Every September, the same thing happens on the public courts around Sarasota. School is back, the fall tournament schedule is filling up, and juniors who spent all summer grinding suddenly want to know one thing: am I ready? I’m Michael Boothman, and after thirty-plus years of coaching, I can tell you that the weeks right before a competitive season are the easiest weeks to get wrong. Most players either coast because they’re tired, or they cram because they’re nervous. Neither one gets you sharp.
Sharpening up is a real thing, and it has almost nothing to do with hitting more balls. It has to do with hitting the right balls, in the right conditions, and walking off the court with evidence that your game holds up when it counts. Here is the September checklist I use with juniors heading into fall play.
Cut the volume, raise the specificity
The instinct before a tournament is to do more. More hours, more baskets, more reps. The research on skill retention points the other way. Once a player has built a stroke over a full summer, cramming extra volume in the final two weeks doesn’t add much—and if it leaves them flat and sore on match day, it actively costs you.
What you want instead is a taper: fewer total balls, but a higher percentage of them under conditions that look like a match. That’s the whole idea behind the first of my Six Pillars, Accuracy Inside Representative Conditions. Accuracy built off a cooperative feed doesn’t transfer to a match, because a match never feeds you a cooperative ball. So in September we build accuracy inside live, game-like points—the same speed, the same spin, the same “I don’t know where this one is going” that a real opponent brings. The target I hold players to is the 85/100 rule: can you land 8 out of 10 to a chosen target while you’re actually rallying, not while a coach spoon-feeds you? If yes, that skill is tournament-ready. If not, that’s your last two weeks of work.
Test it, don’t just trust it
Confidence going into a tournament shouldn’t be a feeling. It should be a record. Before fall play, I have juniors run a few simple tests and write the numbers down.
Serve into a target box: how many first serves out of 20 land where you aimed? Cross-court rally under pressure: how many balls in a row can you keep past the service line before one sails or nets? Return of a live serve: how many of 10 do you put back deep? These aren’t drills for the sake of drills—they’re a snapshot. A player who knows “I hit 14 of 20 first serves to my spot on Tuesday” walks to the line with something real to stand on. A player running on vibes tends to tighten up the moment the first game goes against them.
This is why I keep coming back to evidence over encouragement. Telling a nervous 12-year-old “you’ve got this” does nothing. Showing them a page of their own numbers from the last two weeks does a lot. Confidence is built, not handed out.
Play sets, not just points
Points are not sets. Sets are not matches. The gap between them is where most juniors lose in the first round.
In the two to three weeks before fall tournaments, I want players competing in scored formats as often as possible—full games, tiebreak races, short sets against someone who is genuinely trying to beat them. The skill you’re rehearsing isn’t the forehand. It’s managing the score: what you do at 30-40, how you reset after a bad game, whether you can close out a lead. Those are separate skills, and the only way to train them is to put a scoreboard on the court. A player who has practiced being down a break in a friendly set is far calmer being down a break for real.
If you’re a parent looking for where to find that kind of match play around here, our local scene has more options than people realize. I wrote a full rundown of where Sarasota juniors actually get better on the SRQ Tennis coaching page, and most of it costs a lot less than a private club membership.
Manage the body, especially in September heat
Sarasota doesn’t cool off in September. It’s still routinely in the 90s with the humidity to match, and a junior who bakes through a three-hour Saturday practice is not going to be fresh for a Sunday match. Fall tournament prep means being smart about load: shorter, sharper sessions in the heat of the day, real hydration, and enough sleep that the nervous system can actually absorb the work you’re doing.
Recovery isn’t the opposite of training—it’s the part of training where the adaptation happens. In the final week especially, I’d rather see a player rested and hungry than drilled into the ground. The USTA’s guidance on youth heat safety is worth a read for any Sarasota parent whose kid is competing through the fall.
The last 48 hours: keep it simple
Two days out, the work is done. Whatever your strokes are now, they are what you’ll bring to the tournament. So the final 48 hours are about staying loose and staying confident, not fixing anything.
A short hit to feel the ball. A few serves to your targets so the first service game doesn’t feel foreign. A quick look back at your numbers from the last two weeks. Then rest. Any junior who tries to overhaul a backhand the night before a match is telling you they don’t trust the one they have—and that doubt shows up at 4-all far more than a technical flaw does.
What “ready” actually means
Ready doesn’t mean perfect. No junior walks into a fall tournament with a flawless game, and chasing that only feeds nerves. Ready means you’ve tested your game under match-like conditions, you have real numbers that say it holds up, and you’ve competed enough in scored formats that the scoreboard doesn’t rattle you. That’s a player who can lose the first three games and still find a way, because they’ve been there in practice and it didn’t fall apart.
That’s the standard I hold Sarasota juniors to every fall. Not “are you fired up.” Are you sharp, and can you prove it. If you want help building a September plan for your player—or you’re weighing which fall tournaments are worth entering—reach out any time at michael@srq.tennis or 941-239-4703. I answer my own phone.
See you on the court.