Dave Smith: Internet Coaching

0:00:01.0 Jack Broudy: Hello, y'all. I'm Jack Broudy, and we are Living at the 45 here with Dave Smith, my colleague and friend, great tennis pro and great guy, all the way around. So another episode today, we just started talking here and I wanted to hit the record button. We're talking about internet coaching. And I was going to give them my newest idea of what we're doing, starting in about two and a half weeks, I believe June 5th. And I was going to invite Dave, so I'll invite him right here live. So what I'm doing is this, I've been getting, like I'm saying, this is a very interesting thing, this internet coaching. You can do things that you could never figure out standing there. I mean, even when I look back to some of my best relationship times with like Foreman and Warren and Steve, all the guys that I worked with, the big deal with them was, you know, Jack, let's do another video tennis lesson. I go, really? Oh yeah, those are the ones that get me the most. These are 14, 15 year old kids telling me this. And I should have figured this out 20 years ago, but you know, it's just incredible what you can do on video that you can't do on the court.

0:01:21.5 Dave Smith: Well, I think two things that strike me because as you well know, I was senior editor for tennisone.com, which was really the cutting edge leading first of its kind kind of online presence in the tennis. I was happy to be a contributor.

0:01:40.3 Dave Smith: Yeah, we had a lot of good tennis contributors. I mean, obviously Alan Fox, you know, a number of name pros as well as those that have a deep level of experience. But what I've found and why I'm so excited about your program is this. One is players today that the more you mentioned 15 year old, well, they've grown up with TikTok. They've grown up with YouTube and they're so ingrained and they're so invested emotionally, physically, mindfully invested in the internet concept, the video concept that I think is a perfect timing and people you're absolutely right. The video presence of being able to pull slow motion, which I mean, I don't think a lot of pros, you and I have been around the block for so long, we have a keener eye. But even with a keen eye, the ability to visualize things live versus a super slow motion, high definition video presence and being able to really isolate and look at things in an objective sense is priceless. And so I think your video presence is going to be very well received. Plus, you add not only your ability to see things more clearly and show them to the student.

0:03:10.9 Jack Broudy: But to take your 45, well, you said 100 years experience. I don't think I plug it all into this.

0:03:18.6 Dave Smith: I do. I always plug it into the system and I go, is there anything that's off balance here? Is there anything that's not lined up properly? And you're right. I don't somehow I don't even feel like a dumb jock anymore. I feel like much. It's just a much different thing to plug it into that system. So you're right. And you're right. I never thought about the kids are invested in this virtual reality. Right.

0:03:39.9 Dave Smith: So these slow motion tennis tennis videos and these ability to stop freeze frame, to look at the footwork, to look at the balance, to look at the offhand, to look at the racket's position, the swing path, the contact point, all these things can now be more objectively. Yeah. And within numerical values or within a quantitative values versus qualitative values, which is they have to go hand in hand. So in talking about online video, online learning, I tell my students all the time and you probably can relate to this. When I was in high school, the video machine was this big bulky thing that had just been invented. It was on a cart. The camera had to be on a tripod. Well, it's not that old, but it was black and white video. We were like, oh my gosh, this is the greatest thing ever invented. Well, now we have telephones that can take you know, I did some majoring in communications at UCSD and Chapel Hill both. And we used to have to cut, you know, the film to edit. I mean, that's how you edited it back then. Now it's just copy paste, you know, clip here, split screen.

0:04:53.4 Dave Smith: You know, it's so easy now. But yeah, you're right. Back in the old days, it was not easy getting video. And so it was a big damn deal when you got some video of a student. But like I think I told you earlier today, I did a lot of that, especially I remember Foreman and Stevie and they would really like the video lessons of themselves. Number one, I think they like to see themselves.

0:05:18.2 Dave Smith: Yeah, no, there's there's certainly a degree of ego centric reward of gone. That's me. I mean, the case in point is every time I put pictures of my students up in my in my club, I would frame all my students, every every kid had a picture and guess what the kids would do? They bring their parents in and they'd show that picture. These are younger kids for the most part, but they loved seeing themselves highlighted. And obviously, that's a little different than a one on one lesson. But it's still the same concept of players actually going, that's me. That's really me. And you can really see things much more clearly. I didn't know I did that. I know. Yeah, that's the other thing. It doesn't get personal. You know, it's funny. I work. I'm a lucky guy. I've been started with Foreman and start with Warren. I start with these kids under 10, you know, between four and six years old. And I maybe it's because of the 45. Maybe it's because we had instant success. And everyone else was, you know, saying whatever this year's flavor of the month was, you know, unit turn or buggy whip or whatever.

0:06:31.6 Jack Broudy: That my kids stay with me. Like my last lesson with Sam Querrey, he was 18. My last lesson with Steve Foreman, he was 17 going to college, Warren, I was with him during the NCAAs when he won it. So and the year before when he lost in the finals. So I've had a good long time with that. And what I'm getting at is this, it can get personal. When you're on the court with them, there's ego, it can get personal. Like I remember former ones challenged me when he was 14. I can I can ace you until I said, Steven, you can't get your tennis serve past me. I said, you know, aim it, you just hit hard, because he was getting a big tennis serve at the end, right? Right. Right. Right. And he thought he was great. But I said, Steven, if you don't disguise your tennis serve, if you don't put it on a line, an old man can anyone can return so I bet him we bet. We bet 20 bucks. He says, I'll bet you. He says, I'll hit three serves you can't return. Maybe one he says, I'll say you can return one of the three.

0:07:27.2 : I said, I'll return all three. So I returned all three, he owed me 20 bucks. He ended up giving me a couple of his free shirts that he got from whoever he was sponsored by that year. I can't even remember. But it gets personal. When you show it on video, all of a sudden you're on the same side of the fence, you know, and you're like, well, look at this, you see how Federer's heel drops here. And look at yours. Look how look how stagnant you look. And look at the dynamics and Roger's body. He's not working hard, but you can see there's something different. So you can talk like that all of a sudden, you're on the same bench and your pals again on the court, you know, when you're trying to make a change, especially when the kids number one in the country, you know, I mean, let me see if I can find it. But like, right, you know, when you can pull up it, you you move from a subjective, because kids especially and I've got a young lady who's, who's a really good player who gets really uptight, very tense. And when I bring up the video, it moves away from this emotional life critical, you know, where you're telling a player to do something, they take it as a critical affront to them sometimes when you're just you're just trying to teach them and sometimes you have to remind them but when you bring up a video, you absolutely move from subjective emotional evaluation to Oh, this is what I do.

0:08:59.7 Dave Smith: This is what you do. This is I think that's what we see in the line call. You notice that over the last five years as we have shot spot and various high definition video line calling now, we don't have the Mackinac row. You cannot be serious or the argument argumentative call anymore. This has become so much more about the sport rather than a bad call. We still get it occasionally. But I think tennis videos change the dynamic of the sport. Like that kid behind me. See that kid to my you see I'm the one with the blue hat there without. And the kid next to me is Foreman who he won this is the hard courts in San Antonio. He won it. And he and Stevie Johnson, who on my other side right there. And that's his father. If you remember his roommate in college, God rest his soul. You know, I like Steve, we were good friends. But anyway, this was about two weeks before this tournament. This was San Antonio, they want a couple of gold balls and doubles and Foreman won the singles. I just given Stephen a video lesson how I remember back 25 years, I don't know, but and he had told me says, you know, the video lesson really weighed on me.

0:10:13.7 Dave Smith: I can see it when I was playing. I was like my own spectator all of a sudden. So those were his favorite lessons. We only did them a couple times a year because like you said, video in those days was a real pain in the ass. You know, you got a tripod and this and that keeping the camera steady. And remember, they had stability back there. Camera. I mean, it was not easy. And then of course, you know, you had to download it somehow and then upload it. So now today, it's so much simpler. But like today, it was a really interesting morning. I had this kid he's a UTR like 10 very good player going to play college tennis next year number one, you know, top two or three in his state. And so it was very difficult. When you first look at his tennis serve, you think I'll show you what we were doing. When you first look at his tennis serve. You're like, well, that looks pretty good. I mean, he's a UTR 10. He's not terrible player. But of course, when you can get to slow motion, and I'm only showing you a minute here because I find it interesting full screen.

0:11:21.9 Dave Smith: So you can see this right. So So yeah, it's so much easier. You can stop action, you can stop action, you can compare him to other players, you can get a closer, you can get closer to him. There's Taylor Fritz. I was Taylor here I was trying it's there's just no way you could see possibly see this unless you're doing it in slow motion. I was emphasizing that see his right heel, you saw it was lifted at first. But if you watch it super slow motion, you can see it's he starts to settle into it. As he as his toss goes up, he settles into that right heel, which is sort of what I talked about this idea of polarity, right? When your left arm is up, your right heel is down. When your left hip is up, your right hip is down. And you know, like I said, I always contend that tennis is a system of polarities. It's like you're in a giant bubble, but you have to always fill it. So Roger does subtle things that makes him so terrific that I could never show him these things. Like look at his left shoulder, people don't notice things.

0:12:37.9 Dave Smith: But look at the coil from his left foot to his left shoulder. There's a dynamic there. And unless you stop it right there, you can't explain that to anybody. And you see he's already begun with that right hip is pulled back the furthest and you can see a torque in his body. It's almost like a slight bow. It's beautiful, really. And then this kid when he was serving, big difference. So you see at the same point here, right there, this kid, you can see there's nothing in his back leg. Right? And when at the same point, when you saw Federer, you saw his calf was bulging out on the right leg. And you see how he's already slid to the front leg. So he's already off balance. So you know, by the time you hit the ball, he's going to be facing the net. This is what I was trying to tell him because he goes into the tennis serve slightly off balance. But it's very difficult to show someone this unless you can compare it, stop it, slow motion it. And you'll see here as he does come through because he's a little, he's a little front heavy on the tennis serve.

0:13:45.5 Dave Smith: You'll see a contact. See, he's already sideways and he shouldn't be. He should still have some weight in the back foot. I'm explaining to him, you have to face it. You see, because now he feels like he doesn't have enough power. So now he tries to rush his upper body. You see, look where his eyes are. He hasn't even come close to hitting the ball.

0:14:07.6 Jack Broudy: Well, that's the most pull down I've ever seen of a head, a head and shoulder. And the head pulling that far down.

0:14:15.6 Dave Smith: But if you watch it in fast motion, it's not a bad looking tennis serve. Listen, the kid is ranked in the nation and he's a good player. But you can see the difference between good and great between UTR 10 and UTR 13. There's a big difference. So yeah, so like I'm saying, I'll get at it. But it was just something I found interesting. Just thinking about our meeting today. You know what I mean? Anyway, that's, that's kind of where I'm at with that is just, especially at this level, I guess with a beginner, it's much easier. You can just coach him by looking at him, don't you? You don't know what you're doing. But when it gets to anything over a UTR four, sometimes you really have to, you know, they're good enough to say, well, yeah, you can play this game. No, you're I mean, I associated golf and tennis in the same light. And, you know, my daughter, being a world-wide golfer, we use video quite extensively, both on the course and in the office to, to isolate many of her swing components, because tennis and golf are very similar in the repeatable stroke.

0:15:29.7 Jack Broudy: And if there's a golf and tennis, you can do seven things, right? One thing wrong and your stroke will likely be failed, it will likely fail in some regard. And so until you identify, whoops, I just lost.

0:15:44.0 Dave Smith: Well, you're so lucky, Dave, that you were doing both golf and tennis. You know why? Because golf is miles ahead of tennis. And most of us know that I think even tennis pros know that. They're miles ahead of us as far as everything from commentating to really we look how they fit golf clubs. They don't do that in tennis. Hey, you want to try a million rackets. Yeah, exactly. Whatever you like. I mean, the bottom line is golf and tennis have similarities and there's obviously differences too.

0:16:16.7 Dave Smith: But the one thing that when I train my tennis players is if you cannot create a repeatable, reliable swing path that is correct back to my seven things, right? One thing wrong. If you can't identify that one thing wrong and you can't make that correct, if you can't identify it, how do you correct it? There's where video is very helpful in identifying one or two aspects that might be polluting the rest of your swing. And so we use video heavily in showing our players, like you said, what they look like. They love it. But then they're like, oh, is that me? Yeah, that's me. That's you, girl. Or that's you, boy. And the idea of identifying those and correcting them now gives you the potential to create all the parts of the swing correctly, whether it's footwork in tennis, whether it's a contact point, whether it's a swing path, whether it's a balance. And then you can start to create tennis tennis drills that emphasize or train the elements that you're trying to make the uncomfortable or unfamiliar become comfortable. I don't prescribe, as you well know, to the idea that well, we're going to avoid that because that's too difficult.

0:17:31.7 Jack Broudy: We're not going to challenge you. That's BS, because all you're doing is creating a player who's going to be more difficult in developing the correct swing path. So from the very moment our kids are seven, eight years old, we're teaching them an advanced foundation, whether it's tennis or golf, to hit the ball correctly as best we can. We also know that they will evolve that foundation to match their personality. And we have to be careful as pros to make sure that it doesn't evolve negatively. It has to be evolving to be, I call it embellishing in the positive context that it's actually contributing to a stroke rather than making the stroke more negative.

0:18:20.9 Dave Smith: Yeah. And you know, it's funny, while you're talking, I'm thinking to myself, I try to encourage the kids in kind of a weird way. Like if I have a short kid, I'll show him tennis videos of Rios, of Justine Ennard. If I have a big kid, I'll show them tennis videos of Taylor Fritz, a tall kid. If I have a kid that's a little hefty, I'm not going to show them Taylor Fritz. I'll show them Marenka, I'll show them Sanga. So I try to let them relate. And if I know in the back of my mind that their favorite player is Nadal, then I will always use that player to compare them to because you want to, you know, I don't know, gives them that great feeling of, hey, you know, I'm not that far behind my favorite player.

0:19:11.7 Jack Broudy: Well, one of the hard things I think is getting players to find a player that they, you know, we train a lot of tennis players, especially the hardest thing in the world is dealing with a kid who says, I want to learn to play tennis. Well, how much tennis have you watched on TV? Oh, a couple of minutes.

0:19:27.8 Dave Smith: That's a whole, that's a whole topic. Getting kids to watch tennis is incredible. I mean, I don't know. I guess maybe it's the generation of, you know, everything's got to be done in 15 seconds. You know what I mean? I don't know what it is about long movies anymore, you know, watching a three hour match. I have no problem watching. Certainly if I can avoid the commercials, I will. But other than that, I don't mind sitting on my butt if I'm watching an epic match, you know, Fener, Nadal, Djokovic, Murray, any of those, you know?

0:20:04.3 Dave Smith: Right. Well, if you're anything like me, you're watching to collaborate with what you're training your players to do. And you're like, there it is. That's the exact same, you know, whether it's a footwork or a stroke or a strategic player, or when a player gets ahead in a rally, what's controlling the point. And you're hoping that kids are starting to, and we watched when I'm coaching with our teams and we have large teams, we go in, if it's raining, which we don't get a lot of rain here in Southern Utah, people don't realize Southern Utah, St. George is like Vegas. It's a dry, we're the one part of the state that doesn't get hardly any snow. But we do get rain occasionally. And so I look forward to rainy days because I look at an opportunity to work on things that are maybe not as critical as being on court working on, but we can watch tennis videos, we can highlight, I love highlight tennis videos of greatest 10 points in Wimbledon or the greatest 10 because it shows kids, wow, look at that. That's amazing. And it really raises the bar of expectation of what a kid's like.

0:21:16.6 Dave Smith: Suddenly you see the light bulb go on in their head and they're like, I want to learn to do that. It's sort of like me as a magician, I'm a professional magician. And when I see somebody do something with cards, that's really amazing. I want to learn that. I want to study it and I want to master it. And so when we show kids tennis, it's like suddenly they realize, wow, there's, it's an art form and it's something that they find very cool. So I love that aspect. Yeah. And, and you know, there's a couple, I don't want to forget either. One is, you know, I remember when I was a kid, funny when you're a tennis player, you remember pretty much you're all the same. But when I was taking lessons, I remember thinking I was hitting Sol on the lesson. What was it he was telling? I mean, I guess it must've been a real scattered brain kid because it's like, you know, things would go in one ear and out the other, like my mom would say it's true. And with the tennis videos, I always copy, you know, download, upload it, download it, copy the link on Vimeo, send it to the player that day and their coach.

0:22:26.5 Dave Smith: Cause I work with that's the other thing. When you do this, you actually get a stronger bond. Like I just did this last lesson with that kid you saw Sam and his coach, they were both there and they were just about to go out for a lesson, but they said, let's call Jack. Let's do a lesson with Jack for 15 minutes on your tennis serve. Cause I sent them your serves. So it's unbelievable way to collaborate. So now as we speak, those guys are out there working on a tennis serve. I said, Hey, I would use the rocker. If I were you, I would put the arrow because he's really over rotating. He's got to start thinking, Oh, this is the direction I'm going. And, you know, so I gave him my suggestions and the student loves it. The pro loves it. Cause the pro loves to learn a little more. I love it. Cause I get to be a part of it. Whether it's in Spain or Canada or Alabama, I get to be a part of it. And it's a lot of fun for me, but it's amazing what you can do with these lessons because, and if they forget, they just look at the link really quickly.

0:23:29.2 Dave Smith: He's got his phone with him on the court. He can look at the link. Oh yeah. Jack said, do this with your shoulder. Try that. So it's really, it's something that I think people don't realize. Even I didn't realize till a little while back, a couple of years ago, how crucial this video stuff is. So I think that's, that's an important thing is that they can look at it again. Right? Like I said, you finish a lesson. What was it that coach told me? I can't even remember now you've got it forever. You can keep a library of it. And I think that's a very good thing as well. And like I said, for me, it's great because I have these certified pros. I probably get a minimum 50 tennis videos a week. Seriously all day long. That's why I shut my phone before this podcast because ding, ding, they're on the court in Vegas or wherever. And they're sending me a video. How's this kid look to you? I always say, you know, it's tough in a text, but in a word, you know, see if you can do this. But that's why I came up with this next idea that I'm going to launch to you right now.

0:24:36.8 Dave Smith: So we're going to do a giant zoom in about two weeks, two and a half weeks. We're about to announce it in a newsletter to our members at which you are. And I'd love you to show up at our new idea is this one. See what you think of this. So we'll have minimum. You know, last time I did a giant, soon we had 26 pros. So we'll have a minimum of 25 pros because that was three months ago. Things have moved a lot since. So imagine we have 40 pros and I'm going to go over these tennis videos that I've been getting, you know, trying annoyingly trying to text a one word answer. I'm going to go over it. The pros will be there that sent me the tennis videos. We will go in front of everybody over every one of those things because I'm tennis videos because I'm going to have time to slow motion and this and that. And we'll probably get through, I imagine, 25, 30 tennis videos in 90 minutes. And it'll be and then we can have other people talk and say, you know, I've had that same issue, but I use I use the Cobra, Jack.

0:25:37.3 Dave Smith: Oh, and I'll say, well, you know, I could see how that would work. And how did you use it? And it's going to be I don't think anyone's ever done anything quite like this. So we're really excited about it. Certainly. I just thought I'd launch that to you and get your opinion on that.

0:25:52.2 Dave Smith: Well, number one, I love the idea of unique collaboration, giving people a vehicle to listen and contribute and obviously share their wisdom if they are a relatively experienced pro, but also to learn how would you, Jack or Dave or Joe, whoever, how would you progress with a particular player? And we all have players with various situational things that are pretty common, you know, pretty common. I would say, yeah, they all seem unique at the moment, but they're all pretty common. And if we've had success and others with correcting a flaw or idiosyncrasy, that's not a contributing aspect of a tennis serve or tennis volley or a ground stroke or strategy. And then we can jump in with, oh yeah, we create balance by serving on our left foot or try keeping your hand into your chest as you're driving through. I mean, just there's the gamut of things that we can suggest that maybe others have not thought of. You know, there's a lot of information out there that I love when I go to conferences, because I'll pick up one, two, three, four, five things that I'm like, oh, that fits my narrative of what I already know.

0:27:22.2 Dave Smith: But that's another way to describe it, convey it, make the student aware of it. That makes me a better pro and certainly makes my students better because I have more vehicles to give them to go, oh, now I get it. I always encourage all my students to take lessons from others, not just from me, because number one, it's inevitable, we still see pros. I have them in small town here who say, you're not going to take lessons from Joe or Jim or whoever, because you belong to me. And who does that benefit? It benefits the pro, not the pro. Yeah, a lot of territorialism when it comes to this. There is, but if you train a player to understand the why as well as the how, they're able to now go to another clinic, even if that clinic or that lesson is offering something of questionable authority, my students know to ask, why are you teaching me that? How is it going to help me? And does it contribute to an advanced foundation or is it something I'm going to have to change later? Because that's really the defining nature of players. We never have to change our foundation ever.

0:28:37.4 Jack Broudy: We teach a basically a pro level stroke that we know will evolve because no two pros play exactly alike. But the video concept and everything will help a player and your program is going to be extraordinarily helpful in that endeavor to say, this is something that helped my player in my situation, try it with yours. And that's that's it.

0:29:01.3 Dave Smith: I know I'm really excited about it. It wasn't even my idea. I mean, I wish it was. It was one of my pros in Chicago. And he, you know, he was sending me tennis videos. He's got he tennis coaches the number one boy in the 12s in the country. Right. His name's Javier. Very good pro. But he had mentioned it to me says, Jack, why don't you do a giant zoom where we can you share the screen and you just go over our tennis videos one by one? I'm like, you know, why did I think of that? That's genius. And then I floated it by a dozen pros and they're all like, yeah, we're in what day, you know, so we're in. But yeah, it could be a mainstay because I've been thinking so much about this, Dave, that this might be a mainstay. It might be a once a month thing. Because, you know, I know until you do it and then the response to it will give you a good feedback.

0:29:54.6 Dave Smith: Well, that's what I'm that's what I'm hoping. I'm hoping after the first one they go, well, we could have done this better or we loved it. We want to do it again. You know, this is so helpful. And I even contemplated and I'll ask you your opinion. I even contemplated offering the pros to bring one student each. Let's say they have because everyone's got one serious student. Maybe, you know, in our cases, we had a lot, but everyone's got one serious student that might really be interested in watching some of this. And so, I mean, that's just something I'm toying with. But this whole idea of virtual, you know, lessons is really got me fascinated. Like I said, it's great when you can watch it with beginners and intermediates. But when you've got a guy like Sam, the last guy I showed you, you know, if you're on the court with him and he's hitting, you know, 90 mile an hour serves and they're going out by this much, you're trying to return them. It's really hard to see if he's got dynamic in his body when he's bouncing the ball. You know, it's hard to tell because you're sort of on your end of the court, you know, sort of getting ready for the big picture.

0:31:01.2 Dave Smith: It's hard to be very picky. The other thing I think you ought to consider is obviously each of these can be unique and it could be a tennis serve day, it could be a ground stroke day, it could be a tennis volley day. Number one. Number two, tennis tennis drills. What tennis tennis drills are going to help prolifically advance a player? I think one of the things that pros, when I talk to pros, when you and I have spoken at conventions, is the number one thing that most pros are looking for are drill ideas or situational tennis tennis drills that help create more diversity, identify strokes, identify strategic play, whatever the case may be. So sharing the tennis tennis drills that you and I and others have done, whether it's a one-on-one private lesson or another session would be group lessons. How do I, as a high school coach or a group coach in a club setting or academy setting or whatever, how can I maximize efficiency and effectiveness when I've got 50 players or 40 players or six players on the court? What tennis tennis drills work really well? And that's my forte. Well, sure. That's your forte. That might be another, that might, we could do a special video.

0:32:20.9 Dave Smith: I'll tell you one thing. It's rare to get pros that commit to something. And financially as well, right? I mean, it's not a big sum of money I charge, right? 15 bucks a month, 15 bucks a month, but it's still a commitment and it's a rare pro and it's always the best pros. I mean, all the guys I'm working with are just producing beautiful, kind of like us, beautiful players, no sad sacks. You know, everyone's loving it. Everyone's loving it. Like you say, from the very, the number 43 person on the team, right? They're loving it. And that's the most important person. And so these guys are very special and they might like something unique like that, where it's more of a clinic day. Yeah. So there's a wide variety of things.

0:33:08.1 Jack Broudy: And we would encourage people who are maybe listening in on this conversation to give us your ideas of what you might want to see, what a particular week, what would you like to cover? Do we want to do tennis backhand volleys or tennis forehand volleys? Do we want to do serves with young players? Do we want to see, how do we drill players in a group setting and yet still want to create maximizing aspects to how can we get the most out of our players? I mean, there's hundreds of tennis tennis drills that I've recorded as well as showing what particular drill we're trying to do and what we're trying to achieve in a particular drill. So all in all, we're really emphasizing the aspect of in this type of setting, how do you get the most out of your players? And there's no question when I haven't lost a match in six years, the system works.

0:34:06.6 Jack Broudy: Well, certainly you get a lot of great feedback on a clinic like that, because one thing I do love about pros, we still have the ego. So everyone thinks they've invented a drill. So you can get a lot of variations, I think, on some of the stuff that we already do. Everyone serves on their knees, but maybe someone doesn't scratch in their ass. I don't know. But I'm just saying there are a lot of variations on a lot of things. I've learned plenty telling my pros, here's what I do. Well, yeah, we do something like that. And I found this thing and we bought it and we use this. I go, well, I've never seen that before. Right. No, it could be very interesting. Well, ironically, I'll be speaking in Nebraska here in a month, talking to golf pros and tennis coaches, as well as tennis. I've got a six hour golf session, I'll be training what I did not only training my daughter, but as a as a coach of the high school level, or my girls golf team just finished second in state, I just took over this program with my daughter. And we took a fourth place.

0:35:13.7 Dave Smith: Yeah, congratulations. Last week was a big week.

0:35:17.0 Dave Smith: It was a big week. And, you know, we performed well and under pressure. And that that's the result of the same kind of training that we do with tennis. And so I thought it must have been a heck of a team that beat you. They must have been pretty good. Actually, the team that beat us had won it last year, they had their whole team back. We came within four strokes of beating them. So we we knew we were close. But it was we won we were second by 35 strokes. So we were you know, there was nobody really close to us. And we'll have a good team coming back. So as building it's when you take over a team, I've talked to a number of tennis coaches and pros who want to ask me, Hey, Dave, what happens when you have to read, you know, you have to start over. And I'm like, Well, starting over and starting over and you don't you you I look at every opportunity of taking over a new program as an opportunity to prove what I do works. And it doesn't matter what environment socio economic environment. I don't care where I'm at.

0:36:20.9 Jack Broudy: But developing tennis players and developing golfers. You're dealing with human beings that have two arms and two legs. I tell them, what does a pro have that you don't nothing other than they may have been doing it longer and they were taught correctly from the start. And that's what we're going to do. All these players you see behind me are all beginners, Robbie, not raw beginners, as you can tell, but is that are just starting to develop the advanced foundation. And we try to create the right swing path, the spin, the spin access, the footwork patterns, especially junior tennis and junior tennis.

0:37:01.5 Dave Smith: You don't really have to be the tallest or the biggest or this or that. You just have to miss a whole lot less than everybody else. You know what I mean?

0:37:11.3 Jack Broudy: That is so true. I mean, what the irony of what you just said is you can see this little girl behind me right here. She weighs 78 pounds and she's undefeated state champion. Size doesn't matter.

0:37:27.4 Dave Smith: I mean, if she was any smaller, she'd just be a spirit. Yeah. Right next to her is another state champion who's very, very tall. And both those girls are passionate players. In fact, I think I have a great picture of them together because one thing that they love about playing tennis is that they love playing tennis as being part of the team. I mean, there's two girls winning state state title there. You know, the idea is that these players are developing a love of the game. And let me see if I can find. But yeah, no. So I'm really glad you like that idea. I love it. I post. I'm glad I posted to you on this podcast because I wanted to really get your gut feeling about this. I think it's a real winner. Number one, where you can get 25 or 50 throws together that are all solid, solid pros. Like I was starting to say earlier, these guys are all my pro. All these guys are committed. You know, they really want to make beautiful, great players and they want to be the top, the best in their field. When you get 50 guys like that together, it has to be incredible.

0:38:40.2 Jack Broudy: Well, tennis coaches tennis coaches have to learn first and foremost that being a creating good players is not rocket science. It is science, but it you do not have to be my father was a football coach, but he was also national tennis coach of the runner up tennis coach of the year, CIF coach of the year in California, where we had a team that won 399 consecutive matches. How do you win 399 consecutive matches in Southern California? You got to be a damn good coach. And even though my dad was probably a 3-5 tennis player, he was a football stud.

0:39:19.2 Dave Smith: He was disciplined, motivated, tough, right? All those things.

0:39:25.8 Dave Smith: So all in all, I mean, my feeling is when a coach tells me, we'll never be that good. We're in a bad area. No, you're not going to be good because you don't believe you're going to be very good. And your players are going to believe what you believe. And the first thing I tell my students whenever I'm taking over a program or working with a team, I'm going to tell them we will be a state champion within four years. And every place I've ever been, we have accomplished everything. So you got to give me inspiration, got to give them the dream. And so hopefully your video program is going to be able to convince people, convince tennis coaches to literally believe in themselves and their players. It does take work. It does take time and passion. And it does take an investment. But the investment is sort of like being an author. I've written 10 books. One of the things when I first wrote my first book was quite, you know, it took a long time. And then my last book was a 600 page Disney novel that some people know I'm the author of the Disney books called Hidden Mickey.

0:40:34.5 Jack Broudy: But it took me three and a half weeks to write a 600 page novel. Why?

0:40:38.4 Dave Smith: Yeah, because I had done it. I had accomplished it before. My first book took the same. I swear to God, I think if I'm not mistaken at a year and a half, I got really pissed off one night. And I think I just did this, threw it away and started again. So after a year and a half of wasted time, I think my first one took me about three and a half, four years. And then I don't want to come back to that, you know, really quick. But the first one and the funniest thing, I don't know if you had the same issue because you're your own editor, but I had an editor. You know Hay House? Mm hmm. They were my first editor and my first book. It's been on tennis. And I couldn't give my editor my book. And she finally said, Jack, Sunday, 5 p.m., I'm picking it up. It's over. And I said, well, it's not quite. And she just took it. She goes, it's done. I'm in. Because you never let go. Did that happen to you on your first book? You didn't want to let it go? Yeah, the authors are notorious with that.

0:41:42.8 Jack Broudy: I speak at writing conventions a lot and authors are notorious with never finishing their book for two reasons. One, they don't believe it's done. Number two, they don't think it's good enough. And so they're postponing it because it's not because it's not really done. It's because they don't they fear failure. Is that what it is? I think that's a lot of what it is.

0:42:07.0 Dave Smith: We went through this for about a month. You know, she said, I'll get it tomorrow. Okay, but now it's not good. I'll get it tomorrow. We did that for about a month. Yeah. So okay, so I'm not the only nut in the... No, no, I think every author and you know, I tell people all the time, if you want a successful book, and you have to know what defining a successful book or, or podcast or whatever is not the book, it's promoting and marketing and making people know about the book. And I tell people all the time, the easiest thing you're ever going to do is technically write the book. That's the easy part. It's making it well known and making people aware of it. And I you know, authors tend to lose traction when they write a book and then time goes by and they lose interest in their own work and you got to stay diligent in making your work be known. It's like inventing the most amazing gadget. And nobody can do that. Let's not start, you start making me cry if you do that. Okay, with the board, everything I've invented, you're going to really make me cry.

0:43:14.0 Dave Smith: But no, you're right. Finishing, isn't that true? Finishing is everything, isn't it?

0:43:19.6 Dave Smith: Well, I encourage everyone to do what you're doing, what I've done, and that is when we die, my dad died at 55. He left nothing behind as far as what he accomplished other than the people who knew him, who he coached or myself as a son, my sister. And I wanted to make sure before I die, I left something that would retain what I had learned over the years from him, from others, from you, from many others, and put them in something that will live long after I'm gone. And I don't want a headstone. I want a book, I want a record, I want something that I have done that my family can say, that's my dad's work or my grandfather's work. And I think everyone has a story. Everyone has a story to tell, whether it's instruction, whether it's fantasy, whether it's fiction, nonfiction, whatever. But people, obviously, some stories are more interesting than others. But the bottom line is, I think everyone needs to remember that we don't live forever. And sometimes we wait till it's too late to record something like what you're doing in terms of this program that you're doing, because it'll live forever.

0:44:34.4 Dave Smith: I mean, it'll be on the internet forever and ever and ever, just like these tennis podcasts are going to be on. So my suggestion to people is, if you have a passion for something, start recording your ideas, whether in the outline, whether it's just a journal, and start thinking about how can I leave this legacy, this part of me that will live on after I'm done. And you will die a much more happy person, I think, because of knowing what you've left behind. Yeah, yeah. And for me, I'll cap on that. We'll christen this thing. It's about, I don't know, like I said, when I think about tennis, I'm still a junior. I mean, nothing changes. You're still playing college ball. And when I think back to all the arm problems I had, my arm would hurt with the wood rackets when I was 14. It really hurt. And then I'd have a great, I'd play great. But then one of the things with the old wood rackets, if you played really well, things started to hurt. And I guess what I want to do is have juniors avoid the love hate that I had with tennis.

0:45:52.3 Dave Smith: I really did. I love tennis so much, but I just hated the fact that I couldn't break into this upper echelon of the great players, the Fergie Tagans, the... Oh, I think you... The great players, you know, I was always a big step behind them. And it's not so much that there aren't better athletes than me, but if you really look back and go, shit, I had no clue. I had no clue. If I had known about the 40s, if I had known about the hips and not thought... And my coach would tell me things, oh, you know, looped with your arm. You never talked about the body, not once. Maybe, I think the most I ever heard was pivot your back foot to rotate your body. It was so dumbed down. It still is. It's so dumbed down. But if I had just had someone explain to me, hey, the forces of nature can help you. And that's really where I'm at. So it's not just leaving a legacy. It's actually helping a lot of frustrated juniors and players not be as frustrated. And like I said, we had, you know, it really took way most for us to play back in the 70s.

0:47:06.1 Dave Smith: There was no money in it. And you had to really love tennis. And there was equally as much frustration as joy for all of us. We know that's true. There was as much frustration as joy. Well, but look at all the pros out there that are coaching top-ranked players, other than a few handful of pros that were on tour. I would say you can look at the Macy's, the Foxes, the Bulleterys, the what's his name? Macy, the Montaglou or whatever. Yeah, you know, I mean, most of these pros, myself included, yeah, I was a ranked player, but I was I never made it to that next level. I played college, Division one, college tennis, loved it. But my I knew I was always going to coach. And I think I think the great tennis coaches became great partially because they did have some experience. You had experience playing college tennis. You had experience hitting with and playing against top level players. Men have been better than us. I played against Ricky Leach and Robert Vanthoff. I'm one of the best players in the world. I played against the Jensons, Pete Sampras. Yeah, I know I lost to the best.

0:48:17.8 Dave Smith: And so the idea was, yes, you've got to have a level of experience that says, OK, I know from experience, this is what needs to happen as well as I've studied. I'm well learned. I've studied and experienced what works in terms of large numbers. I've taught 3500 players in various environments from academies to clubs, obviously high school. And you get to study when you work with 40 or 50 players for four years, you get to see what works and what doesn't. And you also care what you're doing to what other tennis coaches are or are not doing. And that's one of the greatest things that I I wish every pro would coach high school tennis for a minimum of four years, because I've learned more from coaching high school tennis and what works and what doesn't work, as well as organization, drill production, effective, efficient, et cetera, et cetera, that I would never have been near the quality of an individual coach if I hadn't learned from that experience. So every I really encourage tennis coaches, I know I've I've encouraged you and taken on a whole new realm of understanding that high school tennis has value has validity when it's done right.

0:49:36.5 Dave Smith: Now, that's the whole reason we're doing this. Right. I was convinced at my tender age of 65 that I might be wrong about something.

0:49:44.7 Jack Broudy: Well, and I'm so proud of you and others because sometimes it's hard to break through that mindset of saying, no, no, no, no. All my only experiences with horrible, horrible high school tennis coaches who bring a passion, a level of experience or teaching experience to the masses and being able to do what you what I do, what I'm sure you would be able to do in that setting, because now and that's what I love to share when I speak at coaching conventions is like, yeah, it's great one on one. I mean, it's great. I do a plethora. I do a ton of private lessons. But a lot of times my lessons are dealing with 30, 40 players on one court. As I mentioned before, I have 75 players show up to a drop in clinic of mine. When I had a two hour Saturday morning clinic, 75 people showed up. How do I teach 75 people effective tennis? Well, it takes it takes balls.

0:50:44.7 Dave Smith: It takes understanding. And that's where my experience really paid off. This director of tennis and I have one. I have one head pro and I was a director and we ran this program every Saturday. We have 30 to 40. But one day we had 74 people show up. I had to take a picture because I've had that issue many. Yeah, we just don't expect it.

0:51:03.8 Jack Broudy: And boom, big day. You better know how to deal with it. And that's what when I wrote high school coaching mastery is really summing up that that core principle of okay, I'm now I'm a high school coach. Now what? Okay, I got 50 kids on my team. Be careful what you wish for. I love 50 players on the team. But if you don't know how to effectively sure, and those 50 players, you're going to struggle as a coach and the players are going to struggle. Oh, yeah. And so one of the things we really I try to do is say number one, encourages many players to come out number two, never cut. And number three, learn how to train more players. So good stuff. I can expect you'll be there. I hope everyone will be part of this and ask you real quick before I let you go.

0:51:56.0 Dave Smith: We decided to do it Sunday afternoon, 8pm Eastern Time because the East Coast to stay up later than we do. And Sunday is a pretty chill day, I think. And then five o'clock for a California is pretty much you know, right before Margarita time. So it's pretty what do you mean? Margarita time starts at 12 noon in California. That could be that could be true as well. But then they'll be in a good mood, at least. They will. Yeah, so we'll be doing it probably the first Sunday of every month. If the first one goes the way I like. Yeah, absolutely. I don't see why it wouldn't. It's really, like I said, just gathering all these tennis videos, I have about 100 I could choose from right now. And this is just in the past couple weeks, I've gotten and, and what's really neat is these are pros that we're all going to be sort of on the same page today. Remember, you're not going to have anyone go, well, yeah, shouldn't you tell him to get his racket back early? No one's going to say that, right? So it's going to be a pretty high brow.

0:52:56.8 Jack Broudy: I would say to be pretty high brow. I like it. And probably identify what you want your first you want your first one to be an overview or you want to get right into it.

0:53:08.1 Jack Broudy: Right. I think I have to go through the tennis videos a little more discerning. That is a good idea is to give it a theme, not just a we're gonna get together and look at a bunch of you'll attract a lot more people when you can isolate a stroke, whether it's a poly I like that.

0:53:23.7 Jack Broudy: I like that. You're absolutely right. Well, I'll be on board every Sunday. And I think others will start to migrate over and go, wow, I picked up 12 things today that I mean, we go to Florida to do a convention. Now you can sit in your office and learn. Just you and I, which obviously, we bring a lot of experience, but we're going to be inviting other pros who have a great deal of experience and the value of validity of what we're going, you're going to be doing in this program is going to be huge in terms of the depth of knowledge that will be presented and offered free of charge or $15, whatever your program decided that yet, you know, we're talking to the powers that be either way, it'll be nominal that I do know, I mean, I charge $15 a month, I'm not going to charge much for you know, it's, it's more about getting more of this terrific content.

0:54:19.5 Dave Smith: That's really what it's all about. Hello, hello. Hey, Dave, thanks. You have a fantastic day, Jack, you to have a great week.

0:54:26.9 Jack Broudy: And we'll be looking forward to that program. And certainly folks, make sure you tune in to what Jack and I are doing on here as often as you can. I think there's a lot of information to, to grasp and get into your program and make you a better pro and be sure to reach out to Jack and myself with any questions that you have that might be, Oh, I we want to know what you need. And that's what we're here for.

0:54:53.9 Dave Smith: Great. I agree. 100%. Thanks. Thanks a lot, y'all.

‍