A parent recently shared a thoughtful message about their child’s tennis experience. They agreed with the program’s vision, creating a space where young players learn through the game itself, but they also raised a familiar concern:

“My child struggles to rally for long because other players make too many unforced errors. Maybe the coach should hit in more to provide better examples and keep rallies going.”

It’s an understandable perspective. Watching your child struggle through short points or messy rallies can feel frustrating. But this situation reveals a deeper truth about skill development, and why the best coaching environments are rarely tidy.

The Myth of the Perfect Rally

Many parents and even coaches believe that longer rallies mean better learning. In reality, long rallies can mask learning opportunities. When the goal becomes “keep the ball in,” players learn to avoid mistakes instead of create opportunities.

Research in ecological dynamics shows that skill emerges through the interaction of the player, the task, and the environment (Davids et al., 2015). When rallies break down, it’s not failure, it’s feedback. Each unforced error offers rich information about timing, spacing, and tactical decisions.

By contrast, long, coach-fed rallies often remove this variability and create artificial stability. The player’s brain stops searching for solutions. They look smooth, but they’re not learning to adapt.

Why Coaches Shouldn’t Hit In

The suggestion that coaches should rally with players “to show them how it’s done” is well-intentioned but flawed.

When coaches hit in, the feed becomes consistent, predictable, and adult-like. But young players don’t move, hit, or perceive the game like adults do. They rely on perception-action coupling—the ability to pick up information (like ball speed, spin, or opponent movement) and act on it in real time (Davids, Araújo, & Shuttleworth, 2003).

When the coach becomes the hitting partner, this coupling breaks down. The player begins to respond to unrealistic cues. They start to time shots to the coach’s tempo and rhythm, not their peers’.

Over time, this leads to poor transfer of learning—the player can rally beautifully in lessons but struggles to perform against opponents their own age.

Studies in representative learning design (RLD) support this approach. For learning to transfer, the practice environment must preserve the information-movement coupling found in real matches (Pinder, Davids, Renshaw, & Araújo, 2011). In other words, practice should feel like the game itself, not like a coach-controlled version of it.

Short Points Can Be Productive

In the current performance phase, players are encouraged to recognise attacking opportunities—stepping forward, using mid-court space, and finishing points at the net.

That means rallies are supposed to be shorter. The goal is not endless exchanges, but purposeful decisions: when to defend, when to counter, and when to finish.

This approach aligns with what Araújo and colleagues (2023) describe as intention-driven behaviour. Players learn best when guided by clear tactical intentions rather than abstract technical instructions.

Short, messy points are signs of players experimenting with those intentions—trying, failing, adjusting, and learning. It’s not pretty, but it’s powerful.

Building Brave, Proactive Players

Too many young players learn to survive rather than compete. They rally safely, waiting for opponents to miss. That style breaks down as soon as they face physically stronger or tactically aware peers.

To thrive long-term, players must learn to take initiative, make decisions under pressure, and act on affordances—opportunities for action available in their environment (Gibson, 1979; Renshaw et al., 2019).

That’s the foundation of modern player development: helping athletes perceive and act with purpose, not just reproduce technique.

Why Parents’ Questions Matter

It’s important to acknowledge where these questions come from. Parents want to see progress. They want sessions to look structured and players to look successful.

But true development is often the opposite of tidy. Progress looks chaotic, and good coaching sometimes looks like stepping back, not stepping in.

As Woods et al. (2020) point out, ecological approaches shift the coach’s role from “instructor” to environment designer—someone who shapes the practice so players learn to self-organise solutions.

The messy rallies, quick points, and inconsistent play are not problems to fix. They are the process itself.

A Call for Evidence-Based Coaching

Statements like “the coach should rally more” or “players need longer exchanges” often stem from intuition, not evidence. Tennis coaching must move beyond personal beliefs and towards scientifically grounded frameworks.

Ecological dynamics, the constraints-led approach, and representative learning design all share one principle: players learn best by being immersed in real tennis situations. The job of the coach is to guide intention and design affordances—not to control outcomes.

So the next time a session looks messy or a rally ends too soon, remember: those moments might be the most valuable part of learning.

References

• Araújo, D., & Davids, K. (2023). The ecological dynamics of cognizant action in sport. Sports Medicine – Open, 9(1), 32.
• Davids, K., Araújo, D., & Shuttleworth, R. (2003). Environmental constraints on the dynamics of perception-action coupling in sport. Journal of Motor Behavior, 35(3), 199–218.
• Davids, K., Renshaw, I., Pinder, R., Araújo, D., & Button, C. (2015). Designing practice for skill acquisition: The constraints-led approach. Routledge.
• Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Houghton Mifflin.
• Pinder, R. A., Davids, K., Renshaw, I., & Araújo, D. (2011). Representative learning design and functionality of research and practice in sport. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 33(1), 146–155.
• Renshaw, I., Araújo, D., Button, C., Chow, J. Y., Davids, K., & Moy, B. (2019). Why the constraints-led approach is not teaching games for understanding: A clarification. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 24(5), 441–454.
• Woods, C. T., Davids, K., & Araújo, D. (2020). The role of representative design in talent development. Sports Medicine, 50(1), 131–140.