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The Greatest Secret Weapon in Tennis

  • Writer: Jason Chow
    Jason Chow
  • 2 days ago
  • 2 min read

I was once watching a San Diego Nationals Girls U16 Finals match when I was floored by what I saw. After the changeover, one of the top ranked players in the country sat on her bench and then opened her tennis notebook. I had never seen that before! Wow! What was she reading? What secrets was she reviewing, in the middle of her match. The reason this experience left a deep impression on me was that she had lost the first set, but after reviewing and re-reviewing her notebook, she went on to win the match in 3 sets.

No, she wasn't reading about Roger Fed Bond. She was reminding herself about her match plan.

As a more experienced coach, one of my favorite best practices is to make my students use a tennis journal. 


  • What is a tennis journal for?   We want time to reflect on our own tennis game.   We need to time to analyze and recognize our strengths, but also our areas for improvement.  As we do in Silicon Valley tech companies or in medicine, we use journaling to strengthen our post-mortem analysis skills (what is that?).

  • When should I write?  Write in a tennis journal for 5-10 min after each lesson  as a starting point.    For more serious students (w/ greater tennis ambitions), I recommend writing in your tennis journal 15 min after each match as well and reviewing your notes pre-match.  We tend to forget what we worked on during the last lesson so reviewing ahead of time helps to reinforce the focus and key concepts.  (When I went to Nadal Academy and they gave me lots of helpful pointers, I realized that I couldn't let my $$$$ go to waste! The place wasn't cheap. As a middle-aged man, writing down my key lesson takeaways from Spain helped me internalize and re-remember them for when I got back home!)

  • What should I write about?  

    • (A)  2 things I did well in the match and/or lesson;

    • (B)  2 things I want to work on.

  • Pro-tip:  the more precise your writing re the technical aspects of the game, the more precise a students thinking will be while on the court. 

    • bad example:   I had great forehands.    better example:  I hit great crosscourt forehands deep beyond the service line and could consistent hit 5-6 in a row. 

    • bad example:   my first serve needs work.    better example:   I noticed my first serve percentage was low and hitting the net frequently.   I need to work on my service routines & active consider the target (wide or T) before serving.  Think about "making the opposite mistake" by serving using the baseline as a target, instead of the service line.

  • For more advanced journaling tips:  email me (jasonchow@gmail.com).  


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