How much tennis?
The first question is, how much does your child want to compete? Competition should be fun for your child, and you don’t want to force them to do something they don’t enjoy.
Once your child has started to grasp the basics and started to enjoy matches and develop self-confidence, then they should be encouraged to play matches on a regular basis.
Benefits of Competition
- Player develops good tactical awareness, problem solving skills and decision making.
- Player is able to progress in the areas of the game which their coach is developing, and so complete the learning process.
- Player develops competitive and mental toughness qualities to cope with the demands of the game.
- Player is able to improve their tennis rating and ranking which opens the way to further competitive opportunities.
It is important to get a balance at this stage between practice time, lessons to further develop and participating in other sports to encourage overall rounded development.
Creating this balance will allow the player to:
- Develop the skills which will benefit longer term development.
- Develop a game style which will be effective in junior and then senior tennis.
- Keep the player fresh and looking forwards to competition.
- Allow them to keep spending time with their family and friends in other activities.
- Make non tennis friends by doing other sports.
Types of Competition
1. Practice matches
Really important and nearly always missing from a player's programme. Any aspiring player should be playing at least one full practice match a week or several practice sets.
2. Training events
These are lower level tournaments, probably on a local level, such as matchplay events or club matches. Training events should be played on a fairly regular basis to get good match practice and to practise introducing new areas of the game into real life situations.
The parent, coach and child all need to understand the purpose of such matches. Obviously it is important to give 100 per cent and try to win, but it is also about developing the game for more important matches in future months and years.
3. Main events
These are the bigger tournaments in the year, eg, Junior Nationals or the County Closed, depending on the level that your child is currently competing at.
At these events all the development work should have been done so that the player can concentrate fully on putting it into practice and raising their game to a new level.
Be careful to avoid these more significant events becoming so significant that they become high pressure. This can lead to your child feeling an expectation to get good results.
Your approach and your child's approach will be the same. The difference will be that the coach should have completed all the development work so that the player is ready to focus fully on putting it into practice, without worrying about whether or not they can do it.
So how much then..?
Competition is a mixture of team and individual events with greater emphasis on individual play as the child gets older and more experienced.
Building on the information in Learning to Play and Compete, the table below continues this for players aged over 11.
| Age |
Practice Matches and Training Events |
Matches in Main Events (per year) |
|
Under 12
|
4 sets or 2 full matches per week |
40-60 matches |
Under 14
|
4 sets or 2 full matches per week |
50-80 matches |
Under 16
|
6 sets or 3 full matches per week |
60-80 matches |
Under 18
|
6 sets or 3 full matches per week |
60-80 matches |