Meet your mentor: how to find your perfect teaching pro

What was the first thing that the thousands of people who picked up tennis during the pandemic learned about the sport? It’s fun, yes. It’s a safe way to exercise, definitely. But they probably realized something else: It’s hard.

As these newcomers discovered, while tennis bills itself as an individual sport, there’s a limit to how good you can become at it on your own. Practice can make perfect—but only if you have an expert there to watch and correct your strokes, before any bad habits become permanently ingrained.

Fortunately, experts, in the form of teaching pros, abound. Hiring one is an investment; the average price of a private lesson is $50/hour. But not every coach is created equal, so it pays to shop around. When you’re ready to start, here are 10 suggestions.

1. Give Yourself Options

"There’s a coach who will suit you,” says Todd Snyder, a teaching pro in Brooklyn, N.Y., “but you might not find that person on the first try.” If possible, join a facility with multiple pros, so you have choices. Ask for referrals from other players, and observe the pros as they give lessons. To start, you might ask a friend, or another player close to your level, to join you in a group or semi-private lesson. That way, you’ll cut down on the cost, and probably have more fun, as you get to know the instructor. (You can also go to usptapro.com or ptr.com to find a teaching pro in your area.)

2. Look for Someone

Who Coaches Full Time According to Kamau Murray, who coaches Sloane Stephens and has worked with recreational players in Chicago, you should be wary of picking someone who is moonlighting, even if the price seems right. “You don’t want someone who’s doing this for beer money,” Murray says. Instead, find someone who makes his living from coaching, because that person will be concerned about his reputation. As Murray says, “Full-time pros want people to watch their students and ask, ‘Wow, that girl has a great forehand, who’s her coach?’”

3. Don’t Choose Someone Who is Self-Taught

For many players, it’s a point of pride be able to say, “I’ve never taken a lesson in my life.” But just because someone can learn the game doesn’t mean they can teach it. Snyder says that it’s worth finding out if a pro is certified by the PTA or PTR. “There are a lot of people out there who probably shouldn’t be teaching tennis,” he says. “Certification helps you weed them out.” Adds Murray, “You want a coach who has played at least at the college level. They have experience with how the game is taught.”

4. Find Someone Who Cares.

If you’re going to make a monetary investment in a coach, you should expect an emotional investment in return. How can you tell if your pro cares enough? “You want someone who will do the things they’re not getting paid to do,” Murray says. “Someone who will educate you about the sport, show you how to join a USTA league or enter a tournament, set you up with doubles partners or opponents, watch your matches, and lick your wounds after you lose.” “If there’s no emotional attachment from your coach,” Murray says, “you’re doomed.”

5. Find a Strong Listener

“You have to follow first before you can lead,” is one of Colorado-based teaching pro Emma Doyle’s favorite quotes, and one she likes to think about when she has a new student. “Ask great questions to understand the player’s goals, to see what’s possible for them even when the player might not know.” Rather than bombarding you with their own ideas, your pro should start by finding out what you want to get out of tennis. “I like to do a little interview with any new player,” Snyder says. “It’s a way to break the ice and get on the same page with the student.”

6. Look for a Good Communicator

Unlike team-sport athletes, tennis players only talk to themselves when they’re on court. So it may not come as a surprise that many of them aren’t great communicators. You may have to look hard to find a teaching professional with those skills, but it’s worth the effort. “You see a lot of coaches, if they don’t get what they want, they start yelling,” Murray says. “A coach should be able to explain something five different ways. Instead of raising his voice, he’ll change his words and come at the problem from different angles.”

7. Make Sure You’re Having Fun

There’s no getting around it: Improving at tennis involves lots of repetition, which means coaches must make the boring seem fun. For Doyle, the key is to get people playing, and succeeding, as quickly as possible. “Let the activity do the coaching for you,” she says. To that end, she uses depressurized balls and smaller courts to help novices engage in rallies more quickly. “I want people to fall in love with tennis,” Doyle says. “Our goal should be to attract people, keep them, and coach them. You don’t do that by standing around and talking at them.”

8. Be Open to Change

Have you ever heard a player complain that a pro “tried to change my game”? If you want to get better, it might be the only option. “Coming to a pro and saying you don’t want to change anything is like telling your doctor you don’t want to take any medicine,” Murray says. Doyle believes it’s the pro’s job to find out what a player wants to get out of the sport, and decide from there what changes are necessary. “If someone just wants to play social doubles,” she says as an example, “you probably don’t need to change their grips.”

9. Don’t Put Up With Screaming

For many of us, the word “coach” calls up images of Bobby Knight throwing a chair, or Nick Saban frothing at the mouth. That’s not what you should expect, or accept, from your teaching pro. “Our job is to find fault with what a player is doing,” Murray says, “so you have to be gentle about it. You don’t want to kill someone’s passion for the sport.” Doyle like to think of coaching in terms of three E’s: energy, empathy, and enjoyment. “You have to walk alongside your players,” she says, “and start by emphasizing their strengths and what they do well.”

10. Don’t Be Afraid to Move On

OK, you’ve hired a coach. But just like in the pros, or any walk of life, working relationships rarely last forever. So how do you let your instructor go when it’s time? “I think every pro has had players disappear, and then you’ll see them a couple of weeks later on the next court working with someone else,” Snyder says with a laugh. “You want to yell over, ‘Hey, what happened?’” But breakups are part of tennis, and can be healthy for both parties. If you’re not improving, it’s better to make a fresh start with a new coach—and hopefully no hard feelings.