Roger Federer’s mother Lynette on ‘HOW TO BE A GOOD TENNIS PARENT’ …
It’s important that your child enjoys the game and isn’t forced into it: ‘I believe a child chooses tennis because he or she is attracted to and fascinated by the sport, and that could be through the parents, friends or family.’
Discipline is part of the game: ‘If a child wants to play tennis, then it means he or she has to behave properly at practice and during matches. This is not always an easy task as emotions play a big role, influencing behaviour and results. If your child is misbehaving, I would not intervene during practice, but would discuss it with the coach and try to identify why your child is behaving like that. Bad behaviour during practice can also be a result of a lack of interest, poor tennis coaching, or a child having a bad day at school or at home. I would also speak to the child about his or her behaviour. In Roger’s case, when his behaviour was poor during a match, I told him he was inviting or asking his opponent to beat him.’
Parents should go with the flow. Don’t be too ambitious for your child. And don’t intervene too much: ‘The progress of a child can differ in the same age group – due to size, maturity and other factors – so some children are going to progress faster than others at the beginning of their junior career and will later be surpassed by those who were weaker at an earlier age. Our role as the parent of a junior is to ensure they attend their practice (though not to stand behind the fence all the time), accompany them to their matches, motivate them and comfort them when necessary and, most importantly of all, to ensure that they enjoy the game, and not to put pressure on your child in any way.’
A child can start playing tennis from the age of three or four in a playful manner: ‘Roger started at the age of three because my husband and I spent weekends at the tennis club and he just picked up the racket and loved playing against the wall, and at home against the cupboard. Whenever we could we played on court with him. He could play for hours by himself. Later he played with friends on the road with a mini-tennis net and a soft ball.’
It’s not easy to say how you can help your child find the right coach: ‘We were very fortunate that we had a good system in Switzerland. If a child was talented, they were selected with the best of their age group and had good regional coaches. We were also lucky to have very good coaches at our local club.’
A parent’s role can be very important in the success of a junior: ‘Without the support and guidance of a parent it will be difficult for a junior to succeed.’
Andy and Jamie Murray’s mother Judy on ‘HOW TO DO THE BEST FOR YOUR CHILDREN’ …
You need to let go a little at some stage: ‘You never know if you’ve made the right decision but you have to apply common sense and go with your gut feeling a lot of the time. It’s not that you hand over everything, but you have to try to find the right places or the right people and you have to trust them. You have to keep an eye on it, you can’t just hand your child over to a tennis academy in Barcelona [Andy Murray trained at an academy in the city] and say, “I’ll be back for you in four months.” You have to make sure they are doing the right things.’
You don’t know it all – get some help by talking to other parents: ‘I’ve heard enough horror stories about people who have got it wrong. You have to understand that you don’t know enough about it to think you can do it all yourself and so you have to find the right people to help you.’
Ana Ivanovic, a former world No. 1 and French Open champion, on ‘HOW TO HELP YOUR CHILD GET THE MOST OUT OF THEIR TENNIS’ …
It’s a very bad idea for anyone to coach their child, as it then becomes difficult for the parent to separate parenting and coaching: ‘And it’s very hard for the kids, too. All of a sudden, kids don’t want to see their parents as they’ve had enough of tennis and practising. For parents, it’s going to be hard to educate their kid and talk about anything other than tennis. If a kid has to listen to a parent talking all the time about tennis, and then talking about life in general, the kid is going to be thinking, “OK, just leave me to live my life a little bit as I don’t want you to influence every part of it.” Coaching your child can only hinder them.’
Parents should never try to live their dreams through their kids, and make them play a sport they don’t want to play: ‘I’ve seen that over the years, and it’s just wrong.’
The most important thing is to make sure that your child wants to be on court, and takes pleasure from playing tennis: ‘There are so many talented kids out there who, at an early age, have been forced to train too much by their parents, and they start to hate tennis. That’s because, all of a sudden, it’s something they have to do. Most kids just want freedom. They just want to play. Especially when they’re young, I think they just want to think that they’re playing a game, and that it’s nothing serious. So don’t force them to practise a certain number of hours or anything like that.’
Kids should be encouraged just to play points, rather than doing drills: ‘They should be having a fun and interesting time on court – they shouldn’t be drilling or grinding as then they could lose the desire to play.’
Don’t put pressure on your child to succeed. Just support them: ‘My parents never put pressure on me. They just talked about how important it is to be happy, and to behave well on the court. For them those were the most important things. Looking back, that was great as so many parents these days put so much pressure on their kids. What they should be doing is offering unconditional support as that’s what kids need. Yes, you should show your kid the way. You need to give them discipline so that they respect the time and money that has gone into tennis, so they recognise that they have been given an opportunity to be on court. But that’s not the same as putting pressure on them. Every tennis player needs a supportive family.’
Allow your child to make their own decisions: ‘There are so many cases when parents are very, very controlling. That’s so bad. The parents should be there to make sure that there are the right people around their child. But then they should leave it up to their kid and the coach to play and learn and to go into the details.’
Greg Rusedski, a former US Open finalist and world No. 4, on ‘HOW TO AVOID BEING A NIGHTMARE TENNIS PARENT’ …
Make sure your child has good values: ‘Sometimes you get cheating in junior tournaments – that happens in every single country in the world. Your child has to understand that, in the long run, cheating isn’t going to work.’
Appreciate that your child won’t win every tournament they play: ‘There’s only one winner at the end of each week. There are going to be times when the child loses a lot of close matches, and the parent and coach have to make sure that the development is monitored.’
Understand that, if your child is phenomenal at 12 or 14, that doesn’t guarantee any future success: ‘And one child’s goal will differ from another’s. Some kids might want to use tennis to help them get a university degree. Others might want to get a pro career. But kids can’t really make those decisions until they’re 16, 17, 18 years old. If I hadn’t been up to a certain level at the age of 17, I would have got a university scholarship in America.’
Talk to the coach and make sure everyone is giving the same message to the child: ‘Parents have to work in conjunction with the coach. You can’t have one message from the coach and another one from the parent – they have to be passing on the same message. You have to communicate together. Communication is so important.’
Don’t let your child take the easy route, especially if they want to play at the highest level: ‘The child has to understand what’s expected of them.’
Understand that as your child gets older, he or she may lose his or her passion for tennis, or they could get injured: ‘It’s a long voyage and lots of things can happen.’
Serena and Venus Williams’ father, Richard, on ‘HOW TO INSTIL THE RIGHT VALUES IN YOUR TENNIS-PLAYING CHILDREN’ …
Players need to respect themselves. And also have the respect of their families: ‘But the respect of other people? Venus and Serena don’t give a damn about that.’
Young tennis players need to know that there is a world outside tennis: ‘Tennis is just a game. I’m not proud of what my daughters have done in tennis. I’m proud of my daughters for who they are, and for what they’ve achieved outside tennis. Too many players in tennis, these champions, don’t know anything outside tennis. They haven’t been to college, tennis is all they know, and what else can they do? They stop playing and then they become coaches or TV announcers, they stay in tennis. They can’t do anything else. Most players can’t see that there’s a life beyond the baseline, that the baseline is the baseline. My daughters have been to college, they have an education, and they’re not going to be broke.’
Wimbledon referee Andrew Jarrett on ‘HOW TO COPE WHEN YOUR CHILD IS HAVING A TANTRUM ON COURT’ …
Your child needs to know that, by behaving badly, they’re helping their opponent: ‘If I was the opponent of the child throwing a tantrum, I would be thrilled and delighted. If I see my opponent throwing a tantrum, I know they’re not concentrating. They’re not focusing on the match, they’re rattled, they’re upset. That’s great news. So the child having the tantrum needs to understand that, and to cut that nonsense out as soon as possible. They’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, which is trying to win a tennis match.’
Occasionally you might hear of a parent walking on court to intervene saying, ‘Give me your racket, you’re not going to play for a week… for a year,’ whatever. But that’s just one way of dealing with this: ‘There’s no hard and fast rule. Everyone’s different. You have to look at the whole situation and try to find the best solution. It’s not easy. It can be very inflammatory and can lead to a breakdown in the relationship.’
First and foremost, parents should be parents, and so shouldn’t intervene in any situation: ‘Ask for assistance. That could mean officials, or coaches, or other people who are working with that player. Parents should be in the background, backing up that communal effort. It’s difficult when parents step over that line and try to take on additional roles such as being a coach. It’s not impossible. There are some great examples of people who have crossed that line and done it very successfully. But there are more examples when it hasn’t been so successful and the result is a breakdown in relations. That’s a shame because the parent-child relationship is a very special one, and I think that should be protected.’
Jo Durie, a former world No. 4, on ‘UNDERSTANDING WHY YOUR CHILD IS MISBEHAVING ON COURT’ …
You need to stop the tantrum first. Tell your child that if they don’t stop throwing their racket or swearing, you will ban them from playing tennis: ‘If the child really loves tennis, they’ll stop doing it. I think you need to be quite hard on your child because smashing rackets and swearing is not acceptable.’
Ask yourself whether your child is behaving like that because there’s so much pressure on them: ‘Their desperation to get the win sometimes means they can’t control their emotions. You absolutely want to see some passion and fight but you don’t want to see it ticking over into desperation. You also don’t want to see them going into a mini tantrum about not getting their own way.’
Annabel Croft, a former British No. 1, on ‘HOW TO ENJOY TENNIS AS A FAMILY’ …
Play mixed doubles and mix up ages and standards of play: ‘Playing mixed doubles as a family is one of my favourite things. One of the most amazing things about tennis is that you can involve players of all ages. There aren’t many other sports that allow you to do that. On a tennis court, you can have a grandfather in his 70s playing alongside his 11-year-old grandchild. That’s really sweet. If you swap around after a few games, it’s fun and it keeps everything going. I like to mix up ages and standards of play, to make sure that one person doesn’t end up feeling they’ve lost out every time. You should avoid putting strong players together.’
Don’t make it too pressured – but as kids get older, there will be probably be some hairy moments along the way: ‘Rackets will be thrown – that’s the tennis equivalent of throwing the Monopoly board into the air. It can get tense with pre-teens. One way to avoid that is to make sure that everyone has a chance to partner the best players. But part of what tennis is about is learning how to deal with those emotions.’
You can start playing with the kids from a young age: ‘I’ve been hitting with my kids since they were tiny, since the age of two or three.’
You don’t have to play sets to have fun. Drills can be fun, too, though it helps if there’s a competitive element: ‘You will find that the level goes up. You raise the intensity level, but you’re not putting pressure on anyone. You’re not just aimlessly hitting balls.’
Jo Durie on ‘HOW TO INTRODUCE YOUR CHILD TO TENNIS’ …
There isn’t a right age for kids to start playing; they should start whenever they feel ready. When they do start it’s important for them to use soft balls and large rackets: ‘This allows the child to swing as madly and as hard as they like without it being dangerous. It also means they can have as much fun as possible which is so important.’
Make sure your child spends plenty of time hitting balls over nets and against walls: ‘This gives them a feel of the ball and gives them a chance to practise their swing.’
Kim Clijsters, a former world No. 1 and US Open and Australian Open champion, on ‘HOW TO COMBINE MOTHERHOOD AND TENNIS’ …
Just do it: ‘I spoke to Evonne Goolagong [Cawley] about what it was like winning Wimbledon as a mother. She said to me, “Yeah, you should do it – you go out and play and if you lose, you lose, and the next day you’re home taking care of the kid.” And that’s how it felt for me. OK, there were days when it was hard, but I just got on with it.’
Try to forget your defeats quickly: ‘There were times when I was upset after losing a match and my daughter Jada came over and within a minute I was laughing because she was being silly. It made me realise, “Who cares about the match?” I worked hard to achieve and to do the best that I could. I was brought up to think that I shouldn’t stress out too much about a tennis match. Try to learn from it, and don’t think that it’s the end of the world if you lose, because it really isn’t. It would be embarrassing to think like that.’