Why your club needs members of the Tennis Professionals Association

Many of you may be too young to remember back in the late 70’s, during the first tennis boom, when a lesson consisted of “take your racquet back, bend your knees, that will be $25 please”. Well not only has the price of the lesson increased so has the amount of knowledge required to successfully teach tennis. Gone are the days of long lines with pros feeding balls like modern day ball machines. Tennis Professionals today possess skills well beyond just playing tennis well.

Do you require a pro who provides customer service, complaints management, administration, budgeting, marketing, facility management, staff mentoring, human resource management, videography and can play tennis? 

Today’s lessons include a dynamic warm-up, an open skills assessment, often times using video and radar, and then a closed skill drilling of a specific technique or tactic based on the body type and size of the player. This is then followed by another open skill assessment of the successful application of the skill. 

Annual lesson plans need to fit into the Long Term Athletic Development (LTAD) model based on the stage of development of the athlete.

With that being said Tennis Canada’s Coaching and certification program, for the last number of years, has been divided into two streams with one being the Coach stream and the other being the Club Pro stream. This recognizes that the knowledge and skills to coach recreational Adult intermediates are different than those required to train high performance players. Both streams require ongoing continuing education (CE) requirements so as to maintain current status. 

By hiring a member of the Tennis Professional Association you are assured that the candidate has:

• met their CE requirements and has a minimum level of knowledge based on their level of certification
• $2.0 million of personal liability insurance provided through the TPA group policy which reduces insurance exposure to your club.
• received a current police check (if over the age of majority)
• annually, agreed, to follow a Code of Conduct whereby serious breaches can affect their certification.
• ongoing access to current tennis teaching resource materials and discounted equipment.
• strived to meet the Quality Standards for Kids Tennis as set out by Tennis Canada.

Being current in any teaching profession is so important to being able to effectively provide the best possible teaching methodology. A great example of this is that in the last three years tennis analytics has identified that the average rally length of a tennis point is only four hits. With this knowledge today’s lesson focus is on the serve and return much more so than in the past.  It is also recognized that tennis is an open sport relying equally on a tactical and technical advantage over your opponents. 50 % of a lesson should include tactics and reacting to situational based events.

Don’t sell your members short; ensure you are hiring TPA members that are adequately certified for what they are being asked or allowed to do within your facility.