There is a spiral notebook in my bag that is older than most of the players I coach. The cover is soft at the corners, the wire is bent, and about a third of the pages are filled with handwriting I can barely read anymore. I am Michael Boothman, founder of SRQ Tennis here in Sarasota, and after more than thirty years on the court, that notebook is still the tool I would grab first if I could only keep one thing.
People assume the notebook is full of drill diagrams or match strategy. It is not. It holds numbers. One number per player, most days. Eight out of ten forehands to the deuce-court target under live pressure. Five of seven first serves into the wide box in a real game. Nine of twelve returns landing past the service line off a partner’s feed instead of a machine. Small, boring, specific numbers. And they are the closest thing I have found to an honest record of whether a young player is actually getting better.
Why numbers, and not feelings
Early in my career I coached the way a lot of us were taught to coach. I watched, I reacted, and I told players how they were doing based on how it looked to me that afternoon. “Great session.” “You’re really coming along.” “That backhand is looking sharp.” I meant every word. The problem is that a good feeling on a Tuesday is not evidence, and kids know the difference even when we don’t.
This is the heart of one of the six pillars I build every SRQ Tennis program around: Confidence Is Built, Not Given. Confidence is not something a coach hands a player through praise. It is something a player earns by watching their own numbers move. When a twelve-year-old can see that her cross-court forehand went from six out of ten on target in May to nine out of ten in July — under live, game-like pressure, not off a cooperative feed — she does not need me to tell her she is improving. She already knows. The notebook just makes the improvement visible.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. A player who is told she is good has to keep trusting the adult who said it. A player who has seen her own progress on paper carries the proof herself, onto every court, into every match, long after the lesson ends. One is borrowed. The other is owned.
The discipline is the hard part
Writing a number down takes ten seconds. Doing it honestly, every session, for years, is harder than it looks. The temptation is always to record the good day and quietly skip the flat one. But the flat days are the data. A dip after a growth spurt, a plateau during a stressful stretch at school, a serve percentage that falls apart the week a player changes grips — those patterns only show up if you keep writing when the numbers are ugly.
Over thirty years the notebook has taught me things I would never have noticed session to session. That most real gains show up three or four weeks after a change, not the same day. That a player who is quietly anxious will lose accuracy before they lose power. That the juniors who improve the most are rarely the ones who looked the most talented at eight years old — they are the ones whose numbers climbed steadily because someone kept track and kept them honest.
What the number is measured against
A number is only useful if it comes from a condition that resembles a match. Eight out of ten forehands off a friendly, waist-high feed tells me almost nothing. Eight out of ten during a live rally, when the ball is coming at a real height and a real pace and the player has to move, decide, and swing — that number means something, because that is the situation the player will actually face on Saturday. I track accuracy inside representative conditions on purpose. The notebook is only as good as the honesty of what I ask a player to do before I write the number down.
This is also why I am skeptical of progress claims that live entirely in the “eye test.” The research on self-efficacy — a player’s belief in their own ability — is fairly clear that belief grows most from genuine mastery experiences, not from external reassurance. The organizations that train serious coaches, from the USPTA to the sport-science community, keep landing on the same idea from different directions: show a learner real evidence of their own competence, and confidence follows. My notebook is just the low-tech version of that principle, running for three decades.
For parents wondering what to look for
If you are a parent trying to tell whether a program is actually developing your child, ask a simple question: how does the coach know your kid is improving? If the answer is a warm feeling and a lot of “great job,” be a little cautious. If the answer involves specific, repeatable numbers measured under real conditions — and the coach can show you how those numbers have moved — you are probably in good hands. You can read more about how we approach this on our coaching page, but the short version is that we would rather show you the math than sell you a mood.
I am not against encouragement. I encourage kids all day; it is one of the best parts of the job. But encouragement and evidence do different work. Encouragement gets a player through a hard rep. Evidence tells them the hard reps are adding up. A young player needs both, and only one of them fits in a spiral notebook.
Thirty years, one habit
I have coached in a lot of places and through a lot of changes in this sport. Racquets got lighter, strings got smarter, video is everywhere, and there is an app for measuring almost anything now. I use plenty of it. But the habit that has outlasted all of it is the plainest one: watch a player do something real, count what happened, and write it down.
If I could pass one thing to a younger coach in Sarasota, it would not be a drill or a swing thought. It would be the notebook, and the discipline to fill it in honestly on the days the numbers disappoint. Do that for a season and you will coach better. Do it for thirty years and you will have something rarer than a trophy shelf — a truthful record of a lot of kids who got better, one measured rep at a time.
If you want to talk about how your child’s game is being measured, I am easy to reach. I am Michael Boothman, and you can find me at michael@srq.tennis or 941-239-4703.
See you on the court.