Has anyone heard of this? Small courts, nets and racquets.
The coolest part of the quick start program are the 3 different "squishy" balls. The bounce stays nice and low for the kids
The green ball is the closest to a real tennis ball. The kids at this level are competing against other clubs. Real court, real serves, real double faults, real scores. The only difference is the green ball.
The Orange ball division is played on a 60 foot court
The red ball division is played on a sideways court (pictured)
The usta claims this is the reason other countries are so much better at tennis. I was on to this early. 2 Yrs ago the usta came and showed us this. Back then they had maskiing tape lines. One good breeze and the courts blew away.
It's grown on me, think the balls are great for kids 4-8 or so, although I think hand tossed drills are effective with regular balls. Kids do get to work on their technique more and also learn how to construct points when using slower balls. Had an 8yr student just do the USTA RTC camp at Stanford where they invited top 8yr olds and made them do all drills with 25" rackets and orange balls and 60' court. Interesting since all are already playing tournies on full sized courts.
Yep this is USTA's big baby, and promoting it heavily I feel kids can learn either way, but slower balls and faster learning curve should = more fun for the kids. The tournies however who knows how the players will turn out.
John, what I don't like is how they are putting really good 8-10 yr old players in the promo vids and making it look like that is how they learned. Some of those kids are ranked.
OOO. That's dirty. But doesn't suprise me. USTA is a business like everything else
Hey Hal- you seem pretty knowledgeable. How do you feel about there being 3 levels? Red/orange/green? I feel like 2 would be perfect. One with red or orange and little net.
I am having the most success with the green ball on a full scale court.
We play interclub matches with those green balls and lots of those 10 yr olds are ranked too =/
This has been around awhile. It is the way to get young kids involved in the sport when they are too small to play on a big court. Almost all of the top manufacturers make these sets with the smaller staged racquets and differant balls, and still play on the big court, just use different lines. ie half court, 3/4 court then full. Works great