Tennis Coaching Research Articles

Coping with emotional labour in tennis coaching


 
 
 Viewed through the lens of ‘emotional labour’ this paper discusses situations in the tennis coach’s daily schedule that may lead to perceptions of increased stress and burnout. Resulting from interviews with experienced coaches, our findings revealed; (1) Responsibility; (2) Impression Management; (3) Communication to describe the primary antecedents, response and coping strategies employed by coaches to mitigate against the maladaptive outcomes associated with emotional labour.
 
 

An automatic visual analysis system for tennis

This article presents a novel video analysis system for coaching tennis players of all levels, which uses computer vision algorithms to automatically edit and index tennis videos into meaningful annotations. Existing tennis coaching software lacks the ability to automatically index a tennis match into key events, and therefore, a coach who uses existing software is burdened with time-consuming manual video editing. This work aims to explore the effectiveness of a system to automatically detect tennis events. A secondary aim of this work is to explore the benefits coaches experience in using an event retrieval system to retrieve the automatically indexed events. It was found that automatic event detection can significantly improve the experience of using video feedback as part of an instructional coaching session. In addition to the automatic detection of key tennis events, player and ball movements are automatically tracked throughout an entire match and this wealth of data allows users to find interesting patterns in play. Player and ball movement information are integrated with the automatically detected tennis events, and coaches can query the data to retrieve relevant key points during a match or analyse player patterns that need attention. This coaching software system allows coaches to build advanced queries, which cannot be facilitated with existing video coaching solutions, without tedious manual indexing. This article proves that the event detection algorithms in this work can detect the main events in tennis with an average precision and recall of 0.84 and 0.86, respectively, and can typically eliminate manual indexing of key tennis events.

Stigmatized, Marginalized, Celebrated: Developments in Lawn Tennis Coaching, 1870–1939

This paper examines the numerous changes to the role, influence, professional standards and general social status of coaches and the vocation of coaching in lawn tennis, focusing predominantly on the inter-war years. It was during this time, generally, when lawn tennis clubs became more open and democratic in their memberships, and when elite-level tennis came to embrace more profoundly the ethos of professionalism. As such, the recognized value and esteem of coaches at both levels increased, which led to advances in the vocation of coaching practices across the sport. These developments are analysed in the light of wider social processes, most notably the widespread and influential class struggles of the twentieth century, which characterized taken-for-granted assumptions about how sport should be played and who should play it. The debate between amateurs and professionals is at the heart of developments in coaching, and forms the central issue in this paper. This article commences with an investigation of lawn tennis from the 1870s until the First World War, and then goes on to consider areas of progress with regard to coaching and areas of continuing inequality. The period after the Second World War is discussed briefly, when attitudes toward professionalism softened further in all areas, despite the considerable delay in not initiating ‘open tennis’ until 1968. Testimony from players throughout these eras reveals the fundamental importance of coaching to achieving success amid the continued hypocrisy of adopting professional standards under the veil of being an amateur, or in some cases ‘shamateur’.

An analysis of time factors in elite male tennis players using the computerised scorebook for tennis

The authors developed the computerized scorebook for tennis to analyze the time duration of shots. The purpose of this study was to analyze the time factors in Grand Slam singles matches using the computerized scorebook for tennis. Eighty-two players’ performances from forty-one matches in Grand Slam tournaments held in 2003 and 2004 were analyzed. The French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open were selected to compare the effect of court surface on timing factors. The time duration of both 1st and 2nd service was longest at the French Open. Players need different service strategy between the French Open and the other tournaments because of the difference of strategy. Time duration of ground strokes showed no significant differences between the three tournaments. Ground strokes and rally play followed similar rhythms at all three tournaments. These results were obtained using the computerized scorebook for tennis. The usefulness of the scorebook for tennis coaching was demonstrated.

Enhancing Tennis Coaching with Youths Using a Metaphor Method

Children and adolescents in a summer tennis instruction program were taught a “metaphor method” for eliminating distractions and detrimental ideation. They visualized themselves enclosed in a bubble, cocoon, or chrysalis that separated them from nontask stimuli. Although subjects in the experimental and control groups were positive in their evaluations of their tennis experience, ratings from instructors demonstrated multiple advantages of the metaphor method. When compared to control group subjects receiving regular instruction, students taught to use boundary metaphors improved significantly in terms of performance criteria and ability to concentrate. Their instructors also rated them significantly higher in enjoyment of the experience, motivation, and a display of mature and appropriate behavior. The method was easy to implement and appears adaptable to a variety of sports and other performance settings.

The transfer of skill from short tennis to lawn tennis.

The purpose of this study was to establish if short tennis skills transferred to lawn tennis. The experiment was conducted in two parts. In the first experiment 16 children (average age 8.9 years) were coached for 20 h (2 h/day for 2 weeks). The experimental group (n = 8) received 10 h of short tennis coaching followed by 10h of tennis coaching. The control group (n = 8) received tennis coaching only. In the second experiment 14 children (average age 8.5 years) were coached for 8h in group strokes alone (only ground strokes were tested and analysed). The experimental group (n = 7) received 4h of short tennis coaching and 4h of tennis coaching; the control group (n = 7) received tennis coaching only. Prior to coaching, all children were tested on the Dyer Backboard Test. The tests were video-taped for later analysis of technique. The video was analysed by three coaches in terms of backswing, positioning (position where player stood in reference to the bounce of the ball), follow-through, and placement (accuracy with which the ball was hit). The experimental group improved more than the control group on the Dyer Backboard Test (p < 0.05) in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2 both groups improved (p < 0.05) with coaching; there was no difference (p > 0.05) between the two groups following coaching. This implied that the short tennis skills positively transferred to tennis.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)