Monday, February 28, 2011

32 Draw=No Win for Others

Other notable losers of the 32 draw that did not even swing a racquet:
  • The most obvious are kids that did not get in, but what about the officials that did not get hired because they only used 8 courts?
  • The t-shirt vendor whose order was cut in half from last year or the racquet stringer who is available onsite at many tournaments (and was nowhere around).
  • The tennis ball vendor who sold fewer cases of balls to the tournament because they played only half as many matches and no third set (therefore no new can of balls). BTW, the match tie-break for both main draw and back draw matches was another topic of conversation amongst parents.
  • The food vendor who sold fewer lunches to the tournament players.
  • The host hotel for the tournament. Consider this possible conversation between TD and Hotel Mgr:
TD: Hello, Hotel Mgr. We're having a Boys' 12 National Tournament at our club next month and we're looking for a host hotel and sponsor.

Hotel Mgr (thinking to himself): A national tournament? People flying in from all over the country and needing a place to stay? We booked so many rooms last year and that tournament lasted 5 days...

Hotel Mgr: GREAT! We'd love to do it again this year!

TD: I was thinking we'd have the check-in there and also hold the mandatory meeting there, followed by a pizza party.

Hotel Mgr: GREAT! I'll bring in extra staff and I'll give you a great tournament rate. About how many players will be arriving on what day and for how long?

TD: Well, the USTA cut the draw to 32 and shortened the tournament to 3 days, so that means that half the field will be out after the first day.

Hotel Mgr (thinking to himself): I've had wedding parties book more rooms and everyone stays the whole time. I'm not so sure about this.
  • And last but not least: HIGH-TECH TENNIS. For the past 3 years, we've provided video services at the National Open BG14s in Dothan, AL (64 draw, 128 players), which has been a great tournament at a great facility with a great tournament director and great tournament staff.

    For whatever the reason, Dothan lost that tournament this year (thanks again) and so we were left with the National Open B12s (32 players). We contacted the TD and she was more than happy to accommodate us. She was glad we were available to enhance their tournament.

    We had a good tournament percentage wise (consider it was one age, one gender, 32 draw) but let's face it, percentages don't pay the bills. At national tournaments, we normally add 20-25 new customers, which is always good. We're growing our base and more players are taking advantage of the tools and technology out there to help them improve and to document a small slice of their tennis development.

    At this national tournament, we picked up 3 new customers from Florida.
Since they only used 8 courts, we did a HIGH-TECH TENNIS first and recorded every single match of the tournament (thinking no one will buy a match that you don't record).

The only problem was that in last national tournament in 2010 that FELT like a national tournament, we recorded more matches BY REQUEST than were actually played in this entire tournament. 

No big winner here...


When so many lose, WHO WINS?

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Who Wins?

You’ve heard about big changes to the format and schedule of junior tennis tournaments…Well, those changes are HERE.

Now we know that nobody likes change – so it’s far too early to predict the answer to this question with any accuracy – and we’re certainly hoping for the best…After all, if junior tennis players win, we ALL win.

But we thought we’d share some early reactions.
Please refer to the postings listed under the Blog Archive section.

If you know ANYTHING about us, you know how much we care about junior tennis.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

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10 and Under=No Win for Players or TDs

At our last Southern Level 3 tournament of 2010, we saw 20 players (more girls than boys) compete in the 10 age division. This was before the changes took effect.

We recently went to a Level 4 tournament and saw 9 players in this age division (7 boys and 2 girls). The girls played one match (the finals) – first and last round in one match!

There were a few more 10 and under players in the tournament, but they weren’t playing in that age division. Instead, they were playing “up” in the 12 age division. Check out this conversation:

HTT: How was your match this morning?
PLAYER: I guess it was o.k. I won.
HTT: What was the score?
PLAYER: I won 0 and 0. But the kid I played was only 7.

How much fun was that for the 7 year old? Or for the 12 year old?
No real winners there…

Finally, we’re still trying to figure out how any player on the 60 foot court will be able to compete against the great 12 year old national players we saw this weekend.

The tournament director told us he had to spend money to paint the lines on the courts (and listen to lots of club members complaints)…and it turns out they had far fewer participants in the 10 and Under age division for that tournament compared to the previous year.

Where’s the winner?

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32 Draw=No Win for Players or TDs

Who KNOW it's early and these changes just took effect.
Still, everyone has a right to an opinion...and they must all be copying from each other because they're all singing the same tune.

We’ve been going to national tournaments for the past 4+ years. We normally see players coming in from everywhere in the country…and there are always a few that just barely got in to their first national tournament. Wow, those parents and coaches are so proud and so happy for the player – before they’ve even hit a single ball!
And how about the kid who was on the alternate list and then got a last minute call to say that someone had withdrawn…there was a slot for them - could they get there in time? Those are great stories to hear because that kid is a winner at the moment he picks up his first t-shirt that says “NATIONAL TOURNAMENT”.

We saw none of those things. We saw players who had already played in a national tournament, we saw that NO players withdrew. We saw that they all came from Florida and the Southern section (with just a few from the Mid-Atlantic section). We know these same kids played each other in the last national and they'll probably play each other again in the next.

This was good competition right off the bat
(or should we say off the racquet).


But no win for players...

The talk amongst the parents around the tournament site about the 32 draw was one of puzzlement. No one, NO ONE was in favor of the change. One parent said he could understand it somewhat but liked it the way it was. According to another: "If the USTA wants the kids to get more experience by playing more matches, then why did they limit the draw to 32?"

We saw more tournament staff, volunteers, court sweepers, and officials than there were players.

A 32 draw meant the tournament director had to do the same amount of work for 1/2 the entry fee. I'm sure there are many TDs this week who are wondering whether it was really worth it to host a tournament with a 32 draw.

Bottom line: You'd like to think TDs run tournaments for the love of the game and for the good of the kids but as you may well know, many TDs do it just for the money. Some break even, but I can't think of many who will run a tournament and lose money.

No winners here...

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Monday, February 21, 2011

As HIGH-TECH TENNIS Turns - February 21

Danny Makes Me LOL
HI and thanks for reading! It's been another wonderful week in our world but it wouldn't have been half as nice if we didn't have great support from great people. We're all about giving credit where it's due and it's time once again to name names...Ready? :)

We stopped in at the GA Tech/UGA match recently and it was so nice to chat with two of our friends. GREAT THANKS to Coach Manny Diaz and Asst Coach Will Glenn for inviting us to return to the Bulldog Tennis Camp at UGA this summer. So sorry we will miss out on John Isner's 2nd annual camp but we can only be in one place at a time and we've already committed to the Clay Court Chps in Winston Salem, NC.

We don't exactly have our own courts (since we're a mobile business) but we do have some great friends who come through whenever we ask for a favor. GREAT THANKS to Will Wright and Torrey Hawkins (Windward Tennis Academy) for making easy for us to impress our friends from TN. GREAT THANKS to Mary Nunaley for bringing her son Amadeus to GA so we could capture content for his College Recruit Video. :)

When we met a great TD last fall, he invited us to return for his very next tournament, so we did (LOL). GREAT THANKS to Cole Donley (Athens Country Club) for the warm welcome and the great suport at the Athens Winter Classic Chps. We know that Level 4 players need video love too and we made lots of new friends. See you in August! :)

As always, the greatest GREAT THANKS goes to YOU, our wonderful customer friends. It is truly a privilege to play a small part in the development of your junior tennis player - and living this dreamy life is tough to beat! :) Thank you for your ongoing support - and our cameras will be looking for YOU! Finally, LONG LIVE THE FED - gooood luck in Dubai!!!




 

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Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Practice Being a Good Sport


Practice makes perfect. Nothing good comes easy.
If you want something bad enough, you have to be willing to work for it. Nobody gives you anything in this world.


These clichés apply to life AND they apply to tennis. If you know the first thing about competitive tennis, you know that it involves hours and hours (and HOURS) of tennis practice. Many players get up early to practice at 6AM, go to school, and then go back to practice. Most players practice 5-6 days a week. What a huge commitment of time and energy (not to mention money---but we’ll have much more on that later)!

“If you don’t practice, you don’t deserve to win.”

Andre Agassi

Why do these tennis players do it? Because they want to compete at a high level and they realize that level of commitment is required.

That leaves little time for other activities, which can be a good thing. One mother told me she’d agreed to buy her son a car if he played tennis until he graduated from high school and never smoked or drank. She spoke very openly and honestly and she admitted that she was effectively bribing her son…and she was o.k. with that. One father told me he was glad his pretty daughters played tennis because as long as they were on the tennis court, they weren’t out having sex! Such a direct comment took me by surprise for a second but then I thought about it and I understood how he felt and why he’d said it.

It’s easy to see why good parents will do almost anything they can and make whatever sacrifices are necessary to keep their kids involved in tennis (or any other sport or hobby that takes up a significant amount of their time). Of course there is no guarantee that the kid will remain interested in tennis – especially when the peer pressure sets in – and of course every kid is different and must experience life on his or her own terms, even if these terms prove to be harmful.

Consider the recent report concerning local 8th and 9th grade girls who were involved in gang activity. WOW. Girls… Gangs???
I don’t even know what else to say about that!
Clearly, setting a goal and then working hard to achieve that goal is a very good thing to do at any age – particularly for young kids. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop! I can speak from personal experience about this point but suffice it to say there is a reason I chose not to have children! The karma train would run me over and I just can’t imagine what I would do if my teenage daughter put me through even a fraction of the stuff my mother had to put up with from me. I was baaad.

“If you want a kid to dream about something, you have to show them something to dream about.”
Wayne Bryan

Before we leave the subject of practice, let’s think about Wayne Bryan, father of Bob and Mike Bryan. This famous father began taking his sons to college and pro tennis events when they were very young. At 12 years of age, the boys decided they were going to become the best doubles team in the world…and they have now been ranked #1 in the world for at least the last four years. Sooo impressive!

GOOD SPORTSMANSHIP

“Long after your match is over,
no one will remember who won

but everyone will remember how you behaved.”
Unknown

Since I’m not now, have never been, and never will be an athlete, I can unequivocally say that I’ve never given a moment’s thought to what it means to be a good sport. After being surrounded by tennis for AT LEAST 24 hours each day for the past five years, I now see that it’s crucial to the sport of tennis because at its highest level (such as in a National Open with a 64-draw), 64 of the best players in the nation are selected and only ONE player wins…That doesn’t mean that 63 players lose. It just means that 63 players DON’T win.

Clearly, there’s more to tennis than just being the player who reaches the highest score first. Our cameras have shown us that there’s no such thing as a loser in a tennis match. It is simply a situation where one player wins and the other player just doesn’t win.

And we’ve certainly seen that any player can win any tennis match on any given day. For my money, winning a match doesn’t matter nearly as much as how the player handles losing a match. The bottom line here is that we’ll all have many opportunities to experience both winning and losing in life. Learning to win with class and humility and to lose with grace are very important life skills.


Follow The Golden Rule

So what is good sportsmanship all about? Well, it’s certainly about more than a hand shake, though our cameras have seen the players who shake hands in a sincere manner (and the ones who don’t) at the net when the match is over. One dictionary defined it as playing fair, following the rules of the game, respecting the judgment of referees and officials, and treating all opponents with respect. Some people define sportsmanship as the “golden rule” of sports – in other words, treating the people you play with and against as you’d like to be treated yourself. You demonstrate good sportsmanship when you show respect for yourself, your opponent, and all referees and officials.

As if there weren’t enough reason to demonstrate good sportsmanship, it’s not only important to behave well on the court, it’s also good strategy. We watch the top players and they always react in the same way, whether they win or lose the point, the game, the set, or the match. Smart players know better than to let their opponent see their reactions. A big part of good sportsmanship is having a good reputation. So why not strive for the reputation of a gracious player who is always pleasant and always fair. Our cameras have seen this player and he is admired by fans and opponents alike.

 
Most Prestigious Award
Winning the Sportsmanship Award at a junior tennis tournament seems so much more important in the long run than winning the tournament itself. We think the good person has so much more to offer the world than the good tennis player. If it were up to us (which, of course, it’s not), we’d like to see the Sportsmanship Award included at each and every tournament. Furthermore, we were encouraged when we recently read about a league that requires players to rate their opponent’s sportsmanship after each match. What a novel concept! We believe so strongly that the Sportsmanship Award is the most valuable award in tennis that we encourage every player prior to the beginning of the tournament to do their best to win it. This generates some very interesting responses: “I’ll try my best,” or “That’ll never happen!”

Obviously, our opinion is just that – our opinion – and others have a very different take on this. Consider the player who responded with this comment: “Why would I want to waste my time on that? I’m going to win the tournament.” And don’t get me started on Andre Agassi’s father smashing and destroying Andre’s Sportsmanship Trophy…Talk about destroying his spirit.

We want to remind you that we care about junior tennis and we want to do whatever we can to improve it. We’re sharing our observations for no other reason than to help you, the tennis parent, to be prepared. Please know that the very last thing we want to do is cause any controversy whatsoever. We can’t possibly solve every issue that occurs at every tournament, but what we can do is reflect on what we see and hopefully shine a light of awareness on this subject. Sometimes things need to be said so that positive change can occur…or at least that’s our hope.

This article focused on the positive side of sportsmanship. In the next article, we’ll share some observations regarding BAD SPORTSMANSHIP.

In conclusion, it goes without saying but we’ll say it anyway:

Tennis is a classy sport and that’s one of the reasons we all love it so much. Let’s all do everything we can to improve the junior tennis tournament experience!


Junior tennis is a journey, not a destination…
You might as well enjoy it!

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What Could Go Wrong?

So you’re taking your junior tennis player to a big junior tennis tournament…That’s GREAT! It could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! What could possibly go wrong?
PLENTY!

At HIGH-TECH TENNIS, we hope you know that we care about junior tennis and we’re sharing our observations (this is the first in a series of articles) for no other reason than to help you, the tennis parent, to be prepared during the competitive junior tennis tournament. Please know that the very last thing we want to do is cause any controversy whatsoever. We can’t possibly solve every single issue that occurs at every single tournament, but what we can do is reflect on what we see and hopefully shine a light of awareness on this subject.

Over the course of these articles, we’ll share our observations about good and bad sportsmanship in “Practice Being a Good Sport”; developing ‘professional juniors’ and creating positive memories in “Expect a Good Experience”, and recognizing the good, the bad, and the ugly in “Choose a Good Coach.”

For the past 5+ years, we’ve traveled to 25+ junior tennis tournaments every year. We can’t count how many times we see that what starts out as a positive, happy experience too often deteriorates into a very tense situation, filled with stressed-out parents and players.

As the tournament kicks off, everything is just great…for everybody! People are excited and, if they’ve traveled a far distance, they’re so happy to finally reach their destination! Everyone is hugging everyone else, “it’s been ages - how have you been???”, “where are you staying?”, “maybe our kids can warm up together!”, and “let’s have dinner together while we’re here!”

The players are so excited to see their friends (particularly those they don’t see that often) and everyone is on their BEST BEHAVIOR. Lots of high fives, lots of smiles, you get the picture. The tournament check-in and registration time is our favorite time of all! The good aspects of a junior tennis tournament can be so very GOOD!

The beginning is so great but that overall sense of goodwill to all tennis players just doesn’t last. Almost like clockwork, we watch the tension build as the tournament progresses and it is just so sad when we see unhappy endings that involve pissed-off parents and crying players. Worst of all is when it involves threats of legal action or even escalates to police involvement. We hate to say it but the bad aspects of a junior tennis tournament can be so very BAD.

Keep in mind that these things don’t happen all the time or at every single tournament (thank goodness)…but they do happen routinely and there seems to be a pretty clear pattern. We see the same unpleasant stuff OVER AND OVER – no matter where we go. How can something that starts out so positive go so horribly wrong?

When it comes to junior tennis (or maybe any other aspect of life), we think it’s important to focus on THE GOOD but watch out for THE BAD. Maybe, just maybe, shining the light to make people aware of these things will enhance the positive and somehow (miraculously) reduce the negative. ?

It really hurts my heart when I think about some of the damaging, abusive things I’ve seen. Seriously…it ain’t pretty. I’m glad I don’t have a crystal ball because I don’t think I’d want to see the consequences of the emotional damage I’ve seen. Not judging – just saying.

But the good news is that we can all be part of the solution. I think it starts with being aware of potential trouble spots and then being prepared to handle them in the most positive way.

The sport of tennis is based on components that all good parents want their children to develop. These include hard work and sheer determination, honesty and fairness, problem solving and endurance, overcoming obstacles and establishing independence, and more. Good parents will always want the best for their kids – and at HIGH-TECH TENNIS, we are committed to improving the game of tennis through technology…and helping tennis players play better tennis! In the next article, we’ll share some of our many observations concerning good and bad sportsmanship in “Practice Being a Good Sport.”

In conclusion, it goes without saying but we’ll say it anyway: Tennis is a classy sport and that’s one of the reasons we all love it so much. Let’s all do everything we can to improve the junior tennis tournament experience!

Junior tennis is a journey, not a destination…
You might as well enjoy it!

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