{"id":1370,"date":"2018-07-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/reports\/can-young-tennis-players-be-taught-to-raise-their-game-away-from-the-bright-lights-of-wimbledon\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:12:41","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:12:41","slug":"anne-keothavong-1","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/anne-keothavong-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Young Tennis Players Be Taught to Raise their Game Away from the Bright Lights of Wimbledon?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n Jul 05, 2018 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

Can Young Tennis Players Be Taught to Raise their Game Away from the Bright Lights of Wimbledon?<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Category<\/div>\n Coaching & Development<\/a> <\/div>\n
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Great Britain\u2019s Fed Cup Captain Anne Keothavong is also cutting her teeth as a coach and here she outlines how she is helping give the nation\u2019s young female players the tools to succeed.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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Wimbledon and the Championships are very much on the horizon when the Leaders Performance Institute catches up with Anne Keothavong. Great Britain\u2019s Fed Cup captain is also a National Women\u2019s Coach at the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA], a part-time role that can see her working with Britain\u2019s juniors or case managing young professionals. Most players dream of walking out on Centre Court at the All-England Club but, as Keothavong explains, the reality of a career in tennis is very different.<\/h4>\n
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By John Portch<\/h6>\n

\u201cWimbledon is the icing on the cake for a lot of players but that\u2019s not the reality on a week to week basis,\u201d says Keothavong, who competed in the Ladies\u2019 singles at SW19 for 13 consecutive seasons. \u201cThe tennis season is long and pro players are on the road for 30 weeks a year; it\u2019s non-stop and players can be playing a lot of smaller tournaments in remote places. There\u2019s the challenge of trying to remain positive when things are not going well.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is a path well-trodden by Keothavong during her 13-year professional career. \u201cI guess I can relate to players and they use me as a sounding board because I\u2019ve been there and done it,\u201d she says en route to Eastbourne for a training camp for British players aged 15 to 17 as they prepare for their Maureen Connolly Challenge Trophy meeting with the United States. These aspiring juniors welcome her counsel but Keothavong readily admits she is still getting to grips with coaching: \u201cI\u2019ve been retired for five years. I have worked in broadcasting ever since and didn\u2019t go into coaching immediately, so it\u2019s all relatively new to me.\u201d We also discuss some of the challenges that face juniors as well as younger players who have beaten the odds to take the next step in tennis.<\/p>\n

What does your work with young players entail?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AK:<\/strong> I work alongside the player and their coach; I help them to set goals; establish what they want to achieve and how they\u2019re going to do it. I help give them information and help lead them in the right direction, providing extra support in areas where they feel they need it.<\/p>\n

What sort of challenges are they looking to address?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AK:<\/strong> First, they have to come up with realistic goals. Every player represents a different case, depending on where they\u2019re ranked and how old they are, how long they\u2019ve been playing professionally, and what targets they need to hit. I\u2019m not involved on a day to day basis but when I see them in a training or competition environment I\u2019m looking out for whether they\u2019re improving, consistently working on those goals, and the other things they want to focus on to help make them a better tennis player.<\/p>\n

How can you find them to find their focus?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AK: <\/strong>There isn\u2019t one, perfect way and you have to deal with each individual depending on their personality; and that comes down to communication. I\u2019m not a mind reader, I don\u2019t know what they\u2019re thinking. So a lot of it is communicating and sharing how they feel. They don\u2019t necessarily have to agree with my view, but they can be open about it and be honest with themselves and me about how they they\u2019re performing and how they\u2019re doing things, whether they\u2019re focusing on the right things, that\u2019s their biggest challenge.<\/p>\n

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How refreshing it is for players to hear another coaching voice when they work with you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AK:<\/strong> It\u2019s up to the players to decide how much or how little they want to use me; with the younger players it\u2019s an opportunity for them to offload and pick my brains and ask for advice because they\u2019re not inside the world\u2019s top 100 yet, and I guess there\u2019s still a lot of girls that I used to compete against that are still out there competing. I can help provide extra tactical support and the fact that I commentate on women\u2019s tennis from a week to week basis, I\u2019m aware of the different levels and playing styles of the international players.<\/p>\n

Is there a greater incentive on communication in an individual sport like tennis?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AK: <\/strong>The nature of a life of a tennis player means that you end up spending more time with your coach than any of your family, so you have to have the trust in your coach. Communication is the biggest skill and you have to learn how to express yourself in the best way possible and to get the best out of your coach. A player needs to develop that trust and you only gain that trust by spending time with that player and being around them and providing the support when they need it.<\/p>\n

How important are qualities such as perseverance and resilience?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AK:<\/strong> They\u2019re huge. Those qualities for me are more important than the talent of the player because, frankly, in tennis, most players are dealing with losses every week and unless you\u2019re winning tournaments you\u2019re losing somewhere, whether it\u2019s in the first round, quarter-finals or semi-finals; so you need to be pretty thick-skinned and develop a way to pick yourself up. Some losses will hurt more than others, that\u2019s natural, but again it\u2019s being able to see the bigger picture especially from a younger age. That\u2019s not only the player, that\u2019s also the people around them, including parents, who are often the driving force behind younger players. If you think of how many hundreds and thousands and millions of kids who are, I guess, working on a dream of winning Wimbledon one day, only a fraction of those kids will go on to compete at the highest level. The life of a tennis player can be very lonely as well, particularly at the start where you\u2019re not playing the big tournaments and it\u2019s a huge grind. Like I said earlier, you\u2019re travelling quite often to remote places where you\u2019ve got probably a handful of people watching you; you\u2019ve got to be made of pretty tough stuff to suck it up and put yourself out there every week.<\/p>\n

How much stress is enough stress?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AK:<\/strong> Stress is always going to be there and it\u2019s just managing it in the right way and having a good support team around you can help you with all of that; to offload where you can. It also needs to be channelled in the right way; I guess it needs to be viewed as a challenge; as a motivation for the player.<\/p>\n

Do you encourage players to have a routine?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AK:<\/strong> Yes, but that doesn\u2019t always work for every player. In general, tennis players are some of the most superstitious athletes in the world. I think that most tennis players actually like routine and need routines because everything else is so unpredictable. And most athletes: part of them is a control freak, right? Why would you do it and put yourself through all of that? One of the things when I retired from playing tennis professionally, I missed things such as the routine. I\u2019m a fan of routine and if you find a certain technique that works then I\u2019m a supporter.<\/p>\n

Should feedback be given before or after a match or training session?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AK:<\/strong> It\u2019s a mixture and you have to work around each individual\u2019s needs and every player is different. Depending on whether it\u2019s a team competition or individual competition it\u2019s really up to the player to tell me how they want it, whether it\u2019s before or after. There\u2019s certain players who like to have specific debriefs and tactical chats about matches anyway the night before. I don\u2019t direct the coach of any individual player and you don\u2019t want to take a player out of their usual training or competitive environment habits.<\/p>\n

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And you want them to feel empowered?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AK:<\/strong> Players need to take ownership and that\u2019s probably emphasised more to younger players coming through; they need to understand it\u2019s their career and the rest of us are all there to provide support in the right way, but they need to take ownership of it all and feel comfortable that certain things are being done in a way that\u2019s going to help them.<\/p>\n

Do the LTA guard against creating cooker cutter players?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AK:<\/strong> Playing style has to be established at a very young age because once you mature in tennis it\u2019s very difficult to change your style of play. That\u2019s something important for coaches working with young players to ensure that they have variety in their game, so it\u2019s not all about power. It\u2019s a skill-based sport but those skills have to be worked on from a very young age; it\u2019s very difficult to tell a 24-year-old to chip and charge or serve and volley here when that\u2019s something that\u2019s been alien to them for so long. You don\u2019t see many professional tennis players change their natural style of play during the course of their career, they generally become better at what they do or more consistent.<\/p>\n

You\u2019d find you were trying to refine rather than change your skills?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AK:<\/strong> I think every tennis player is always trying to develop different skills and nothing\u2019s ever perfect so you\u2019re always trying to find your groove. If you do make technical changes there will always be slight tweaks here and there; it won\u2019t even be noticed by a lot of people. I look back at my own career and there were certain things that I needed to work on from a younger age; once I got to a certain age I was already set in my way and it was very difficult to change. In the heat of the moment, you revert back to what you know on the match court and what you trust. While you\u2019re trying to improve things here and there, ultimately your playing style is defined from a young age. Some will disagree, though.<\/p>\n

What is the biggest lesson you\u2019ve learnt so far?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AK:<\/strong> The biggest thing is that it\u2019s important to have an open mind. I\u2019m still learning and I don\u2019t believe there is one right way to develop a tennis player, so it\u2019s having an open mind to trying different things.<\/p>\n

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Further reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n

What are the Character Traits of a Tennis Champion?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n

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Great Britain\u2019s Fed Cup Captain Anne Keothavong is also cutting her teeth as a coach and here she outlines how she is helping give the nation\u2019s young female players the tools to succeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1371,"menu_order":0,"template":"","categories":[22],"pathway":[],"topic":[],"sport":[],"class_list":["post-1370","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coaching-development-performance"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCan Young Tennis Players Be Taught to Raise their Game Away from the Bright Lights of Wimbledon? - Performance Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/anne-keothavong-1\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Can Young Tennis Players Be Taught to Raise their Game Away from the Bright Lights of Wimbledon? 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