What is the most important skill in tennis?

If forced to pick one, movement — the ability to arrive at the ball early and balanced — because every other skill depends on it and it is the hardest to build late. But good players are a system: reliable technique under pressure, an athletic base, a clear game identity, competitive skills, and the drive to keep improving. No single ingredient survives without the others.

Can a player with average natural talent become a good tennis player?

Yes. Tennis rewards accumulated skill more than raw gifts. A coachable player with strong work habits, a real love of the game, and years of well-directed training will pass more "talented" peers who coast — I have watched it happen for four decades. What average talent cannot survive is average training and average intent.

How can I tell if my child has potential in tennis?

Look past the strokes. Watch how they move, how hard they compete when losing, whether they light up on court, and how quickly they absorb a correction. Those four things predict far more than a pretty forehand at age ten. A one-to-one assessment by an experienced developmental coach will tell you honestly where those markers stand.

Are good tennis players born or made?

Made, overwhelmingly — but made over many years. Genetics set some physical parameters, and temperament matters, but technique, movement, game identity, and competitive skill are all built through training. Every accomplished player I have coached or competed against was manufactured by roughly a decade of deliberate, well-sequenced work.

What do college coaches look for in a tennis recruit?

Beyond level and results, most look for the same things a developmental coach does: movement, competitiveness, attitude toward losses, and whether the player makes teammates better. A player who competes well and keeps improving is a safer recruit than one with better strokes and a fixed game.

What Makes a Good Tennis Player

A technical foundation that holds under pressure

Good players do not have perfect strokes. They have reliable, repeatable mechanics that hold up when it matters — at 4–5 in the third, on a windy day, against a style they hate. Textbook form on the practice court is worth very little if it breaks down under stress; a slightly unorthodox stroke a player can reproduce ten thousand times under pressure is worth a great deal. When I evaluate technique, I am asking one question: will this hold at the next level, under the next level's pace and pressure? If the answer is yes, we build on it. If it is a ceiling, we change it early, because rebuilding a stroke at 16 costs far more than fixing it at 11.

An athletic base

Tennis is a running, jumping, twisting sport played for hours in the heat. First-step quickness, the ability to decelerate and change direction, balance through contact, rotational power from the ground up, and the aerobic engine to think clearly in hour three — these are not extras, they are the platform every stroke sits on. A player with a modest forehand and a great base will beat a player with a beautiful forehand and no legs, almost every time, because the great mover hits far more balls in balance — and a ball struck in balance is a different shot from the same swing hit on the stretch. I go deeper on this in the physical qualities good tennis players need.

A game identity — knowing how you win points

Every good player can answer a simple question: how do you win points? First-strike tennis behind a big serve. Grinding opponents into errors. Taking time away on the rise. Coming forward. This is what I call a player's game style, and it should be built deliberately around the player's weapons, body, and temperament — not copied from whoever is No. 1 that year. A player with a clear identity makes good decisions automatically under pressure, because they know what they are trying to do. A player without one plays a different match every week and calls it versatility. Building that identity is a coach's job as much as the player's — it shapes which shots get the most practice time, which patterns get drilled, and even which physical qualities get priority in the gym. It should be visible in the training plan by the early teens.

Competitive skills — a separate skill set entirely

Competing is not the same as hitting, and it is trained separately. The competitive skills I mean are concrete:

Problem-solving mid-match. The opponent is doing something that works. Good players notice what it is, form a hypothesis, and change something — targets, height, position — before the set is gone. This is where anticipation and reading the opponent becomes a match-winning skill rather than a nice idea.
Managing nerves. Everyone gets nervous. Good players have routines between points, control what they can, and keep playing their game style when their hands are shaking rather than inventing a safer, worse one.
Losing well. Not liking it — using it. Good players come off a loss knowing what to work on. Players who leave every loss with an excuse have learned nothing, and it shows within a year.

The intangibles I actually screen for

When a new family comes to us, the strokes take me a few minutes to assess. What I spend the rest of the session looking for are the things that predict the next five years:

Love of the game. Does the player light up on court, or are they performing enthusiasm for the adults watching? You cannot fake this for a decade, and a decade is what development takes.
Coachability. When I ask for a change, do they try it — even badly, even reluctantly? A player who genuinely attempts the adjustment will improve for as long as they play. A player who nods and does nothing has a hard ceiling no coach can lift.
Work habits. Not just willingness to work hard, but the quality of attention while working. Two players can hit the same basket of balls; one is practicing, the other is exercising.

What parents over-weight — and what actually predicts

Parents almost always over-weight strokes. It is understandable — strokes are what you can see, film, and compare. But at 10, 12, even 14, the prettiest ball-striker in the group is often not the best prospect in it. What predicts, in my experience, is a different list: movement, because it is harder to build late and everything depends on it; competitiveness, because the drive to solve problems and win points shows up in every match forever; and learning speed, because development is thousands of adjustments, and the player who absorbs them twice as fast simply travels twice as far. Strokes are the most fixable item on the whole list. The predictors are the least. A forehand can be rebuilt; I have never installed competitiveness in a player who did not bring it.

This is also why an honest, individual assessment matters more than another lesson. A Saviano Evaluation is exactly that — I look at the whole picture, level, development opportunities and realistic pathways, and tell the family plainly where the player stands. It is not a private lesson, and it is not a sales pitch; families deciding about a professional pathway in particular deserve the unvarnished version.

What makes a good tennis player