There’s a moment most adult tennis players know well.
You’re in a lesson. Your coach is explaining something — open stance, topspin generation, hip rotation sequencing — and somewhere around minute three you realise you have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. You nod anyway. You try to do the thing. It doesn’t feel right. You leave the court not quite sure if you improved or just survived.
That’s not a you problem. That’s a coaching problem.
The Disconnect Nobody Talks About
A huge proportion of tennis coaches — particularly younger ones fresh out of university programmes or their own competitive careers — learned the game at a high level. D1 college tennis. Junior academies. ITF tournaments. They spent years ingraining movement patterns, technical systems, and physical habits that took thousands of hours to build.
Now they’re standing across the net from a 47-year-old woman who plays twice a week and wants to hold her own at her club. And they’re teaching her the same game.
Think about that for a second. What does a 23-year-old ex-collegiate player have in common with a 52-year-old man who took up tennis three years ago, runs a business, has a shoulder he’s being careful with, and just wants to feel confident in a social doubles game?
Technically? Nothing. And yet the methods often look the same.
This isn’t about criticising coaches. Most of them are genuinely trying. But the training frameworks that shaped them were built for a completely different kind of player — younger, more athletic, with years of time and physical adaptability ahead. When that’s your reference point, it becomes your default. And your default isn’t always appropriate.
The Techniques That Get Pushed — And Why They Don’t Help You
Let’s be direct about a few things that get taught to adult recreational players as if they’re essential:
Open stance on every groundstroke. Let’s be clear about what open stance is actually for: it’s a recovery shot. When a ball is pulling you wide, dragging you out of position, you use open stance because you have no other option — you’re running it down. It requires real coordination, timing, and athleticism to execute well even in that situation. It’s not a technique for balls coming right into your wheelhouse. And yet coaches teach it as a universal position, on every shot, as if that’s modern tennis.
For the majority of adult players, what actually gives you power, balance, and consistency is a proper shoulder and hip turn with your weight transferring into the ball. Both hips and shoulders fully rotated. Stepping in, rotating through, finishing the stroke. That’s the fundamental that works across all levels and all bodies — and it’s the one worth building.
Topspin before swing path is solid. Topspin is a result. It comes from a high velocity wrist whip up and over the ball to create height over the net and an unruly bounce that’s hard to time for the opponent. It requires a seriously good contact point and racket speed. If someone can’t yet finish a stroke consistently and pass back a deep ball — then teaching them to brush up the ball for topspin is putting the roof on before the walls are up.
I recently worked with a player at an advanced beginner camp who told me she’d been working on topspin with her coach at home. She arrived without a racket. She’d rented one. And on our first session together I had to show her how to finish a stroke. Where her contact point was in front of her instead of on the side of her. So the topspin conversation was years away.
The Footwork Myth
High-performance positioning and footwork patterns. YouTube is full of breakdowns of what Djokovic or Alcaraz do with their feet. That content exists for a reason — it’s fascinating to watch elite tennis. But it is not a coaching guide for someone who plays club tennis on weekends. The movement patterns elite players use are built on 15-plus years of training. They’re not transferable to an adult who plays twice a week and wants to get better at their club.
What adult club players actually need from footwork is far more practical: moving to a position that gives them their best balance and their optimal contact point. That means getting to the ball early enough to hit near waist height — not too low, not too high — and well out in front of the body rather than letting it get behind them. That’s the footwork goal. Not replicating what a 22-year-old professional does instinctively after two decades on court, but finding a repeatable position from which you can actually swing.
What Adult Players Actually Need
Here’s what I’ve seen work, consistently, over more than a decade of coaching adult players:
Contact point. Where does the ball meet the racket? Is it in front of the body? At the right height? This is the foundation of everything. Get this right and a lot of other things start to fall into place.
Spacing. Can you move to create the right distance between yourself and the ball? This is more important than any technical swing adjustment for most adult players.
Balance through the stroke. Are you stable when you hit? Or are you off-balance, reaching, cramped? Balance is what allows your natural swing to actually work.
Shot selection. Do you know when to go cross-court, when to go down the line, when to just keep the ball in play? Match play is decisions as much as it is technique. Most adult players improve dramatically just by making better choices.
Finishing the swing. This sounds basic. It is basic. And it’s still the single most common thing I correct at camp with players who’ve been taking lessons for years.
They’re not glamorous concepts. They don’t make for viral YouTube clips. But they’re the things that actually make adult players feel and play better — in club matches, in social doubles, in pickup games with friends.
Who Are You Playing For?
This is the question I’d encourage every adult player to bring to their coaching relationship.
If you genuinely want to compete — if you have the time, physical condition, and appetite to pursue tournament tennis — then yes, you need a different kind of technical development. Progressive, systematic, demanding. That path exists and it’s worth pursuing if it’s yours.
But most adult players I work with want something honest and specific: to feel confident on court. To play a decent match. To join a club league. To not embarrass themselves when someone asks them to fill in for doubles. To enjoy the game — the social side, the exercise, the mental switch-off that tennis gives you. To look like they know what they’re doing.
That is a completely legitimate goal. It deserves a completely different coaching approach.
Because the moment an adult player feels like it’s all too complicated, too far over their head, too much to hold at once — they pull back. The joy drains out of it. And often, they quietly give up.
I’ve seen it too many times. And it’s unnecessary.
Finding the Right Fit
If you’re an adult recreational player — somewhere between picking the game back up and genuinely competitive — here’s what I’d look for in a coach:
Someone who asks about your goals before they start teaching anything. A coach who can observe you for five minutes and tailor what they say to what you actually need — not what the coaching manual says comes next. Someone who makes the game simpler for you, not more complicated. And someone who understands that tennis for adults is about enjoying the game and playing it well enough to love it.
That’s what I try to do at Costa del Tennis. Every player who comes to camp is different — different body, different background, different game, different goal. My job is to see that clearly and coach accordingly. Not to impose a system. To find the path that works for you. If our dates or playing levels don’t match your availability feel free to use our promo code to the Rafa Nadal Academy in Mallorca, Cancun Mexico or Dominican Republic. They run adult camps year round for all levles. Promo code: Costadeltennis
If that sounds like what you’ve been missing, come and play with us.
Costa del Tennis runs boutique adult tennis coaching holidays in Mallorca, Marbella, and Andalucía. Small groups, personal attention, and a coaching approach built around who you actually are as a player.
