STOP COMPARING!
by Marcus Rutsche, Academy Head Professional

Some juniors can easily be discouraged from playing tournaments. When the feeling of putting in your greatest efforts both on and off the court is still not enough, It is convenient to give up and say “I’m never going to be able to beat these overgrown monsters!”
The junior game and growth and development should be closely examined when considering player’s success and failure on the court.
It can be very hard to compare a 5’3 fourteen year old and a 5’10 who grew early and is beginning to grow facial hair. So can these two players be compared as future champions? Is this fair?
Every person grows at different rates physically but also mentally on and off the court. This mental side is called tennis maturity. Early maturing and late maturing games can both pose issues that need to be carefully monitored and addressed.
Obviously a junior who develops physically at a young age has an advantage in the tennis competition through height and muscle gains, increased speed, power and leverage. Early physical development can however lead to either laziness from not being challenged physically or mental burn out. Players developing later tend to work harder to keep up with their bigger rivals and have the potential eventually over take these “monsters” as long as they rise to the challenge.
Mental growth and tennis maturity usually occurs separately. Learning from your errors, listening to coaches and playing experience are all ways you can grow mentally. Some of the smallest juniors can be the most mentally tough while some of the oldest physically developed players can act like mental midgets.
It’s important for juniors not to feel overwhelmed when competing against others who are more developed in these areas. To understand a player’s physical development, assessments need to be made during conditioning and psychologically during tough tournaments.
Players should go about developing their own games based on where THEY are physically and mentally in their sport. It is important to follow ones own path over our competition because of how differently we grow in our personal lives. To constantly compare yourself to others can be tough for juniors to understand. Genetics can play a large role in this formation which we have no control over.
My advice to a junior is to develop mentally, be patient. Learn how to win and learn how to take your loses. Train physically; get all the strokes, perfect them for when you develop physically, otherwise it is much harder to learn new physical things older. Earlier in life it can be harder to control your emotions and other distractions. Once you can control your mind, you can let your body then catch up.
Later in tennis the junior game ends and an adult game takes over- here physically we are finished growing. We must be sure development is near complete in all areas of our game to allow for fine tuning and creating opportunities on court.
So if you are a junior who is a little discouraged because you are losing to giants, keep working on your own game, don’t feel like you have to be at the same point in your tennis career. There are many late bloomers on the tour and in college. Conversely there are many players burned out from rising too quickly and having an unhealthy approach to development. Just keep listening to your coaches. Each one of them has developed a different way, learn from their stories and keep chasing your dream!