Before I walk onto a court in Sarasota, I ask myself the same question I’ve asked for three decades: what will this player be able to do at the end of the hour that they couldn’t do at the start? Not “did they have fun.” Not “did they hit a few nice ones.” What can they now do — reliably, under a little pressure — that wasn’t there before?
I’m Michael Boothman, a USPTA Elite Professional and the founder of SRQ Tennis here in Sarasota. I’ve been coaching for more than 30 years, and I’ve raised a house full of kids alongside the business. Those two facts are more connected than they look. Fatherhood and small-business ownership both punish wishful thinking. A kid doesn’t get more confident because you told them they’re great; a business doesn’t survive because you believed hard enough. Something either works or it doesn’t, and you find out fast. That’s the same standard I bring to a tennis lesson.
Applause is cheap. Evidence is the job.
Early in my career, I could run a lesson that felt fantastic. High energy, lots of encouragement, the player leaving with a smile. And then I’d see the same player two weeks later making the exact same error, and I’d realize the good feeling hadn’t traveled home with them. The lesson was fun. It just wasn’t coaching.
That experience shaped one of the six ideas I build every SRQ Tennis session around — the pillar I call Confidence Is Built, Not Given. Confidence isn’t a pep talk. It’s the quiet certainty a player earns from watching themselves succeed at something measurable. When a ten-year-old hits eight forehands out of ten into a target zone in a live rally, they don’t need me to tell them they’re getting better. They saw it. The number did the convincing. My job is to design the drill so the evidence is real and repeatable, then get out of the way while they collect it.
This is why I track numbers on court instead of leaning on adjectives. “You’re improving” is a claim. “You made seven of ten crosscourt targets today, up from four last week” is proof. Kids can feel the difference between the two, even if they can’t articulate it. Proof sticks. Praise evaporates by the parking lot.
What 30 years actually changes
People assume experience makes you a better talker. For me it did the opposite — it made me a better editor. When I was younger I over-taught. I’d stop a rally to fix the grip, then the backswing, then the follow-through, three corrections in ten seconds, and the player would freeze up trying to hold all of it in their head at once. I thought more information meant more help.
Thirty years taught me that the skill of coaching is mostly subtraction. Say the one thing that matters right now. Let the player take fifteen swings on it. Watch what the ball does — the ball never lies — and only then decide whether to add anything. The research on motor learning backs this up: learners consolidate skills better with fewer, well-timed cues and more of their own repetitions, not a running commentary. The USTA’s coaching resources echo this shift toward game-based, player-led development, and it lines up with everything I’ve watched happen on public courts in Sarasota for three decades.
Fatherhood taught me the same lesson in a different classroom. You can’t rush a child into readiness, and you can’t shortcut a skill by wanting it badly for them. You set up the conditions, you stay patient, and you let them arrive. Some of the best coaching I’ve ever done looked, to an outsider, like standing quietly at the net doing very little. That “little” was the hard part to learn.
Running a small business keeps you honest
SRQ Tennis isn’t a sprawling academy. We coach on public parks — Potter Park, Pineview — in groups capped at six players, because at seven the individual attention starts to thin out and I won’t pretend otherwise. That cap costs me money on paper. I keep it anyway, because the whole point of the business is that each kid gets seen.
Running something small and local means there’s nowhere to hide. If a family isn’t seeing progress, they text me directly and I answer. There’s no front desk to absorb the complaint, no marketing department to reframe it. That accountability is uncomfortable and I’ve come to value it, because it forces the coaching to actually be good rather than just look good. A parent paying real money for their kid’s development deserves to see real development, and they should be able to point to what changed.
That’s also why I’m careful about the language I use to describe what we do. I don’t promise overnight breakthroughs or a fixed outcome, because I can’t honestly predict what a specific human being will do with their practice time. What I can promise is a method: measurable targets, live-ball practice, and a coach who tells you the truth about where your kid stands. If you want to know more about how I got here and what I believe, I put the longer version on the about page.
The question, again
So I come back to the question I started with, the one I’ll ask before my first lesson tomorrow morning and my last lesson thirty years from now if I’m lucky enough to still be out there: what can this player do now that they couldn’t do an hour ago?
If I can answer that honestly, with a number and not a feeling, it was a good lesson. If I can’t, it doesn’t matter how much fun we had — I owe them a better hour next time. That standard has outlasted every trend, every gadget, and every shortcut I’ve watched come and go on the courts of Sarasota. It’s the one thing I’d hand to any young coach starting out: stop coaching for applause. Coach for evidence. The players can tell the difference, and so can their parents.
See you on the court.
— Michael Boothman, SRQ Tennis · Sarasota, FL · michael@srq.tennis