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Our Southern Master Pros Share
Remaining Relevant By Mark Reardon – USPTA Master Professional
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few years ago I was having a rather philosophical conversation with a good friend who has enjoyed much success in his tennis career. He has published books that are well received in our industry, coached players who have reached the world stage, and has been named to the NCAA Coaching Hall of Fame. My tennis career is similar (in length), that I also teach tennis for a living and we are roughly the same age. We have both enjoyed lifelong careers in this wonderful game, but we were both beginning to feel like we were being passed by or passed over. We were lamenting how it feels to have your opinion less valued simply because you have become a little long in the tooth. I recognize that this is not a new conversation on any level or with any career. And that’s when Chuck said something that struck a chord. “You know Mark, what hurts the most is to feel you are no longer relevant and that the game seemingly does not care about the contributions you have made or what you still have to offer”. Wow, that was it! It was the same for me. It’s that I no longer feel relevant. For many of us, how we feel about ourselves is often not really about what someone else thinks, but is more tied to how we perceive ourselves as compared to someone else or to how we used to be. Again, we are not opening any new concepts here. What is to be done to remain …relevant. I believe the first area where we can remain relevant, at least in the perception category, is in personal appearance. We cannot do anything about the fact that we do not have the looks of one of those senior models with the silvergray hair, flat under the chin, no gobbler nor sagging neck. But we can show up each day clean-shaven (or trimmed nicely). Remember how many times you wanted to tell one of your young pros that just putting on a cap did not hide the fact that they had not washed their hair for 3 days? Another aspect of appearance is making sure you are wearing clothes that fit. It is pretty tough to have the same physique we had in the glory days, but you can certainly make the effort to not let your body get away from you. Sloppy shirts that are too long when not tucked in does not hide a tummy that is too big. It just says that this is how you are going to deal with a lack of dietary discipline. If you are insecure about how you look as it relates to fitness, then do something about it. Nobody likes listening to someone who complains but does nothing to change their plight. Recently I was made aware that I was not as healthy on the inside as I looked on the outside. After walking the rolling hills at the Master’s golf tournament this past April, I found myself breathing a bit harder than normal. I figured it
Serving Up Sagacity
may be time to consult a good friend who happened to be a cardiologist. I ended up needing 3 stints to make sure my heart was getting an adequate blood supply. Problem solved right? Not really. In all likelihood, I had subtly been rallying fewer balls during lessons and feeding more to hide the fact that I was breathing heavily trying to keep up. So now I am tasked with having to change my eating habits. Another part of keeping yourself in the hunt is in the area of education. Don’t fool yourself into believing that your initial certification, whatever it is, allows you to put it in neutral. You must continue to climb the certification ladder, especially in the areas important to your tennis career. The USPTA, PTR, and USTA are loaded with different areas of certification and education. The certificates will always be an ego boost but the most important aspect is the education you get from going through all of those processes. It is the knowledge that really gives you the confidence boost. As they say, knowledge is power and in our case, relevance. As the years click by there have been times when I have felt as though I was competing against the younger pros who may be gaining momentum in my locale. Regardless of how good you are at your craft, there are many things you cannot learn without longevity. Our longevity and staying power in the industry is what gives us wisdom. When we are insecure and we feel like our worth is not being recognized, we tend to do something my Dad talked about every time he heard me do it. He would say, “Mark, you don’t make yourself look taller by trying to make someone else look smaller”. It always pinched hearing that, but it has helped me to adjust my thoughts when parents come to me asking why they should bring their child to me instead of the guy across town. You should immediately deflect the reference to the guy across town and point to what they are looking for in a coach or tennis program. Once they list what they want then it is easy for an experienced pro to fill in the blanks. If the parent feels their player mainly needs a coach who can beat their child to smithereens, and that is no longer in the cards for you, then you can recommend another coach and your ego/relevance/self-confidence remains intact. This is another reason our age and staying power is important. Another way to remain relevant is to do the little things the young lions don’t know to do yet. Every time one of our league teams has a match at the club, I let the captain know that the courts are ready to go well in advance of them arriving. It is not necessary, but it sure makes them proud to say, “Yeah, our pro lets me know every week if we are good to go for our match”. Never discount the value of suck-
ing up to a client. If it falls into the category of great service and not brown-nosing it is a win for you. In the area of job retention, one of the most important things you can do is know every single thing related to running the tennis program at your facility. Being the boss is not enough. Can you string the rackets that come in? Can you get on the roller and groom the clay courts if the maintenance person is sick? Do you know where all the shut-off valves are for the water to the tennis facility? Are you the most fluent in your Point-of-Sale software? If the water is running in one of your toilets, can you or more importantly, will you repair it without having to call someone in to do the easy stuff. Doing all those things and more will make you relevant and hopefully more indispensable to your job. Another potential boost to your local relevance is in the area of writing. General managers and well-read members feel pride in knowing you are being published and look forward to your next article or publication. You should always have several folks proof your submissions for grammatical errors and how your content flows. This is especially true if you are new to the process. I have had friends tell me point blank, “you don’t want to publish that”. As a final thought, most of us know the areas in which we are most proficient. If you are a biomechanist extraordinaire then you need to promote yourself as such. Let your membership know no one can better analyze their tennis game than you. Are you super tech-savvy? Then your online presence needs to have your name showing up at every turn with great opportunities to interact with you or your services. Accentuate the positive. I hope this article has given you pause and caused you to consider some things, even if you have not arrived at that confidence-killing time in life where you begin to feel invisible. I hope I have given you some ideas about what we can do to stay in the mix in our tennis careers. We have also been realistic enough to look the beast in the eye and see there are some things we can do nothing about. The two most obvious are “we cannot look like we did when we were young, nor can we play and scamper about the court as we did when our bodies just responded to our brain when it said, “GO”. But guess what? In every other area, we are better than we used to be. We know more, we see better, we anticipate outcomes better, and if we are introspective at all we recognize it’s about the game and those associated with it, not us. Many of our less experienced counterparts have not figured that one out yet. Have fun becoming more and more relevant, not the less relevant version of ourselves that our subconscious lets us believe. Thanks for reading.
