Every September I sit down with each squad player and their parents and we write the tournament year. It has eight to twelve events in it, and families are often surprised that the number is a cap rather than a floor. A performance coach, they assume, wants more tennis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A tournament is a coaching session with a scoreboard. An unplanned one teaches nothing, because there is no aim to measure against, and a full calendar of them teaches less than a short one, because nobody has time to debrief. So the year has a shape: four events above level, where a losing draw against better players is the point; the county closed and the Grade 4s where the player should be winning matches; and one or two events chosen because the player wants them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For every event, one line in the player\u2019s file before the entry is made: what this event is for. Serve under pressure. A first draw on clay. Holding a routine after a bad line call. The debrief the day after measures the match against that line, not against the score.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Players who go through this system enter fewer events than most academies\u2019 and harder ones. By sixteen they can name their game style, their two best patterns, and the pattern they lose with, and so can their coach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Douglas Rennie on capping entries, entering above level four times a year, and writing the aim before the entry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":32814,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_spx_person_id":0,"_spx_fixture_id":0,"_spx_pick_id":0,"_spx_eg_facts_label":"","_spx_eg_facts":"","_spx_figure_caption":"","_spx_news_feat":"","_spx_video_url":"","_spx_duration":"","_spx_views":"","_spx_presenter":"","_spx_media_state":"","_spx_start_at":"","_spx_media_status":"","_spx_episode":"","_spx_subject":"","_spx_subject_role":"","_spx_story_year":"","_spx_duration_seconds":0,"_spx_view_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[299],"spx_comp":[],"spx_fixture_ref":[],"spx_series":[],"spx_format":[],"spx_video_kind":[],"spx_show":[],"spx_sport":[],"spx_flag":[],"class_list":["post-33740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tournaments","tag-squads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33740"},{"taxonomy":"spx_comp","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_comp?post=33740"},{"taxonomy":"spx_fixture_ref","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_fixture_ref?post=33740"},{"taxonomy":"spx_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_series?post=33740"},{"taxonomy":"spx_format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_format?post=33740"},{"taxonomy":"spx_video_kind","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_video_kind?post=33740"},{"taxonomy":"spx_show","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_show?post=33740"},{"taxonomy":"spx_sport","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_sport?post=33740"},{"taxonomy":"spx_flag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_flag?post=33740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}