Every September a parent apologises to me for bringing a nine-year-old to a first session. They have read that children start at four now, and they assume the group will be years ahead. It is the most common worry I hear, and it is almost always wrong.
A nine-year-old arriving with no experience goes into an orange or green group by stage, not by age, and rallies in the first session on a scaled court with a softer ball. The children who started at four are on a different court, at a different stage. Nobody is behind anyone.
The first eight weeks
Weeks one to three are rallying and moving: send, receive, score a point without an adult feeding. Weeks four to six add the unit turn and the low-to-high swing path, taught inside games so that it does not feel like a lesson. Weeks seven and eight are the first in-house festival, where a child plays their first matches against the children they train with.
By the end of the block a late starter is usually indistinguishable from a child who started two years earlier at the same stage, because the stage checkpoints are the same and the coaching is the same. The only thing they missed was two years of being four.
