do repetition drills for hours every day and play monitored practice matches among themselves as their coaches supervise. The volume of tournaments is much lower than the average USTA player, and in some cases, they don’t even play in a tournament until the age of 12. Let’s ask ourselves the following question: Who is going to have more solid fundamentals and footwork? I An eight- to 12-year-old who hits millions of balls the same way for hours a day and hardly played any tournaments; or I The child who plays 20-30 tournaments a year (in more than 100 matches) and who cares more about their ranking than their form? A few years back, I had a chance do my own little “Williams Sisters Experiment” on a young player that I coached. The kid was living in the Bronx, very close to my club and the parents could not take him to any tournaments at all (dad was working and mom had no car). For two years, all the child did was train in my program, working on tons of drills, hitting cross-courts and playing practice sets with my students and staff as I monitored. The child had a lot of talent and great a work ethic, but literally played zero tournaments for two years while other kids his age and level played at least one to two tournaments per month. All he did for two years was work on his game without worrying about ranking or winning … just playing the right way, stepping in, playing a form of freestyle and aggressive tennis. When he reached the age of 12, I told his mother that it was time to get him to compete. In his first tournament (to which he had to take the public bus to) in the 12s Division, he came through the qualifying and won the whole tournament without losing a set, nobody knew him and he played without pressure. That player, Andrew Adams, went on to become one of the top players in the East (ranked number one at one point in the East in the 14, 16 and 18 Divisions) and was top 15 in the nation in the 16 and 18 Divisions. He is currently playing on a full scholarship for the University of South Carolina and won Freshman of the Year in his first season,
posting a record of 28-10 in singles. There is no doubt he is on his way to having a great college career at the very least even though he is the only kid I know that played zero tournaments from the ages of 10 to 12. In the 12 years that I have been living and teaching in the U.S., I found that there is an overall general obsession with instant results and instant gratification … counterproductive to developing top players in my opinion. This is not to say that I am against competition, on the contrary, I encourage competition and a competitive nature. What Andrew Adams did was unique and quite extreme. He did well when he started competing at the age of 12, but still it took him a few years to develop the mental and strategic aspects of the game and to learn how to close out matches … that part takes experience which he didn’t have compared to the “veteran” players who competed since the day they could walk. I remember Andrew struggling against pushers and playing naive tennis at the 12 to 14 age level, having trouble closing out matches and losing confidence due to it. But after he got some matches under his belt, he figured it out, and by the time he was 18, he was one of the top players in the nation and as match tough as anyone, only less burned out than most others since he started competing late. This is no small matter, I have often seen kids waste all of their mental strength on meaningless junior matches looking for ranking points and trophies and missing the big picture, only to reach the college ranks or the Pro Tour to realize that their best tennis and mental effort was left in the junior years. They had holes in their game, holes that did not quite allow them to reach their potential. My approach is the fusion approach. I strongly believe in developing shots in the early ages and putting results as a low priority for the first few years. However, I am also a believer that children need to compete in order to be able to perform under pressure because it’s fun and ultimately the best way to learn. When I do send kids to participate in tournaments, I put it in perspective and make sure that they try to implement the things we work on in practice as much as they can and not revert to the bad habits. It can be a long process, and I certainly understand that sometimes the will to win will
overcome the discipline to do the right thing (after all, I too was once a junior player). I have been preaching this philosophy to my high performance students with sporadic success. Some parents listen to me and most just sign the kids up to as many tournament as they can thinking that getting a good ranking is insurance to being a great player. The pressure to get a good ranking or rating and to think constantly about results is making them blind to so many basic mistakes. When I was a kid, we always had periods of no tournament play during which you took the time to add new elements to your game. It seems that it is harder to find periods like this anymore and it is often smart to cut down the match play for a while in order to take it to the next level. The “Williams Sisters Approach,“ although quite extreme, certainly worked for Serena and Venus. They skipped their junior career and went straight to the Pro Tour. Now deep into their respective careers, both sisters, especially Serena, are still playing on the tour and are capable of beating anybody in the world on any given day. Their late start and the many breaks that they took during their career kept them relatively fresh compared to the other female players who may have burned out by their mid-20s. A tennis career should be looked at as a marathon … you want to pace yourself and get to the last few miles in good shape and have enough energy for the finish which is basically the last four years of college when everything is supposed to click (or when you turn pro if you just so happen to make the cut). In order to make it click at the right time, there should be a long-term game plan and a realization that when it comes to tournament play, sometimes less is more, especially in the younger age groups. Gilad Bloom is a former ATP touring professional who, at his peak, was ranked 61st in singles and 62nd in doubles in the world. Five times an Israel’s Men’s Champion, three times in singles and twice in doubles, Gilad is currently the director of tennis at The Club of Riverdale. He was the director of tennis at John McEnroe Tennis Academy for two years, and before, that ran Gilad Bloom Tennis for nine years. He may be reached by phone at (914) 907-0041 or email bloom.gilad@gmail.com.
NYTennisMag.com • January/February 2013 • New York Tennis Magazine
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