Coaching is killing tennis. All of sport, really.
There… I said it.
I reckon I know better than most. I’ve been coaching for twenty-eight years. Was coached for at least a dozen before that. Those years have shown me what coaching really is: a curriculum of conformity, backed by perceived “expertise”, that leads to total dependency.
For a fee we counsel people against being themselves. We convince them that we know better than they do; that they’ll learn “wrong” if they learn on their own; that imitation trumps creation.
If our natural inclination was to learn things “wrong”, we would not have made it as a species.
The profession is either ignorant, or deliberately indifferent, to how people learn. The brain has around 90 billion neurons… perhaps 100 trillion connections between them… as many as 1,000 proteins, in varying amounts, at EVERY one of those 100 trillion connections. The complexity is beyond comprehension. And that’s just information learning. Motor skills learning and recall is even more complex.
If we could make a map of all of that as you’re learning… if we could see what’s where, when, and in what quantities — we can’t, but even if we could — that map would be worthless to everyone but you. Because no two brains are alike. (Your mom wasn’t lying to you. You really are a one of a kind.)
There are competing theories about how learning happens. One says we process like computers. Another says we tune into the information that surrounds us. Competing theories mean we don’t know. Yes, in context repetition makes things easier to repeat, and experience changes us… but no one knows how it happens. If no one knows how… no one is qualified to teach.
Are we so different from our ancestors, who could predict the change of seasons… and credited it to the gods? Many seem to think the specific explanation isn’t important. Tell that to the poor saps who were sacrificed to appease angry gods.
Is it not strange to be living in a future that was imagined as enlightened, still smashing ourselves upon the same rocks that have claimed us for millennia?
I can’t do it anymore. I can’t promote the belief that there are right ways to hit and move and play when there are not; I can’t pretend instruction works when there’s no evidence it does; I can’t keep acting like I know what’s best for others when there is no way I can; and I can’t keep pushing the idea that I have valuable secrets that players can acquire by becoming my disciple. It isn’t true.
Coaching is killing the game. It cripples creativity, conforms thought, homogenizes philosophy, standardizes playing styles and destroys the artistic expression that was once the hallmark of our sport.
You think I’m exaggerating? A quick visit to YouTube confirms the assertion. Watch the greats of just forty and fifty years ago. Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Stefan Edberg, Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Monica Seles, Steffi Graf, Gabriella Sabatini, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, Justine Henin… we’re talking well over a hundred combined Slams here. No two of them shared a game philosophy. No playing style dominated. Serve & volleyers, baseliners, all-courters, bashers, grinders… all roamed wild in every tournament draw. Today it’s western forehands, two hand backhands, and bruising baseline play as far as the eye can see. Coaching caused that. If, like in a forest, diversity is a sign of health… tennis is sick. Coaching sickened it.
We borrowed the blueprint for coaching from our school system. Straight lines. Right answers. Hierarchies. Deference. Conformity. The teacher is the “expert”. Practice is test prep. Match days are the test. Whenever there’s a test, you aren’t learning for you.
Our delivery system came from religion. The USTA, RSPA, USPTR, ITF… etc, are the Holy See. Clubs and tennis centers are the churches. Pros, the clergy. Students, parishioners. The system shepherds its members down a well worn path.
When it doesn’t work out the student gets the blame. They didn’t work hard enough, practice deliberately enough, or maybe they just weren’t talented enough. Whatever, the cathedral of coaching is preserved.
I’m not saying everyone can be great. I’m saying that we don’t know what great is until we see it. An athlete invents a new style and sets a world record. A player goes against the grain and wins. A business beats the odds. With the benefit of knowing the end result, those actions are dissected and methodized and fiscalized.
Meanwhile, nothing repeats. No moment, no pitch, no bounce of the ball, no position, no opportunity will ever be the same. Therefore EVERY swing, catch, throw, kick, reaction, decision, and performance… has to be improvisational. One’s response depends upon their interpretation of the possibilities of the moment… not coach Craig’s. Unfortunately, they have been rendered reliant on coach Craig’s instruction and are therefore unable to improvise.
Twenty years ago professional players didn’t look to their “team” for answers after every freaking point. They didn’t have a team. More to the point… they didn’t need a team.
Socrates warned that this would happen if teaching became a formal profession. A coaches professional interests are best served by making what’s simple appear complicated, thus making their students dependent.
One core belief of coaching is that human value is rare. We equate it to the very tip of a pyramid. We condition people like animals. Then pit them against each other for that spot. The human wreckage is becoming hard to ignore.
So much has changed over the last hundred years… cars, phones, television, computers, the internet. Meanwhile, we still give the same ole tennis lesson. Too many egos, too many careers are at stake to allow for large scale reform. Which is why every new approach mirrors the old. Even the reform minded can scarcely imagine coaching differently.
Students don’t struggle because they don’t know the right way. They struggle because they believe there is one. Tennis isn’t figure skating. No sanctioned aesthetic is demanded… or rewarded. Putting the ball in the box is our gold standard. There are as many ways to do it as there are fingerprints.
Accordingly, the solution isn’t more or better instruction. It’s more freedom… to explore, to imagine, and to create. We don’t need more coaching to make that happen. If anything, it ensures it won’t.
So, I quit… kinda. From now my focus of understanding is no longer the game. It is the players who play it. I will celebrate their value, support their autonomy, let the game make its sense to them, and do whatever I can do to make sure they can survive in the wild.
If that sounds interesting to you, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know.