A lot of kids are born with talent. You can tell it from the way they move. They are coordinated, flexible, and fast. Nathan was not one of these kids. I should have known it from the beginning. When he was a toddler, he fell so many times that his knees were full of band aids. Another indication is that whenever he runs, he normally stamps his feet.
And so it is with blind faith that we let him try out tennis lessons. If he succeeds, it's got to be because of his overwhelming interest and my enduring persistence. He started out with group lessons in the summer of 2009, when he was 6. Of course, these city classes are only meant to be fun. We didn't notice any improvement. In the summer of 2010, I signed him up with 2 other boys for group lessons with a private instructor every other day. This was a lot better than the city group lessons. At least he learned the basic strokes. Of course, it was not consistent.
In the Fall of 2010, I decided to sign him up for private lesson with another coach who I felt was teaching the correct technique and footwork. I saw him teaching on the next court; he was having the kids doing footwork drills in addition to correct strokes. While I haven't much tennis experience, my feelings were based on my own experience with high school badminton. We trained pretty hard on all aspects of the game. Physical fitness, footwork, and agility on the court are the keys to being able to cover the whole court. So my feeling turned out to be correct. The coach did turn out to be a high school coach!
Although I would like to be able to say, "and the rest was history," it isn't so. As expected, Nathan did improve under the new coach. He's able to do things that I (and my doubtful DH) never believe he could. The forehand and backhand are starting to hit consistently WHEN and IF he can move fast enough to get to the correct position. Another problem is that 30 minutes into the 45 minutes lessons, he started to run out of gas! His strokes fall apart after that because he couldn't get to the ball.
So it's Spring 2011 now and after some research, I discovered in order to improve and being able to play games (which he wants to so desperately; and who could blame him? The point of learning any sport is to be able to play games after all!), he needs to improve his agility, footwork, and fitness. I also found out that most tennis academies make the kids work on footwork drills/running to help their movement. So we're signing him up for MWF group lessons that do all these drills for 1.5 hours.
