Every summer, somewhere around the middle of July, I get the same question from a parent standing courtside at Potter Park. Camp is winding down, their kid has had six or seven weeks of tennis, and something has clicked. The question comes out almost apologetically: “Do you think she’s ready for privates?”
I’m Michael Boothman, and I’ve been coaching juniors in Sarasota for over 30 years. I’ll tell you what I tell those parents, which is not always what they expect: private lessons are a tool, not a promotion. They’re not the reward a kid earns for being good. They’re not the next rung on a ladder. They solve a specific kind of problem, and if your junior doesn’t have that problem yet, an hour a week alone with a coach can actually slow them down.
So here’s an honest guide to figuring out where your kid actually is.
The three signs that usually mean yes
1. They have a specific, repeatable problem that group time can’t reach.
Not “her forehand needs work.” Every ten-year-old’s forehand needs work. I mean something like: she loses the point on the second ball, every time, because she recovers to the middle instead of behind the middle. Or his second serve is a slowed-down first serve, so it either lands three feet long or he pushes it and gets attacked.
That’s a specific problem. In a group of six, I can see it and name it, but I can’t give it fifteen uninterrupted minutes with immediate feedback on every rep. In a private, I can. That’s the actual case for private lessons — density of attention on a named target.
If you can’t name the problem in one sentence, you probably don’t need a private yet. You need more court time.
2. They ask questions between points.
This one sounds soft, but it’s the most predictive thing I watch for. A junior who’s ready for privates has started running their own experiments. They’ll miss a ball, pause, and ask, “Was that late?” or “Should I have gone crosscourt there?” They’re building an internal model of what happened and testing it against mine.
A junior who isn’t there yet just plays the next ball. Nothing wrong with that — it’s developmentally normal — but a private lesson leans hard on a kid’s ability to take a correction, hold it in their head, and apply it four balls later. If that machinery isn’t running yet, an hour of one-on-one becomes an hour of me talking and them nodding.
3. Their group is no longer the limiting factor.
Sometimes a kid outgrows the ball speed in their group. They can handle pace their peers can’t generate, so the rallies stop being representative of what they’ll actually face in a match. When the group can’t produce the conditions your junior needs to be tested inside, a private becomes the place where they get a real problem to solve.
That said — this is rarer than parents think. A max of six players in a group means everyone gets a lot of live balls. Most juniors are nowhere near maxing that out.
Accuracy Inside Representative Conditions — and why it matters here
The first of our Six Pillars at SRQ Tennis is Accuracy Inside Representative Conditions. The short version: placement is only real if it survives conditions that look like a match. A kid who hits 10 out of 10 forehands to a cone when I’m feeding from a basket has demonstrated nothing except that they can hit a stationary ball. A kid who hits 8 out of 10 to that same target inside a live crosscourt rally, moving, under time pressure, with a real ball coming back — that’s a skill.
This is the pillar that should govern your readiness decision, because it changes what you’re looking for.
If your junior can’t yet produce accuracy inside representative conditions, the fix is almost never a private lesson. It’s more reps inside representative conditions — which is exactly what a well-run group session is built to deliver. Six kids, live ball, rallies that don’t stop.
But if your junior can produce it in a rally and it falls apart the moment there’s a score on the line? Now we’ve found something a private can address, because I can build the pressure deliberately and rep it.
The signs parents mistake for readiness
“She won her first tournament match.” Good. That tells me she competed well against one opponent on one day. It doesn’t tell me she has a problem groups can’t solve.
“He’s the best one in his group.” Being the best of six ten-year-olds in Sarasota in July is a snapshot, not a diagnosis. Ask instead: is he getting balls that challenge him? If yes, he’s in the right room.
“She loves tennis and wants more.” This is the one I get most, and I love hearing it — but “wants more tennis” and “needs private lessons” are different sentences. If a kid wants more tennis, give them more tennis. A second group day, a hitting partner, a wall. More court time with peers is usually a better answer than a second adult-supervised hour.
“Everyone else’s kid takes privates.” I understand the pull. But there’s decent evidence in the motor learning literature that variable, self-directed play is a powerful driver of skill development in young athletes — the USTA’s player development resources have leaned this direction for years. Free play against a peer isn’t a lesser substitute for coaching. It’s a different, and sometimes better, input.
What I’d actually suggest, in order
If you’re weighing it right now, before camp ends July 31:
- Name the problem in one sentence. If you can’t, ask me and I’ll tell you what I see. That conversation is free and takes two minutes on the court.
- If the problem is “not enough court time” — add court time, not privates. A second group day at $275 a month buys more total live balls than four privates.
- If the problem is specific and named — book a block, not a habit. Six sessions to attack one thing, then go back to the group and let it get tested. A 6-pack at $570 is a project with an end date. That’s the right shape for this.
- Reassess in six weeks. If the named problem is fixed, we’re done. If it isn’t, we learned something either way.
The kids who develop fastest around here aren’t the ones with the most private lessons on the calendar. They’re the ones who play a lot, get tested constantly, and get precise help at the exact moment they’re stuck. Private lessons are the third of those three things, and they don’t work without the first two.
If you want a straight answer about where your junior actually is, text me at 941-239-4703 or grab me on court. I’ll tell you what I see, even when the honest answer is “not yet.”
See you on the court.
— Coach Michael