Welcome to the USPTA Parent-Coach Resource Center. This Web site is designed to help educate parents as they guide their children through the journey of becoming a competitive tennis player. It is important for parents to understand just how integral they are to a child’s sporting life, even if the parent is not a tennis coach. In fact, every parent is just as critical, if not more so, to the child’s development than a tennis coach because every parent is a coach for their child, whether it’s on the court or in life. This Web site was created to emphasize the importance of the parent-coach and how vital he or she is to a child’s developing game.

There are two major pathways in the development of a tennis player that every parent-coach should become familiar with: Learning and Playing.

The Learning Pathway involves all that a player needs to know to build an all-around game, and it is centered on periodization and the six general performance components (physical, technical, tactical, strategic, mental and environmental).

The Playing Pathway involves implementing all that is learned through the Learning Pathway and applying it in competitive match situations. As progress is made in the playing pathway, a player will gradually advance through the levels of competitive tennis until he or she reaches the desired level of play. It should also be noted that as a player begins competing, the competition itself becomes a learning experience.