Tennis has long had a bit of an undeserved label as an upscale country club sport. I think at least part of this image comes from coaches charging for some seriously overpriced private tennis lessons. The thing that’s important when looking for a good tennis lesson program or coach is to identify exactly what you need. Tennis lessons for beginners do not need to cost an arm and a leg. It’s true that learning the correct grip and strokes right from the get-go is important, but don’t get caught up in equating the best and most experienced coach to the one that comes with the highest price tag.
I started playing tennis in middle school and was at least partially taught by my dad. Here’s a tip for any parents considering tennis lessons for kids that are serious about tennis: a coach is a good investment. Good luck getting your son or daughter to listen to you on the tennis court through the teenage attitude.
My dad had a friend that was coaching kids competing at a national level. This ended up being a great opportunity for me to get lessons from a great coach. Not everyone is going to be lucky enough to have a personal acquaintance to handle their tennis lessons. Instead you’re going to have to rely on research. Let’s look at a few of the different things you should be looking for
How Much Are Tennis Lessons?
Group Tennis Lessons: $10 – 50
Group tennis lessons can be very economical. Depending on the cost of living in the area, a reasonable price might be anywhere from $10-50. In general group lessons will run longer than an hour. With more people on the court it will take longer to get through a full program.
Private Tennis Lessons: $40 – 100
Private tennis lessons cost a considerable amount more. Coaches will sometimes have a set hourly rate, so if you want a private tennis lesson then you will end up paying the cost of a whole group. Most coaches will create a special rate which isn’t so expensive, but still expect to pay anywhere around $50 an hour or higher. Much higher than this would be a considerably high level lesson.
Free Tennis Lessons
In some cases you might be able to find city programs that offer either very cheap or free tennis lessons. The instruction in these types of tennis lesson programs can really be hit or miss. You might find a few quality instructors, but more likely it will be hosted by kids that are fairly inexperienced themselves. That’s not to say that it will make for a bad lesson experience, especially when considering you’re getting it for free.
Certification or Authority in Teaching Tennis Lessons
Before you pay someone to teach you tennis, find out what makes them qualified. Where I live the basic certification that teaching professionals have is from the USPTA (United States Professional Tennis Association). If this isn’t applicable to your area find out what the local equivalent is. These types of associations aim to certify people that are interested in tennis at both high management and low technical levels. Qualifications can range from teaching and coaching all the way through managing and promoting tennis facilities and programs.
A good coach that teaches professionally will have some sort of certification like this. In fact, at the tennis facility that I work at we don’t allow people to teach tennis at the courts unless they are certified professionals. This certification alone doesn’t mean you’ve found a good coach, but it’s a start.
Certifications can also indicate the level at which a coach is qualified to teach. For example, a coach qualified for teaching youth tennis lessons would not have all the same skill sets as one teaching a higher level class. When finding good tennis lessons, children are generally the easiest to shop for because the qualification is more about how a coach interacts than a high level of instruction.
Analyzing Group or Private Tennis Lesson Programs – Scouting Report
Once you’ve identified a few of the coaches that you’re interested in it’s time to do some real world research. Head over to the facility that they teach at and take a look at the lessons. You don’t need to be a technical master at tennis to spot a bad coach or tennis lesson program right away.
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Photo by: Jinx! CC BY 2.0
How many people make up a class? If the program is too big and there aren’t any assistant coaches the instruction can’t be very good.
- How many courts does the lesson program get to use? Is there a lot of downtime during the drills? Are students standing around against the fence waiting a lot?
- Are the students engaged and active? Are they enjoying the lesson and positively interacting with the coach?
Just by watching for a while you can pick up tons of hints as to what kind of coaching program you’re looking at. Sometimes you can even talk to the students after a lesson and ask them personally what they think of the instruction. Lots of bad programs don’t limit the class size per instructor and it will show. Stuffing a ton of people on one court and having them form gigantic lines is the tell-tale red flag to stay away. This kind of program isn’t fun and shows poor planning and management.
Technical Level of Instruction – Advanced Tennis Lessons
As you get more serious about tennis it’s only natural to want more personal instruction and have a lesson tailored specifically to what you need to work on. The best way to do that is to set up a private lesson. The drawback here of course is that private tennis lessons will be more expensive, so you don’t want to waste money on bad private instruction.
The best way to verify the level of a coach’s technical instruction is by finding out about their prior students. The tough thing about this is that good coaches don’t necessarily have to be really great tennis players. Having the ability to teach and convey different aspects in easily understood ways is really the most important thing you should look for. I really think this is true and applies up to quite a high level in tennis. That being said an instructor needs to have some kind of experience playing at a reasonably high and competitive level, along with sufficient technical knowledge, so that they can relate to their students and the situations that will be presented to them in matches. Check if the coach or instructor
- Has any previous students you can talk to
Photo by: Lemsippmatt CC BY-SA 2.0
- Plays in any leagues or local tournaments
- Is known among the tennis community
Make sure to do a little online research as well. Lots of tennis programs will have websites that you can reference and find out all kinds of information. Be wary though because these sites are trying to sell you a product: their advanced tennis lessons. Look out for tacky testimonials and over the top instructor bios that try to oversell a coach or program.
If you follow through with all these things you should be able to get a good picture of the kind of quality you can expect from a tennis lesson. This is also going to help you set a base line for the price you should expect for either a group or private session.
Cheap Tennis Lessons Organized by the Local City or Region
All the above information still applies to the programs I’m about to talk about, but the big difference is that these programs are geared towards getting people involved in the sport of tennis. In my experience the city is taking quite a loss providing very cheap and accessible lessons to both adults and children as young as five. If you are just beginning with tennis, this kind of program can at least give you a taste for what tennis is like. The main drawback to these programs is that the lessons will generally be guilty of at least half of the bad things I listed above. This is not always the case though, and for the price it might be worth it to at least scout any local programs provided by your area.
I’ve personally participated in the coach and student roles in my local NJTL (National Junior Tennis League). This is a program geared towards beginning kids and it is also incredibly cheap. Concerning the value of instruction, you get what you pay for. This is really more of a summer camp experience for kids than any kind of serious tennis lesson program. That’s fine though and I don’t think the NJTL tries to pretend it is anything else. If this is the sort of lesson program you’re looking for I would highly recommend giving it a try. You really can’t beat the price and value it will provide just giving your kids something to do over the summer.