Teaching Games for Understanding: Sessions of Match Play

We view match play as a key component of our tennis training and as a crucial form of practice not only preparing our players for their tournaments, but most importantly instilling into them values essential for sport and life, such as focus on the process, not outcomes, goal-setting, fair play and team culture in general.

Our coaching team applies to match play the approach called Teaching Games for Understanding. The approach is based on the idea that understanding the tactics and strategies of a sport should come hand in hand with the development and execution of the skills required for playing the game. It helps players experience the excitement of play through a variety of games they are involved in on the court.  The key technique is solving tactical problems through trial and error, with coaches acting only as facilitators, thus making players more independent and self-reliant.

Our daily training programme consists of 2 hours of match play in the afternoon. Every Tuesday and Thursday we also have our mental coaches observing our players’ matches, sharing with them their feedback on the spot, between points and after their sessions.

Yesterday our players played series of super tie breaks. During the practice we followed one of our annual players - Katia from the US.