Teaching the game
It may seem obvious but many of the rules and nuances of our game we take for granted. Players
need to learn and know these rules to play properly and that means that we need to teach them.
So make an effort to include them in practices and drills, and help players learn these incidentally
as well as consciously.
Court Boundaries
We have already said how important defining a court is for each activity, but remember once you
have defined the court that you may have to teach some simple principles that we take for granted
but for children are new.
For example you need to explain “What is in and out” and include the fact that “on the line is in”.
Children often don’t watch the ball to the very end of its flight, seeing almost only what they want
to see so you need to set aside some time in lessons to get players to practice calling balls in and
out, and act as umpires for each other.
At a very young age you may need to explain that only the first bounce counts, as children don’t
always understand what bounce was the important one. So trying some practices where children
have to count bounces will help them to understand that it is all about the first one
Ways to win and lose a point
It may sound very obvious to us but some younger children will need to be taught how a point is
won and lost, so You’ll need to teach that this happens if a player:
 Misses the ball
 Hits the ball where the other player cant get it
 Hits the ball out
 Hits the ball in the net
 Allows the ball to bounce twice
 Double faults on serve
 Hits the ball with anything other than their racquet
Counting and Keeping Score
Children often loose track of the score. Remember we said that they have trouble maintaining a
focus on more than one thing and as they are primarily focussed on hitting the ball over the net
and in the court they may forget the score.
The easiest way to help with this is to use visual scoreboards; clothes
pins on the net works best but you can also use balls in a hoop or
place cones on a stack. After they are confident with this and the
scoreboard is not needed remind them to call out the score very
clearly after each point so that both players agree, or get them to
umpire each other matches.
For more complicated scoring tasks like scoring a tie break try using shaded scorecards, or cones to
indicate where to stand.
Tennis is also a game of best of three and players need to experience this idea so that they
understand that just because they lose the first set or mini tie break the match is not over and they
can win the next two and still win. So its a good idea to play best of 3 mini tie breaks, or first to
three points so that players understand this concept.
Serve and Return Rules
Equally players need to remember that they get two serves, so when practicing serve it’s a good
idea to always practice serves in twos, then players will learn incidentally. Remember to teach
players the let rule and which side to start serving from. All these things we take for granted but
you will have to include in your practices and lessons.
Teach the Game
So we have established that you should take time to practice scoring and learning the rules in
every lesson. It’s important that children understand what the game of tennis all about and start to
aspire to be little players. Remember that players are much more likely to be hooked if they can
serve, rally and score! So get players to act as umpires for each others matches, and during lessons,
set homework tasks based around scoring and on rainy days get players to watch part of a match
on TV and see if they can keep score.
Parents
Just because parents are adults we sometime assume that they understand the game, but this is
not always true. They may need to be shown scoring systems and understand the basic rules.
Equally it is important that parents allow their children to learn to become independent little
players. It is inevitable that young children will make mistakes on line calls and lose track of the
score, but parents should not interfere. Making mistakes is part of the learning process and
children should be encouraged to learn the rules and know what to do in different situations. You
should take time to prepare both players and parents for Tournaments so that they understand the
rules when competition becomes more formal.