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From the professionals to the rest of us, when is the right time for your child to start playing tennis?
When Andre Agassi was an infant, his father hung a makeshift mobile of tennis balls over his crib. Mike Agassi believed this would help his young son develop good coordination. At the young age of 14, Venus and Serena Williams bypassed the junior circuit and became professional tennis players. However, it was their father, Richard Williams, who first dreamed of his daughters becoming tennis stars.
There’s no doubt that family plays a pivotal part in many professional tennis players’ careers. Numerous players travel with their families, and some are even coached by family members. Current top-players Rafael Nadal, Maria Sharapova and Jelena Jankovic are each coached by a relative.
A high level of family involvement, and even pressure, may be the norm for the world’s top players, but what about for the average young tennis hopeful?
“My mom loves tennis, so she made me take lessons when I was little,” college senior Allison Martin said. “I didn’t like it very much, but I stuck it out through the end of summer.” Martin said she was eight years old when she took her first tennis lesson.
In CNN’s Children and Sports Special, Edward Laskowski, co-director of the Sports Medicine Clinic at Mayo Clinic, said children between the ages of seven and 10 are the perfect age for taking up tennis.
Lauren Foster, a former tennis coach from Columbus, Ohio, taught tennis lessons for more than 20 years. During her career, she worked as a tennis instructor at different facilities, from country clubs to recreation centers. “At all the places I’ve worked for, six has been the minimum age for children to begin group lessons,” Foster said. “Private lessons are a little different. That can be up to the instructor. Personally, I have only worked with a couple children under six.”
The age a child is ready to start playing tennis, or any sport, depends on their physical and mental development. Between ages six and nine is when children further develop sports-related motion skills and the ability to understand more complex concepts and rules behind a game. According to Foster, most parents naturally wait until around six to sign their children up for lessons, however there are always exceptions. When Monica Seles and Jennifer Capriati were popular in the early 90s, Foster said more and more parents tried to turn their sons and daughters into young tennis phenoms.
“Many professionals have been playing tennis, in some capacity or another, since they could walk,” Foster said. “But for most kids, that’s not the right path.”
Martin said she quit playing tennis because it was her mom’s dream, not hers.
“I liked softball better, and my mom was OK with that.”
If you’re interested in signing your son or daughter up for tennis lessons, click here to find a facility near you that offers the USTA’s 1-2-3 Tennis Lessons.
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