Recently I was described as “ passionate” about tennis.   A real compliment.   Immediately I thought of John Ormsby who wrote a  quite thorough history of Six Man Football in North Carolina.  I asked John where the drive to do this project came from?  He replied,  “…I wanted to know more about one subject  than anyone alive!”

Life without passion and drive is unappealing  to me.   Certainly our children deserve no less.   

One of my Sons made me aware of technology’s “cloud”.   “Dad, anyone can easily make special knowledge available to  all  now.”

Being a coach often makes you almost surrogate  fathers.  Certainly you care about your players.   My passion is care for American junior tennis players and their access to a fair share of our college and university tennis scholarships.   I believe there is a direct link between awarding  so many of our scholarships to internationals that we have run our own kids out of tennis, and other American sports as well.

Is this patriotic or xenophobic?   Is it illegal to reserve state tax money for our state’s youngsters.   Where is the fair “fine line” we can expect?

Passion number two:   The model for successful American juniors has been the  FAMILY not the ACADEMY model.  No ones cares like the parents.   Proper parental guidance,  local teaching pros,  community tennis “angels’,  junior tournaments, high school team play, and on to college tennis.  Examine our golden era of  pros  (Evert, Connors, McEnroes, Sampras, etc).

Academies are often filled by throw away kids,  limited rich kids, and a selected few who get all the attention.   More importantly it is questionable academically and personally. 

The work to follow is also a summary of my efforts to  provide a guide for high school tennis teams, coaches and players (THE LITTLE GREEN BOOK of TENNIS). Is a unique aid for many who know little about team tennis.  Through   cooperation with THE NORTH CAROLINA TENNIS FOUNDATION  the print book was given  free to all seven hundred and eleven high school boys and girls coaches in North Carolina.  Now, we have designed a program to further make available this valuable aid to our teams, every one of North Carolina’s four thousand boys and girls players, and  the coaches, yearly. 

The final product works much like an education model:  1.  A good book for the teacher (coach)  2.  Inexpensive E-Books for the  students (the players)  and 3.   The “library” or resource center.  This was designed by the NCTA  staff.   We can use these tools to communicate, instruct, guide, and make information easily accessible.