The training week before: taper the volume, sharpen the game
The instinct before a tournament is to train more. The correct move is to train less, and sharper. In the final week, volume comes down and intensity stays honest — shorter sessions, competitive live ball, first-strike patterns, serves and returns under a bit of pressure. The player should walk on court Saturday feeling fresh and slightly hungry for tennis, not heavy-legged from a cramming week. The physical engine you arrive with was built in the months before — see the physical qualities a tennis player needs — and no final week can add to it. It can very easily subtract.
And one rule I hold absolutely: no technical overhauls inside ten days of an event. A stroke change makes a player worse before it makes them better — that is how motor learning works — and a tournament is the wrong place for the worse phase. If the grip needs changing, change it the week after. The final week is for sharpening what the player already owns: their patterns, their serve locations, their game identity.
The logistics that quietly steal matches
Ask any experienced coach what beats juniors at tournaments and the honest answer is rarely a forehand. It is this list:
- Sleep — banked, not crammed. One good night before the final does little if the three nights before it were short. Set the sleep schedule to tournament hours several days early, especially for morning match times a teenager's body considers offensive.
- Hydration — started the day before. In Florida heat, a player who begins drinking on match morning has already lost. Hydration for a hot tournament starts the previous day and includes electrolytes, not just water; the first signs of a badly hydrated player are cramping calves and foggy decisions in the third set.
- Stringing — done, and doubled. Fresh strings before the event, and at least two match-ready racquets at the same tension. A junior who breaks a string and finishes a match with a differently-strung backup is playing a different sport. Do not let a $20 string job decide a tournament.
- Food — timed, not improvised. A real meal two to three hours before the scheduled match, and portable snacks — fruit, a sandwich, something the player has eaten before — for the gaps. Tournament sites reliably offer the worst possible food at the worst possible moment. Nothing new on match day, ever.
The day before
Short and specific. A forty-five minute to one-hour hit — rhythm, serves to spots, returns, a few competitive points to wake up the competitor, done. Then the boring logistics that remove morning chaos: bag packed (racquets, grips, water, electrolytes, snacks, towel, a change of shirts, any medications), draw checked, match time and court location confirmed, travel time planned with a margin. The evening is for a normal dinner and an early night — not for hitting another basket "to be safe," and not for watching video of the top seed until midnight.
The morning of
Wake early enough that nothing is rushed — rushing is the enemy, because it hands the nervous system a reason to be jangled before the match supplies one. Eat the planned meal, arrive at the site with time to spare, and warm the body up properly before the five-minute warm-up: jogging, dynamic movement, shadow swings, a light sweat. The on-court warm-up with your opponent is for timing, not for fitness. Then run whatever pre-match routine the player has practiced — music, quiet, a few minutes reviewing the game plan. The routine matters more than its contents; it tells the competitor's mind that this is normal, and we have done this before.
Scouting and game-planning at junior level
Junior scouting should be simple, because a junior under stress can execute a simple plan and cannot execute a dossier. If you can watch the opponent play — earlier round, adjacent court — chart a few concrete things, the same way I teach it in my anticipation drills: where does the serve go on big points, which wing breaks down first under pressure, what do they do with the short ball, do they come forward willingly or under protest. Two or three tendencies is a game plan.
Just as important is what to ignore: rankings, seedings, reputation, and the warm-up. Juniors talk themselves out of matches in the parking lot because of a number next to a name, and warm-up form tells you almost nothing — plenty of players look magnificent for five minutes and compete poorly for two hours. The plan should be written mostly in terms of your own game — "my serve wide, first ball to the backhand, be first to the middle of the court" — with the opponent's tendencies as adjustments, not as the script.
Managing the wait between matches
Tournaments are mostly waiting, and the waiting is a skill. After a match: shade, fluids, food within the hour, a short cooldown, and then genuinely off — off the feet and, just as much, off the mental treadmill. A junior who spends three hours replaying the morning's tiebreak or studying the draw walks into the afternoon match already tired. Parents can help enormously here by keeping the atmosphere light and normal. Save perhaps twenty minutes before the next match to switch back on: a snack, movement, the plan, the routine. The player who treats the wait as recovery beats the player who treats it as a vigil — most visibly in a second three-setter on a 90-degree day.
After: the review that turns results into development
A tournament the player never reviews is an expensive weekend. Within a day or two — not in the emotion of the moment — the player and coach should pull three things from each match: what won points (did the game identity hold up under pressure?), what lost them (patterns, not just "unforced errors" — errors from where, doing what?), and one or two development priorities the results point at. If someone charted the matches, even roughly, this conversation is built on facts instead of feelings. That review is what separates players who play twenty tournaments a year from players who learn from twenty tournaments a year.
And for parents: the car ride home is not the review. The research on this is clear and my forty-five years agree with it — a junior who loses and then endures an hour of analysis in the passenger seat learns mainly to dread the car. The debrief belongs to the coach, later, with a calm player. The car ride belongs to something closer to "I love watching you play. Where should we get dinner?" The player who hears that after a loss keeps loving the game — and the ones who keep loving it are the ones who last long enough to get good.
When the preparation itself needs help
Some events justify more than a home taper — a national event, a first ITF, a stretch where results have stalled. This is exactly what our Week-to-Week program exists for: competitive players plug into the full-time training group for the week or weeks before an event — same coaches, same standards — and arrive sharpened rather than merely rested. However you do it, the principle stands: arrive fresh, arrive organized, arrive with a simple plan, and let the tennis you have already built do its work.