..read more

You can’t be mentally tough without handling the routines in-between points properly. Player’s spend more time in a match dealing with their internal dialogue, than actually hitting a ball ..read more

What should they do? They’re not a coach, but here they are, with their child about to go into a nerve wrecking third set tiebreak (or regular set depending on the tournament), and are looking for guidance ..read more

It’s a hard thing to explain to someone if they haven’t gone through something incredibly difficult and challenging, and refused to back down. It can also seem like an unfair thing to explain to a young athlete, but it’s a necessary thing for them to learn ..read more

If you haven't listened to the Baseline Intelligence podcast, and you're a tennis coach, parent, or player, you need to! Stokke has an incredible wealth of knowledge, from his experience as a junior and collegiate player, playing in the US Open, coaching in college tennis, and now a private coach with an amazing podcast ..read more

Some great lessons were learned, along with some painful ones, but that's how we grow. I'm looking forward to more training blocks, more tournament matches reviewed, and more conversations with parents. In the meantime, please enjoy the 3 things I learned as a coach, but also the 3 things that stayed the same in 2023 ..read more

This blog was a difficult one to write, so I will be directing you to the podcast instead. Answering this question is straight forward, but finding that type of environment is difficult. There will always be a higher level training group so at some point, a coach has to say no, they can’t move you up. So here are the main points of the podcast, and I encourage you to watch or listen to the podcast to get all of the details behind my thoughts ..read more

For those that haven’t heard of the invisible gorilla experiment, volunteers were told to keep track of how many times a few basketball players tossed a basketball. While they did this, someone in a gorilla suit walked across the basketball court, in plain view, yet many of the volunteers failed to notice the gorilla ..read more

No, this is not to paint pickleball in a negative way. I think it's awesome to see tennis courts that used to sit empty finally be occupied again. Unfortunately, I think the courts could have been occupied by tennis players if the sport had marketed the youth color balls and courts in a different way ..read more

Many kids fail to maximize their potential because we put too much emphasis on developing weapons that have the ability to hit amazing winners that ohhh and ahhhh people, and not enough time on weapons that require ball control skills, patience, and strategy skills ..read more