British Tennis - Lawn Tennis Association

Tournament planning

If your child is starting to take their tennis more seriously; training regularly and competing all year, then their coach should be recommending that you start to plan a tournament schedule and training goals more formally.

The best way to do this is to design a plan. The initial plans may only be over a three-month period, but as your child progresses the plan may cover the whole year.

Ideally, your child’s coach will be leading and assisting you with the process. It is something which your child, their coach and you should plan together although it should belong to your child as it is their plan.

Some of the most important points to remember when thinking about this area are:

• If your child is to maximise their potential then they should have a well planned tournament schedule.
• The tournament schedule should be planned about six months in advance and be in line with your child’s goal setting
• A well planned competitive programme will ensure that your child gets the right amount of competition, is able to peak for the most important events, has some good chunks of time for training with no main events, and gets some time off.
• If you and your child are committing to a decent training programme then your child’s coach should be helping you with the plan
• Parent and coach should work together to plan the tournament schedule

Goal setting and planning

The importance of goal setting cannot be emphasised enough. It is safe to say that without setting goals, and regular three-monthly review of those goals, your child has little or no chance of maximising their potential in tennis.

Setting goals is important because:

• Maximising a player's potential is a long journey. Goal setting maps out where a player wants to be in the future and then gives a series of stepping stones to enable the player to get there. 
• When players are training regularly it gives each session a purpose. Without goal setting, the player and coach tend to drift through sessions and the quality of work drops. 
• The player has ownership of the goals. Players that have committed to and set their own goals are more likely to be motivated in working to achieve them. 
• Knowing where they are trying to get to is motivating and exciting for a player. Having longer-term goals in place such as a higher ranking or gaining selection for a county team is very motivating to a player and gives everything an added sense of purpose. 
• Goal setting is driven by long-term outcomes, but it gives the player, coach and parents short-term goals to focus on. This is a great help to parents around tournaments as it gives them something to focus on and talk about other than the outcome.