Someone who teaches children, not adult tennis made smaller
Teaching children is its own craft. A good children's coach runs games instead of lectures, feeds hundreds of balls instead of giving long explanations, and offers one simple idea at a time. They use the slower balls and smaller courts that let a child actually rally, and they plan around an eight-year-old's attention span instead of fighting it. A coach who takes the adult game — grips, positions, a long talk about weight transfer — and shrinks it onto a small person will bore that person out of the sport.
Be clear-eyed about playing ability, too. Playing well and teaching well are different skills. A former college or tour player brings real things: they know what competition feels like, and they can hit with a strong junior. But I have known excellent players who could not explain a forehand to a ten-year-old, and excellent teachers of children who never played at a high level. As your child advances, a strong playing background starts to count for more, but it never replaces the ability to teach.
Treat certification as the baseline. In the US, the common certifying bodies are PTR and USPTA. Certification tells you a coach has been trained in how to teach; it does not tell you whether they are good with your child. Ask whether the club or program background-checks its coaches as well — a good one will answer without hesitating.
A development plan, not a bag of drills
Drills are the easy part; every coach has a hundred of them. What separates a coach from a ball-feeder is a plan — what your child is working on now, why that comes first, what comes next, and what has to be true before they move on. Once a prospective coach has seen your child hit, ask three questions:
- What would you build first, and why? A good coach prioritizes two or three things. A coach who lists twelve has not decided anything.
- How will we know it is working? The answer should be something you can see — a rally your child can sustain, a serve that goes in when it matters — not "they'll just get better."
- How will you keep me informed? You want a regular, scheduled conversation about the plan, not ninety seconds in the parking lot.
Communication with parents is part of a coach's job, not an extra. The best coaches explain their reasoning in plain language, tell you uncomfortable things early, and want to hear what you see at home — sleep, mood, school pressure, whether your child still talks about tennis on Sunday night. If you are buying lessons rather than a program, the same principle holds: a block of sessions with a goal beats an open-ended weekly slot, as I explain in are tennis lessons worth it.
Watch how they handle a loss
This is the test most parents never think to run, and it tells you more about a coach than anything said in an interview. Children cry, sulk, throw racquets and tank sets. How a coach responds in that moment is who the coach is.
The right response is calm and specific. A good coach lets the emotion settle, treats the loss as information rather than a verdict, and picks one thing to work on — usually at the next session, not the minute the match ends. They do not shame the child, sulk alongside them, or turn one bad match into a lecture about effort. They also teach the emotional side of competing on purpose — what to do between points, how to reset after a mistake — instead of hoping a child toughens up alone. I have always believed that coaching young people is a sacred trust. A coach who makes a child afraid of losing has broken it.
How to watch a lesson
Ask to watch a full session, ideally a group class with children at your child's level. Stand where you can see the whole court, and watch the children rather than the coach's own strokes.
- Count the balls. In a good children's session, kids are hitting almost constantly. Long lines, long talks and long waits for a turn are the warning sign.
- Listen to the corrections. They should be short, specific and one at a time — "catch it out in front" — and the coach should notice whether the child managed it.
- Look for points and games. Children learn to play tennis by playing it. A session that is all feeding and no live play builds hitters, not players.
- Check the ratio and the grouping. How many children per coach, and are they grouped by level as well as age? A beginner stuck with strong players learns nothing, and neither do the strong players.
- Watch the last five minutes. Does each child hear one thing they did well and one thing to work on? Do they leave the court still energized?
For a young beginner, a good group class is usually a better start than private lessons; the trade-offs are laid out in private lessons vs group clinics.
Red flags
- Guarantees. Nobody can promise a ranking, a scholarship or a pro career. A coach who does is selling, not coaching.
- Constant technique overhauls. Some changes are necessary. But a coach who rebuilds the forehand in week one, the grip in week three and the serve in week five never lets anything settle. Good coaches change a little at a time, in order, and give each change time to hold.
- Ego. Watch for a coach who talks more about their own career than your child's game, treats your child's results as advertising, runs down every other coach in town, or cannot say "I don't know."
- Pressure. Yelling, punishing losses, pushing extra privates or more tournaments, insisting that a nine-year-old drop every other sport. Pressure buys short-term results and produces long-term quitters.
References, and when to move on
Ask for two or three families whose children have worked with the coach for more than a year, and ask them specific questions. Is your child still enthusiastic? What has changed in their game? How does the coach communicate? What happened the last time something went wrong? If you know a family who left, ask them why.
Then give the coach a fair run of a couple of months, judged on engagement and progress in practice rather than match results. Move on if your child has stopped improving for a long stretch and the coach has no explanation and no new plan; if your child dreads going; if communication has broken down; or if your child has outgrown the setting, the best in every group with nobody left to push them. Leave well: tell the coach yourself, thank them, and ask them to pass their notes to whoever comes next.
A private coach and an academy can work together
Choosing a coach is not always choosing one person. Many competitive juniors keep a private coach for technical projects and train most days in an academy group, where they get hitting partners at their level and specialists in fitness and the mental side. It works when the two coaches talk and agree who owns technique; it fails when a child gets contradictory instructions from two adults who have never spoken. The two models are compared in detail in tennis academy vs private coach, and Florida families weighing programs can start with our guide to the best tennis academies in Florida.
If you want an outside opinion before you choose, a Saviano Evaluation is a one-to-one assessment with me of your child's level, development opportunities and path. It is not a private lesson — and sometimes the honest answer is to stay with the coach you have.