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As player development coaches, one common theme we hear from parents of emerging juniors is “my son/daughter needs to play with better players.” Though everyone enjoys the challenge of playing with higher quality players, only playing up and the relentless pursuit of parents to continuously push for their children to only participate with higher caliber competition can actually be detrimental to a player’s development, as myself and many other industry experts have observed. For this article, I have engaged my longtime coaching friend and head of Female Player Development at IMG, Margie Ziesinger, to share her opinion about this topic.

Tom Witten
© Contributed Photo

In tournament play, you will encounter three skill levels of opponents:

Playing inferior opponents: If one simply practices with better players than themselves they don’t learn how to handle balls with less pace or against players whose tactics may be to push or slice to disrupt the superior player’s rhythm. In addition, the player won’t have practiced playing in a situation where from the mental perspective they are supposed to win. We as coaches have heard generations of parents explain that “my son or daughter was the better player yet lost” or that the player “needs to stop losing to players they are better than.”