THE EARLY DAYS AT TENNISLAND

Back in the 70's, John,  and his wife Dianne,  built Australia's first American style tennis "Ranch"  on a five acre site  at Kellyville in Sydney's Hills District.

  They  called it  TENNISLAND.

Much  cheaper than surrounding sites,  it had an initial problem to overcome;  it was  40 year flood affected.

By  making it  a free tip   for  clean  excavated material, they raised the five acres above flood level.  The trucks  rolled  in  with  30,000 cubic metres of fill from the extensive residential and commercial  development taking place in nearby Castle Hill and Baulkham Hills.

The above picture shows the caravan that was home to Dianne, John, and their children aged 7,  3,  and 3 months, parked at the front of the site. The caravan would remain home for 15 months until the project neared completion. To stay within a "shoestring" budget, just to the right of the picture is the loader/backhoe, John purchased to do almost all of the project's earthworks.

Tennisland  became  Western  Sydney’s  principal  tennis  coaching  venue.  In  the  late  70’s,  John  Newcombe  and  Tony  Roche  had  established  the  “Custom  Credit  Operation  Tennis”  initiative,  to  regain  Australia’s  standing  in  world  tennis.  

This  photo  is  of  our  1982  Custom  Credit  Operation  Tennis  Elite  Squad,  pictured  with  their  squad  coaches,  Rod  and  Chris  Silk.  Members  of  this  squad  would  go  on to  become  world  top  100  players  and   Australia’s  leading  tennis  coaches.

Coaching manuals? I've read quite a few!

I'd say the best is the now out of print ATPCA "Supercoach" manual. The final edition can be recognised by a picture of Raphael Nadal on the cover.

These days the best source of new ideas is unquestionably You Tube. There are many thousands of hours of content,  produced by many hundreds of coaches. I allocate a strictly limited 15 minutes per day  of screen time to checking for any worthwhile new content... it's worth taking a look. As with anything, the content varies from great to....not the best.

The advice for beginners is more uniform, and generally well presented. Beyond that, considerable circumspection is needed. Tom Avery has a good series of videos, covering just about everything.

Long before the World Wide Web (1991),  we had the Beta and VHS tape era; well over 100 instructional tapes were commercially available. In  the  80‘s, one of the best was by Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith; Arthur, considered to have the best backhand of the era, and Stan, the best forehand. 

An  exceptional  series  of  two VHS  tapes  were   produced  in  Australia  in  1990,  titled  “Tennis  for  the  90’s”.  Covering  all  tennis  strokes,  it  shows  how  racquet  technology  has  transformed  the  game.   The  video  highlights  the  forehand  in  particular,  and  presents  it  with  the  biomechanically  produced  “multi-segment”  concept.   At  the same  time, it shows  that  the  featured   player‘s  individual  application  of  these  elements  have  remarkable  variation  In  both  backswing  and  followthrough.  Compare  Boris  Becker’s  high  looping  backswing  to  that  of  Ivan  Lendl.   Ivan  also  had  an  abbreviated followthrough.  Other  players (Thomas  Muster) featured in  the  tapes   used  the  current  “windscreen  wiper”  followthrough.  Muster  also  had  a  linear  backswing,   with  the  racquet  face  always  parallel  to  the  ground,  mirroring  the  also  current  ”pat  the dog”  position  prior  to  forward  movement.    Conclusion?  The minimal  changes in  the  30  years  following  the  tape‘s  production,  contrasting the  previous  30  years.  

Then came the DVD. The only one I bought was one of a series by the previously mentioned Tom Avery. The WWW eventually killed the DVD.

Tennis was played long before the advent of organised teaching of kids. Teaching in classes really only began in earnest, in the late 40's, and then only in the US, Europe, and Australia. The idea of a training course for coaches began when groups of coaches got together to form associations, and create entry criteria to join. They eventually established courses, including a "probationary" period with an existing member.

With one notable exception, tennis coaching instructional manuals came later.  That notable exception was the work of Australian tennis coach, Don Pullinger. Don was co-proprietor of the long since disbanded franchise ”Newks Tennis World" at Gymea in Sydney. Don produced an enormous 100mm thick coaching manual, that also doubled as a scrapbook. It essentially covered the history of tennis, globally, until the 1970's, including more than 100 high quality original photographs, especially tracing the history of the former Tennis NSW headquarters at Edgecliff, which everyone knows as White City. The latter half of the manual shows the use of improving camera technology, providing sequential shots of tennis strokes. Don's comprehensive notes, interpret the photos, and include copious newspaper clippings of outstanding players and descriptions of technique.

As it doesn't extend beyond the 70's, it's now obviously outdated, but it was unique at its time, and many basics still apply. I was entrusted with it, following the shop's closure in the 80's.

Who has it? 

I donated it to the Tennis NSW Museum in 2012. If you'd like to check it out, the museum is located directly underneath the current Tennis NSW  office  headquarters  at  Sydney  Olympic  Park.

John

If you read through the whole page.....congratulations, and I'm honoured that you did.....I hope you found something interesting.