years, the children in our area starts at around 7 or 8 years of age and she was getting beat by 9 and 10 year girls and I being her coach did not show a positive attitude and now she has not picked up a tennis racquet in 5 years, she is now almost 20. My other child I had professionally coached starting around 12 years of age, again she was getting beat by the 9 and 10 year olds and again I was not very encouraging but the coaches were. however the coaches would not accept the way my child liked to play, she liked to hit the ball hard, but they wanted her to play the more traditional way like bend your knees, close your stance put your foot here and don't go for the line. That philosophy got her a few consolation trophies, no finals 1 4th place but basically no good trophies, We were doing around 13 to 15 tournaments a year, and taking a lesson a week and junior development, she was playing tennis 5 times a week but she still couldn't hit 3 good forehands in a row on a regular basis, Both her and I got tired of not getting good results, We got on the internet and found Oscar bought his DVDs dumped the coaches, 3 months later she won her first tournament and the next 4 in a row, now she has probably 11 or 12 1st place trophies and a bunch of 2nd place trophies. I am a firm believer in Oscar and I do believe in encouragement (winning also helps)