Realistically, this question can only be answered by a teacher who had the luxury of having two hitters available during his teaching. For some teachers /coaches it was a must to have two hitters to be able to teach at the expected high standard. When I joined WCT in Dallas/Texas some 40 years ago, Lamar Hunt suggested to develop an optimal tennis teaching method to bring as many juniors and adults to the game, as people who play tennis will be more interested to go to tennis tournaments. During the tennis boom, four students and one teacher per court was the way to teach. When I prepared a program intended to be used in all the WCT tennis schools, I planned from the first day on using 2 ballmachines on every court. I added 4 rebound nets to get during the available time as much hitting as possible. All my teachers were trained to include two ballmachines and the rebound nets into the program. For over 10 years I used for my 80 tennis teachers in 7 European countries 2 simple ballmachines helping them creating valuable hitting during their teaching. The 4 rebound nets on each court made it possible that as a warm up all students had to hit at least 50 forehands ,50 backhands with the right footwork as well as 25 serves. It worked well as there was plenty of hitting on all courts.
The experience I made during these years and my ambition to improve the quality of teaching tennis, I knew that only by giving the teacher more time to actually teach, the quality of teaching could be improved. So I embarked into a new adventure by buying a small metal plant and tried through developing a more sophisticated ballmachine to give myself and other teachers the possibility to improve the teaching. The electronic in the 80s could not meet my expectations, although the created product was quite good by the standards of those days.I sold the small plant which today produces the best ballmachine in Europe.
The following years in the US proved to me again the importance of having top hitters available when developing top tennis players. Stefano Capriati used from an early time hitters in the development of his daughter Jennifer, who already at 14 years became a pretty good pro player. I helped Jim Pierce to find top hitters for his work with his daughter Mary. At some time he had to import hitters from Italy, as no good hitters were availabe and willing to work very hard day after day. When I met Richard Williams in 1991 and intended to come to Delray Beach the following year, he told me that he needed good hitters for his two girls. I remember that from the first day Venus and Serena started working on my courts in Delray Beach there were two hitters working for Richard. He planned all the activities with them and for years I was fascinated by seeing the two girls working hard and running for every ball the two hitters were playing across the net. Gerard Gbdey and others, spent over 10 years hitting, making sure that the two girls have to hit top balls all the time. All these top tennis activities proved to me that top hitters are needed at an early stage of the game, and in developing a top player, quality hitters are a must!
As having two hitters on the court is a costly activity, do we have another solution? Not if your goals are high.Top teaching requires concentration and quality balls to teach as close to match conditions as possible. Coaches of top players need top hitters all the time. Do you tink that uncle Tony changed Raffael Nadal’s exaggerated topspin strokes by hitting himself? Hitting could become the next profession on the tennis court, which would unfortunately make working with top junior players more expensive.
As my original thought never died, and hoping that the computer revolution could help me make my dream possible, I started again developing the ultimate replacement of a top hitter. This happened 8 years ago when I met Freddy a young computer fanatic , who too was not willing to give up. How many nights saw the morning without having solved the never expected problems. The tennis game is so demanding, as the most different balls must be available at different speed, spin, height and place on the tennis court. No ball is the same and all these changes must happen in less than a second. That all balls had to come from each side of the court was simple to solve with two machines. This created another problem: which machine should react to the ball hit by the student can only be decided after the player hit the ball to one side of the court of his choice. There is very little time for this decision by the teacher as it must happen at the time the ball crosses the net. Should I tell you about the problems we had to bring motors turning at 2450RPM to exactly 1730 RPM in less than a half second? Or from over 2000 RPM to 870 RPM just to play a drop-shot? Had I known all this before I would have never had the courage to start with this adventure.
About 4 years later and over $ 700.000.- spent, the first two prototypes were hitting balls close to my expectation, but it took another two years for the final perfect product to satisfy my always higher demand. They were tested in 7 European countries with great success. I called them my TWINS who thanks to 9 different computer boxes and wireless communication are delivering every day without getting tired all the balls wanted. I love and enjoy to work with them! All the teachers of the Global Tennis Institute are now able to train and teach their students under match conditions.
As the professional game, will be faster and more athletic in the future there will be no way around in working with good hitters. If the tennis teaching profession does not embrace the computer technology in its teaching, it will lose the contact to the constantly improving professional tennis world, and one day there will be only a few special tennis institutions able to work with students who choose to become professional tennis players. Unfortunately, reality shows that only very few tennis teachers with vision and courage will embrace the technology of the future, to be able to satisfy the demand made by the future competitive junior players.
