What is a good major for someone who wanted to teach tennis lessons?

KBlade93: What is a good major for someone who wanted to teach tennis lessons?
I am a teenager and tennis is my passion. I would love to enter a tennis-related career, but I am not good enough to become a professional player. What college major would be best for someone who wanted to give tennis lessons as a career? What are some good colleges that offer this?

Answers and Views:

Answer by thequestionsvic
Excellent question. I am also a teenager (14) who loves tennis and would like to peruse a tennis related career. However you don’t really need a degree to teach it you just have to be good. I would probably take the classes on becoming an umpire just so you have a degree in something tennis related and then teach or you can just skip that part and go straight to teaching.

Answer by John S
I might recommend health sciences for a bachelors, then something specific for a masters, if you want to go that far into schooling. If you’re not good enough to play, you probably won’t find any work giving lessons, so take lessons and join your school’s team if you want to do that. Health sciences will get you into the sports field, and based on electives you take for a bachelor’s and what you specify in for a masters, you could become a nutritionist, sports psychologist, coach, sports doctor, etc.

Answer by Ziel
Your best bet is to probably go for business. This way you’ll learn the necessities for running your own business as a tennis coach, and you could possibly even open up your own tennis club in the future. You can’t really get a degree as a tennis teacher. The best thing to do is just play as much tennis as you can to build up your credentials as a tennis player. Play in college if you can. If you are looking to get hired as a teaching pro at a club, you’ll need to have pretty good tennis credentials. Actually, your college degree is mostly irrelevant (you should still have one though). It would be more important for you to have played in college with success.

To help you learn how to teach, you should see if you can find a couple kids to give lessons to during the summer. You won’t be able to charge much yet, $ 15-$ 20 for an hour at the most. But it’ll get you some experience with teaching kids, and will look good when you do start looking for a job at a local club in the future. Also, see if there’s a job open at some clubs near you right now. Not for teaching, but stuff like running the front desk or court maintenance or stuff like that.

Answer by BigBird
If your the best of the worst and the worst of the best you teach! Most in the teaching profession have a business degree. Ferris State University has a great USPTA tennis management program with 100% job placement record.

Answer by Martin Doe
Ok I will give you three basics methods you need to start with before you start playing:

1. Well first things first, you will need to know what grip you are comfortable with. There are mainly five grips for your forehand: Eastern, Western, Semi-Western, and Continental.

Here’s a site that shows you pictures of which part of the racquet you need to grab to use the 5 grips. Remember to click on NEXT and PREVIOUS to see all 5 pictures. Read a bit too.

https://tennis.about.com/od/forehandbackh…

And here are backhand grips:

https://tennis.about.com/od/forehandbackh…
https://tennis.about.com/od/forehandbackh…

Personally, I use the Western grip, for topspin, while most other players (and pros too) use a semi-western for power. Beginners mainly use Eastern but I recommend you start with Western or Semi-western so you can have a good start in learning the advanced techniques. My coach taught me this grip and didn’t even showed me the beginner grip.

As for backhand, I use a two-hander and avoid using the one-hander due to the fact that you get more power while generating spin. Use a one-handed backhand when you volley (strike the ball before it bounces when you are near the net) or when you want to slice ( gives the ball backspin which I will show you in a video).

2. Your swings. It’s hard for me to describe this to you so I will show you videos later on. Basically to generate topspin you will need to start your swing with your hand, holding the racquet, behind you and under your waist. That way when you strike the ball you go from LOW TO HIGH ending the follow through over your shoulder. This will make the racquet brush the ball and give it TOPSPIN. Remember that you strike the ball forward and in front of you.

Basically you will get the hang of your swings if you keep striking the ball. You will gain consistency and make less mistakes after a while. It will also feel comfortable for you too :P.

Here are the videos I promised you:

Djokovic hitting the ball with Western Grip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbsQ8gZLW…
(Note that he ended his swing across the shoulder instead of over-the-shoulder like I told you, That is because he did not want spin in his shots and instead wanted power.)

Andy Roddick hitting the ball with somewhere between semi-western and western grip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-D32RwsD…
(Note he started his swing not under his waist but behind his head to give more energy to his strike.)

Here is a video of the PERFECT two-handed backhand used by Carlos Moya. Memorize his follow through, especially where he starts and ends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38f4xlUct…

As for the slice, here is another video of a perfect baseline slice, remember that your swing changes as you get closer to the net. This is when you should use a one handed backhand for a change and the point of hitting it like this is to instead of giving topspin (brushing from low to high on a ball) you give the opposite, backspin, (brushing from high to low). The backspin keeps the ball from moving forward after it bounces to confuse the opponent and make a drop shot. If you use a western grip for your forehand, it is basically very energy-consuming to slice on your forehand so you should avoid using a forehand slice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GzW401yr…

3. SERVES ARE THE HARDEST PART IN TENNIS!! Mainly due to the fact that you need to be consistent with it (otherwise you lose half your matches :P). It is so important in tennis that I will post videos of a tennis instructor teaching you. The grip you should be using to serve is the Continental grip, which is how you should grip your 2-handed backhand with your right hand.

Here is how you should second serve ( serving when you miss you first serve):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkAj6Mmwx…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkAj6Mmwx…

When you get the hang of the serve and get consistent with your swinging. I will guarantee that your school would be dying to have you into their tennis lineup.