Creating American ChampionsThe Developmental Process

Building champions is long, complex process. You can’t develop a kid in one month.
It’s impossible. That’s why it’s called development. Here are some of the factors that go into it:

First there’s the role of traditional lessons. Some people have the feeling that
the more lessons the better. Some parents like to brag: “My kid takes lessons everyday.” That’s a
crazy idea. If the pro feeds balls to the kid everyday and does nothing but try to correct his strokes,
it makes the student stale. The student never learns to do it for himself, since it’s all being done
for him on the teaching court. In the beginning it’s very important for players to think for themselves.

They should have a lesson for an hour once a week, maybe twice a week. Pete Sampras, Lindsay Davenport,
Tracy Austin, Jeff Tarango – you can name every single player I worked with. They had no more than an hour,
sometimes 2 hours a week. The only exception is if someone comes in from out of town, you might see them
every day for 10 days and then you don’t see them for a month.

Every player I worked with had no…