Ep. 21: The Five Rings | Coach's Corner

Alvin Owusu (00:03.618)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the best three podcast. I'm Alvin joined once again by my main man, Tori Hawkins. Tori, how are we doing this evening?

Torrey Hawkins (00:12.911)
I've been doing well man. Welcome back. hear Punta Cana is pretty nice this time of year. So welcome back and if you would tell us a little bit about your trip. I'm sure you were just hating it over there.

Alvin Owusu (00:23.31)
Yeah, yeah, it was terrible. was terrible. was for some reason it wouldn't get any colder than 70 or any warmer than 80 nice little Yeah, exactly exactly and apparently weather here in Atlanta was was I picked a good time to be gone apparently it was quite quite frigid quite a quite wet Yeah, yeah

Torrey Hawkins (00:30.749)
you poor soul. mean, how did you ever survive?

Torrey Hawkins (00:46.362)
wet and frigid. Let me just say 18 degrees on the temp. I want to say my feels like that day read 11 degrees. So the day you sent me that darn picture of yours with all the palm trees, I was literally coming in from taking out the trash and it was 11 degrees on the feels like. The wind gusts later that day were 15 miles an hour and sorry the wind.

Alvin Owusu (00:54.808)
Wow. Wow.

Alvin Owusu (00:59.778)
Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (01:12.738)
Oof.

The wind. There you go.

Torrey Hawkins (01:15.228)
The wind gusts were up to 25 miles an hour. So 15, 25 on my little weather underground app. I'm sitting there like, you couldn't have timed it any better.

Alvin Owusu (01:23.982)
It was, it was great. was great. It was, we stayed at a, at a club med and all inclusive, got to play a lot of tennis, which was, a little surprising how much I played. but it was, it was great. Got out there, did some of the group instructional work on the first day. And that was, I assume that was going to be my week, just kind of popping into the group lessons. kind of took me back to like early, early juniors where it's like,

Torrey Hawkins (01:39.76)
Nice.

Alvin Owusu (01:53.742)
you know, eight people in a line. get to do a little four ball. You want to, you want to look good in front of everybody, do your thing and then head to the back of the line. And so I did that the first day. And then the second day, this, this, this dad, French guy and his son, who I saw hit the day before comes over to me. like, he's like, emotions like, Hey, you want to come hit with us? And I was like, sure. So I hit with the son, son's 14, pretty good, pretty good player. Um, and so we're just, we're just grinding from the baseline for about 10, 15 minutes. And, um,

Torrey Hawkins (01:55.739)
Sir. Sir.

Torrey Hawkins (02:01.135)
Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (02:22.158)
start hitting some volleys and then the class is about to start. And he's like, Hey, I've got some, we've had some other friends coming to meet us and hit on the back courts. So I was like, right now? And he's like, yeah, right now. So I go back there with them and it's like, it's like Fern gully. You're going through the woods, you get to these other courts and there's like other really good players back there. It's like, Oh, this guy, Oh, this guy played a, he played D one at Missouri. Like he's a little older than me, but this guy's good. And then, Oh, this guy played at a D three a Swarthmore. They gave one national championship. It was just like,

Torrey Hawkins (02:38.808)
Yeah.

Wow. Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (02:47.406)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (02:52.514)
This one dude comes out and he's like, he's like, I don't hit much, know, I live in New York, but like my, have a court at my house in the Hamptons and like his forehand looks like he's got a house, just cleaner than Christmas, like Jesus, man. I was like, we were all just like, what is this, who is this guy? It was, yeah, but it was great and it was like the kind of like small little, it felt like its own little mini tennis club by the end of the week, like, and there was one of the guys had a son who was 13, junior player, like,

Torrey Hawkins (03:02.583)
Yes.

Torrey Hawkins (03:17.241)
Right.

Alvin Owusu (03:21.934)
Real nice kid, asked a lot of questions, played over at a club called Match Point, I think, over in Brooklyn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just a great group of guys. Gonna try to link up with them when I go up for the Open in August. But it was the tennis you hoped for when you get together with some people. Yeah, fantastic, fantastic.

Torrey Hawkins (03:24.322)
Nice.

Torrey Hawkins (03:28.214)
Yeah, I've heard of it, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (03:43.542)
Right. Well, I'm happy for you, man. And more for the tennis, obviously, than the darn palm trees you were showing me as I was enviously looking at the warmth. You know what I mean? And that's pretty rare. And maybe that's club meds all the time, but I got to think that that many good players at a vacation, a little resort spot for a week just happened to be, that was just good timing.

Alvin Owusu (03:51.243)
Yeah!

Alvin Owusu (04:07.936)
Yeah, mean, it was a president's day was that week, right? So we had our kids had winter break and up north in New York, like that's a week they always have off down here. Not all the time. Not every school district does. So it was like everyone I met was either from New York or from France. And this most of the people in this group happened to be from New York. Some of them came. Two families came together. Two other ones just happened to be there. So, yeah, it was it was it was fantastic.

Torrey Hawkins (04:12.332)
Bye.

Torrey Hawkins (04:36.477)
awesome awesome awesome

Alvin Owusu (04:37.102)
That's fantastic, One of the guys snuffed me out in the semi-finals of the tournament. I didn't come in tournament ready, next year I will be. Next year I will be. But yeah, enough.

Torrey Hawkins (04:42.238)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (04:46.421)
Yeah, next year, next year. Well, they snatched it from the eight person in a line forehand drill. So I mean, you probably did pretty well to get to the semis with that group. They were probably fine looking over at you from between the bushes. Hey, he looks pretty good. Go grab him. We need an eighth for the tournament.

Alvin Owusu (04:57.71)
I did okay.

Alvin Owusu (05:05.255)
Yeah, yeah, I did. did. Okay, I did. Okay. was, it was a fun week though. And, that's what the made the, the memories. but, yeah, enough about my tennis, enough about my tennis. know, we, we have been talking a lot about, you know, some of the things that we enjoy, like we enjoy talking about while we're here and in what our, what our, our true purpose is, as we're, as we have the ability, you know, this platform to speak to people. And, one of the things that has come up in previous conversations.

Torrey Hawkins (05:11.691)
Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (05:34.092)
that it seems it needs some more space to breathe here is what you've talked about before is the five rings of player development. And as we've gone on this conversation, we've decided that this definitely needs some explanation. One, around what this is, not even just for the sake of our listeners, but for, yeah, listeners now, listeners later, listeners who plan on,

Torrey Hawkins (05:46.912)
Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (05:53.365)
Sure. Sure.

Alvin Owusu (06:02.85)
helping other players develop. What does that path look like? What are those pieces? So we're gonna get into that and then hopefully, later on down the line, we can do a more thorough breakdown of each one of those rings. But wanna give you some space to lay out here and give us a kind of an overview of the five rings. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (06:04.445)
Right. Sure.

Torrey Hawkins (06:10.547)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (06:22.91)
Sure, sure, this is great. Kind of an episode dedicated to Coaches Corner a little bit here and I like that. I've been coaching for a little over 30 years and the one thing that continues to, that hopefully I'm getting better at, is it starts to become more congruous and simple. You're not teaching.

Alvin Owusu (06:29.098)
Absolutely, absolutely.

Torrey Hawkins (06:51.123)
Tangents anymore you're teaching a process and you're teaching a template and you're starting to bring things closer together the five rings Think Olympic rings for visual each ring at some point interlaces with another and we'll get into the detail of that all later But they all in a sense are interconnected on the surface. The first ring is your skill development

and by skill development, think, and it's one of the biggest, and it's probably right smack dab in the middle of the whole thing. We're talking your tactics, your ability to do certain things with the tennis ball, okay? Not to be confused with, which is the lower one, is your stroke development. Now the two are connected, right? Your stroke development aids and allows your skill development to be what it is, but...

Alvin Owusu (07:37.614)
Hmm.

Torrey Hawkins (07:46.62)
they're not, they're two different things. In fact, I would even say that too many people work on the technique or the skill or the stroke development all too often at the expense of the actual skill development. And so they were so busy getting that stroke to look good that they forgot that the whole goal was to get the ball to do something. And the technique simply allows that not to break down as often. So.

Alvin Owusu (08:01.923)
Right.

Alvin Owusu (08:12.598)
Okay, all right, okay, so then, then, skilled, okay, I think the stroke development part is pretty straightforward. Maybe, we understand that.

Torrey Hawkins (08:19.589)
Very, very straightforward and in so much that it's technique. And I think the bigger thing people need to understand is, and it changes over time. I'm a 10 year old kid, low to high is money. I get the ball deep, I get the ball over the net. Maybe or maybe not have a lot of top spin, but I'm clear in the net and I'm hitting the ball nice. I can only hit it so far, I'm 10, right? Bigger 10 year olds, right? May hit the ball a little farther, weaker 10 year olds are still getting the ball over the net.

hopefully to the surface line. It's all good. 12, 13 starts creeping around and all of a sudden you're launching that ball pretty good. And if you're not finishing more off the shoulder versus over the shoulder, that ball's starting to sail. And now the whole concept of topspin and where you're aiming, maybe even as you start getting to be 15, 16, that ball has to be a little straighter and your finish has to get even lower. Maybe not even dropping the racket down as much. But again, most kids are still kind of died in the wool low to high.

right, and most parents, unfortunately, still, because they remember that, because it was drained, was drummed into the kid when he was 10, right? So these are some things I'm getting at that I want people to kind of understand. It evolves over time. You your ability to hit the ball harder, farther, just ability to hit the ball faster, and so on. So stroke development, skill development, and then I'll probably save the third one down, which I personally think everybody, we pay it attention and then we don't, right? It's a weird one. And that's fitness slash strength conditioning.

Alvin Owusu (09:17.88)
Yeah, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (09:47.123)
I find that the fitness aspect, by that I'm talking about the ability to go as long as necessary in a point and to do it over and over and over again. So you're hitting parts of the recovery, you're hitting parts of the reaction, your strength, your endurance, your speed, all of that is under this amoebus word fitness. And of course your strength and conditioning is a part of that. But that really is really the other piece that's underpinning your

Your game is your ability to get to that darn ball and do it over and over again. I've seen a lot of good ball strikers that after ball six get low winded and start bailing out. And that's, at 52, I do it myself. I'll start flexing that ball after not ball six. Okay, that's enough, that's enough. Let's slow this thing back down a little bit. On the two wings, I feel are two things that people, talk about a little bit, but don't talk about as much. And that is the...

Alvin Owusu (10:30.807)
Yeah

Torrey Hawkins (10:46.54)
the intangibles and on the other end is the mental. And I like the term mental development because I feel like this is a big one that people don't always understand. The mental development is somewhere in between mental toughness and mental flexibility. I read a good article about it years ago and mental toughness, which is your ability to do what you're gonna do, right? You pretty much think of a steel beam or know, in the, you know, or

in the ground. It's not given too much. It doesn't matter what happens. I'm right here. And then of course your flexibility Mr. Punta Cana is your palm tree. It flows in the wind. In fact, it's made to flow in the breeze. know, little sometimes, hey, no big deal. No big deal. can handle that too. And it bends and doesn't break. The term mental toughness to me is a little bit of a misnomer because sometimes you want to be a little more flexible.

Alvin Owusu (11:25.9)
Hehehe

Torrey Hawkins (11:44.141)
And it's not to say the flexible is yours have to change. You do need to have a core mindset, a way you handle adversity and a way you handle success as well. But I find that the term mental development is bigger because you start understanding it's a little bit more than just what it is. So again, in summary, you have, think the most one that everybody needs to kind of key in on in the middle is what we're going to call the tactics or your skill development. What underpins those two?

is your stroke development, your technique, and then of course your fitness. And that is the big overarching category of speed, power, agility, reaction, quickness, the whole nine, right? The old Nike Spark, you remember the old Nike Spark thing that happened back in the days? Yeah, reaction, quickness, reaction, quickness, right? So again, all of those pieces, And tangibles and mental development.

Alvin Owusu (12:29.314)
Yes, speed, power, agility, reactive, quickness area.

Torrey Hawkins (12:43.627)
And the intangible is something you can't coach. It could be size. It could be lefty. It could be unbelievable. It could be better than average feel. Whatever that intangible is, you just don't coach it. That person just has it. When the speed picks up, they kind of calm down and zero it on the ball. I can see it when the kid is eight, nine years old. I can see it when the kid's 11 or 12 and they just shy away from the ball and they just don't want to be at the net, don't want to get hit. That kid probably won't be a great volleyball player. They're not going to.

Alvin Owusu (13:12.141)
Right, right.

Torrey Hawkins (13:12.989)
enough time up there to do it. Either way you can't coach it. You'd like to have more positive intangibles than negative. But the bottom line is those are a couple of things there on the ends that are really going to kind of affect you the upper trajectory of what you're doing. And I find you need to kind of you know you well you can affect one over here too too much. You can accentuate it. The mental development I think is one that we need to spend a lot more time on. Parents in particular with their young kids starting off with the game. We need to have this

mentality of growth mindset. And I don't mean just, you know, everybody gets a trophy and everybody, you know, hey, little Johnny, you did great. You lost O &O, but you played really well. little Johnny, you gotta beat O &O. That kid's pretty good. You know, let's get back to work, little Johnny, on seeing how we can handle, here's the two things that I thought we missed the most, and these things we can do. And in six months, we'd love to play that kid again and see how much we progress.

Alvin Owusu (13:57.42)
Right, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (14:11.997)
But that concept, right, sometimes the tournaments take on a little bit of a pass fail mentality. And really a tournament tends to be, in my opinion, more of a progress report or a checkpoint. This is where I'm at right now. And at this point right now, I'm healing this well, this well. And you know what? I need a lot of work on that. That kid who beat me in the semis, man, he had some things I didn't have an answer for. And now I know what to work on.

Alvin Owusu (14:28.771)
Right.

Torrey Hawkins (14:41.801)
as opposed to right. When the tournament you played great you probably didn't play great every match you probably just got through it and if you lost it doesn't mean you played horrible. The only kid could have been better you could have had a bad day you could have had your better match than the match before doesn't matter. There are checkpoints look out of his matches and the overview of all of them and that goes into your mental development because if you start looking at the tournaments this past fail there's gonna be a whole lot of failure you know what I mean and that would end up kind of kind of hitting you in the

kind of dinging you, we wonder why so many junior players quit at a certain point, how many top junior players don't play much tennis anymore, how many go to college and don't a racket anymore. There's a lot of trauma that they've had from some of these past failed experiences over the years.

Alvin Owusu (15:13.44)
Right, yeah.

Alvin Owusu (15:23.342)
Okay, so before we dig into that, because I wanna kind of maybe jump around a little bit here now that you've introduced all of the rings, I wanna go back to the tactics and skill development part, because I think we did a pretty good job of laying out what stroke development is, right? How we hit the shots, right? And then strength and conditioning, obviously the mental development and then the intangibles. But what is tactics and skill development?

Torrey Hawkins (15:27.826)
Check.

Torrey Hawkins (15:48.121)
Excellent question. Tactics to me are your ability to manipulate or impact the ball period and everything that it comes with. This could be your ability to, you're a big hitter, you like pace, your ability to drive through the court pretty well and you literally just have a bigger ball than most. Clearly your tactic is gonna be more hitting through the court, taking away some time.

Ideally, if you're pretty good at it, you should be able to follow that up with some sort of net or transition to the net because you're taking my time. Hopefully, the person is going to try to get their time back by going high or slicing. At that point, you're coming forward, finishes the play you started. That tactic is tied to a lot of mistakes. hit the ball lower, you hit the ball close to the line, you do a lot of change of directions, and there's a lot of error. It's a high risk, high reward kind of a game. But there's a tactic. Hitting a heavy ball.

the ball that has a lot of shape on it. Getting the ball up out of the strike zone. By definition, not as many winners, but you shouldn't be hitting a lot of errors either. The ball is very consistent. It's a war of attrition. You're really just trying to get that ball out of a guy's strike zone to push him or her back. But you're also trying, and this is the key, you also need to have the ability to counter that same strategy. What's the person gonna do? They're likely to hit the ball back, heavy. If you don't have it on the rise,

Alvin Owusu (16:45.634)
Mm-hmm.

Torrey Hawkins (17:11.895)
or a step-up ball to counter what your ball will naturally cause, then your tactic is incomplete. So these are the types of things that you have. Another good one, the handsy players, the all court, we call them when they get older and grown up and have decent hands. The field players, we call them when they're more wrecked players and they're adults, but we call them scrappers and pushers back in the day that would love to hit a few deep balls in an occasional drop shot.

Alvin Owusu (17:15.778)
Right, yep, yep.

Torrey Hawkins (17:42.648)
Do you have the speed to handle the counter drop shot when it comes back? So again, each of the tactics are nice plays in of themselves, but what makes them game styles is your ability to know how to handle them, your ability to execute them off of different types of shots. You can have it on both sides, not just on one wing, your better wing. And to truly be good, you need to have all of them and be able to have

Alvin Owusu (17:46.648)
Right.

Torrey Hawkins (18:10.881)
Your better ones be pretty fine-tuned but still have the ability to hit another one when necessary in case that better one got matched up or got figured out for the better part of rest of that first set with something else. Go ahead.

Alvin Owusu (18:23.16)
So is this where you would put the, we used to call them patterns, right? And I guess patterns are, they still exist, right? They're still a thing. This is where patterns would actually live then.

Torrey Hawkins (18:26.893)
The patterns. 100 %

Torrey Hawkins (18:33.261)
Patterns live in the tactics. And the one thing about a good pattern is that a pattern is predictable. You know the ball you want, you know the ball you're going for, least I hope you do, and you're hitting that ball to get the ball you want back. What is the biggest problem with the pattern? The kid sees it five, six, 10 times, they start to counter the pattern. So you need another pattern, or at least a way to get back to the pattern. Simple pong tennis, and me right here. Now I know you're lefty.

I'm gonna get to your backhand. I'm gonna get to your backhand. You think I'm gonna go down line to your forehand, but I'm gonna hook you back wide to your backhand again, causing you to hit a slice. You slice wide. I move over to another forehand. I'm not going back to your forehand, Alvin. Sorry about that. I'm gonna go back to your backhand, right? And at that point in time, my pattern is working. Now, what does Alvin do after I do it for two or three straight games?

Alvin Owusu (19:16.084)
he got me.

Alvin Owusu (19:24.464)
I can tell you exactly what's gonna happen. At some point, I'm gonna have to either take that backhand down the line to your backhand, or I'm gonna have to kinda cheat over a little bit, take a forehand. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (19:30.369)
Bingo.

cheat and take a forehand. There you go. So, and when you do so, right? And let's say you do the same thing back to me, right? Now we are battling. Now the tug of war has begun, right? We are competing all day. You got it. And I think people have to understand and at a certain point in time, that is tactics. Now, if I've got a decent backhand, if I don't mind you going to my backhand, I'm gonna be okay.

Alvin Owusu (19:41.262)
Mm-hmm.

Alvin Owusu (19:47.246)
the Nadal fetter of things. are fighting for the same thing.

Torrey Hawkins (20:03.741)
If I'm shielding my backhand, well then it's going to be who can get that ball or not. And then at that point, again, there's where your tactics lie. The part that I think is often overlooked with tactics is your ability to defend the tactic as well as the ability to attack. A lot of people can do it when they're being attacked or being fed a certain ball. A lot of people can't do it when they have to fight for that ball or they have to defend that.

pattern to get back to theirs.

Alvin Owusu (20:34.562)
What do mean? Give me that scenario again and then explain what you mean by defendant.

Torrey Hawkins (20:37.374)
Excellent. Excellent. I'm serving to you. You like your forehand, but I'm making sure you don't get a foreign on the return. You just can't get around hitting the backhand on that ball. You can't cheat over past the alley. I'm hitting a slice out wide to your backhand. I guess I am. At that point in time, for you to break me, you're going to have to hit a backhand at some point in time. Through me, past me, back, cross court, something.

If you do and do it consistently, you might get the point you're looking for back. If your tactics don't, that day, don't merit you having a good backhand cross court enough, well guess what? I'm gonna have my way with you on that forehand side. Vice versa for me. If you do the same thing with your left elbow out of the act, I better have a backhand. We all know what happened Fed and Nadal. 100 % of the time, I think it was one of the matches he hit the serves.

two feds backhand 100 % of time in a four or five set match. There is no guesswork. By about the third set you know guess what he's going to the backhand again. He is not changing it up. But my point being and that's just where the at some point and enter years later enter Ivan Ljubicic who made fed come over the top of the backhand because he said look you're just not going to get through Nadal with that slice backhand return. You're just not.

Alvin Owusu (21:44.085)
Yeah

Torrey Hawkins (22:02.131)
you know, one to 12 slams, I'm here to tell you, you won't win anymore if you keep slicing that backhand return. So those are where you're gonna have to have the ability to counter that pattern before you can even get to yours. And Thad and the dollar obviously do great examples of tennis greats, and they're easy to identify with. But at some point you have to defend that pattern to get back to the one you.

Alvin Owusu (22:05.922)
Right, exactly.

Alvin Owusu (22:24.878)
Okay, so we talked about this at the top as being a, you know, these rings have to do with development, right? And we're gonna, we're using, I think the thing that we're most, it makes the most sense because it is linear, it's junior development with a junior player. So when we start talking about these, when you say the rings, the rings are interconnected, but there really is no beginning and no end with these rings. But as you're building a player, right, player development is somewhat, I'm not gonna say development is linear, but.

when you have time with a player that time is linear. So how do these actually work together or in sequence of one another when we're talking about a player coach development relationship?

Torrey Hawkins (23:06.461)
It's a great piece. Let me start with that one on the outside, which was that mental development. I think you constantly help a player and a parent to make sure they understand that the mindset continues to be, you're incubating it, getting it better and better over time. You're helping the kid understand adjustments. You're helping the kid understand matchups. I tell my kids a lot, I don't care about your mistake. I care about your adjustment.

I'm not even worried about the mistake. already see, I know why you made the mistake before you do. I am worried about your adjustment and your mindset on the adjustment. Can you fix it? Okay, you hit two balls, you one ball long, one ball in the net, great. Sounds to me like you're about to figure it out. I don't even say anything. You know as well as I do. I see three of the same mistakes in a row. get concerned. You tried that same ball three times in a row. What didn't you realize the first two times, right?

So there's one on the mental side of things. Helping the kid to understand a little quicker. In the 10s, you can make two mistakes in a game and they pull it out. In the 12s, you only get one mistake. You the kids pretty good. About 14, 16s, buddy, you get four mistakes unforced a set if you're pretty good. That's it. And unless the kid, unless you have a huge server weapon that's buying you some chances back, there's a good chance that you already.

Error it out and I think there's the linear part of what you're speaking to is helping the kid understand that on the mental side They have to continue to get better at problem solving They have to get better at getting out of their own head and getting out of their own emotional state and they have to get They have to match up and compete even if the answer is not quite so obvious at the beginning

Alvin Owusu (24:53.55)
Okay, so this seems to work really well in an ideal scenario where you get a kid at age, I don't know, 10, and you have parents who maybe played or parents who are kind of like, maybe been through this process before or have, like, maybe they read range by, I can't remember, maybe it David Epstein, but like, they're...

Torrey Hawkins (25:19.086)
Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (25:20.664)
They're gonna entrust you with the process, right? And you've got, and at point you've got eight years, right? Or, but that's not how it works, right? Because oftentimes you get a player late, quote unquote late. Sometimes you get that fair, okay, okay, that's a, we might tangent off to that parkway in a second here. Or you don't get the kid for as long as we would like, right? You might get him at, let's say you get him at 12, okay, this is our six year plan, but then they wanna switch coaches at,

Torrey Hawkins (25:31.706)
Yup. I say 10 is late, by the way, but yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (25:50.542)
15 or you get them at 15 and the parents like, what can you do? So in those, know, yeah, so like, how do you approach that at different stages? Like, how do you know where to start, what to do, what the mix should be?

Torrey Hawkins (25:55.769)
Yeah, I've had both unfortunately and fortunately, but yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (26:03.662)
great.

Torrey Hawkins (26:07.105)
It's a great point. have to fill in and backfill, right? I'm gonna come back to tactics. I was talking about mental and basically incubating and making sure that, I'm gonna use my green egg analogy, low and slow. When I'm cooking my brisket, you gotta keep that in there a long time. You gotta set the right temperature, try not to change it, make sure the kid knows the parents. Everybody's kinda on page. Ideally, you get the kid at seven, maybe a bit earlier, but they really understand it and they're just.

You have them long enough to let that part of the smoke, so to speak, seep into your, you know, in this case, into your brisket just right. And the longer it's in there, the better it's gonna be. If you don't get the kid as early, that's okay, but you're have less smoke, so to speak, on that, in our case, on this brisket. It'll still be brisket, it won't be near, it won't be Texas brisket. won't be, know, it won't be, what was the spot you and I went to in Austin that had the...

Alvin Owusu (27:03.788)
It might've been, God, maybe Friedman's. It might've been Friedman's. Yeah, yeah, yep.

Torrey Hawkins (27:07.006)
Freedments, that's what I was thinking. I was thinking of freedments. It be freedments, right? And it's just to say it won't be as good, as tender, as just mouthwatering. Now, let's come back to tactics. I have to have a tactic to work with. I've got to develop one. And at some point, I've got this 15 year old, I've got to realize, are they on level? Are they behind or are they ahead? I just typically, if I get them at that point,

They're probably late. The coach before me or the kid themselves did not develop the tactic needed for their age group. He's a 15 year old who's still playing with his 12s game. He just happens to have 15 year old speed and power. He's still hitting heavy balls. He's still running around everything. Still got no backhand. Doesn't have a big serve. And at some point he's playing in 16s now, right? The kid could just be a little small for his age and size and he hadn't grown. Okay, no problem. It's worth it. Not his fault, but he still had better get

darn good at returning, darn good hitting on the run, and had better get his passing shots down like nobody's business. Because he's gonna have to let that be his counterpunch and counterpunishing is gonna have to be his tactic of choice until he does grow, fill in, and get some bigger weapons.

Alvin Owusu (28:20.078)
Okay, let me ask you this then. Okay, okay, so now I have a bunch of more questions. so when we're talking about this, right, when we use the brisket analogy, at what point do you and the parent, and maybe at this point it's less the kid, right, because the kid is young, have an understanding of what the goal is, right? Because if the goal is to, you know, if the goal is to be playing at nationals by age 16s and 18s, then we approach things a little bit differently at age.

Torrey Hawkins (28:39.934)
Excellent.

Alvin Owusu (28:49.678)
10 and 11 versus the parent. I once had a parent tell me, this blew my mind wide open when it came to the way I approached player development. She told me, like I was talking to the, she had two kids ahead of this player and one behind, so she had four kids in our program, and I was teaching kids three. Lefty, fast, athletic, like my kind of kid. My kind of.

Torrey Hawkins (29:13.705)
Yeah. Right, right. I chip off the old album block right

Alvin Owusu (29:17.23)
Yeah, you me a little 11 year old girl that's left handed and fast. I'm like, yeah, that one right there is mine. Quirky little sense of humor too. Anyways, I was like, know, this summer, we need to have her ready for this particular tournament. It's usually the first week of June. Wanna have her really hit her stride then. She's like, oh, well we're gonna be on vacation that week. And I'm like, vacation that week? And I was like, well, if we're talking about college tennis and stuff like that, we have to really kind of prioritize this tennis thing at this point.

Torrey Hawkins (29:20.511)
Yeah. Yep.

Alvin Owusu (29:46.67)
It kind of leads the horse, if you will. And she was like, yeah, it doesn't really matter if she plays college tennis. It's not the goal. We just want her to have fun, get good at something, and if she plays, great. If she doesn't, it's fine. And I was like, huh, interesting. At that point, I didn't realize that she went to Duke, her husband went to Duke. They both grad school at Princeton.

Torrey Hawkins (29:58.557)
Yep. Yeah.

Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (30:15.901)
Sure.

Alvin Owusu (30:15.918)
And so on and so forth. the kids, college scholarship was not, it was not going to be a problem. They were all great students. Like this is truly an opportunity for them to develop and they were all really good players. So I say that to say.

Torrey Hawkins (30:24.595)
Yep. Yep. Dare I say better because of no pressure to be good. Right, right.

Alvin Owusu (30:30.944)
No pressure at, no pressure at all. No pressure at all. think three of them went on to play college tennis. so it worked out fine. The other one just went to Duke to be a student. and he might've been the best of all of them. So I say that to say like, but once I understood, once I understood what their family goal was, it made the way I approached her as a player and what we, what we chose to work on that much clearer.

Torrey Hawkins (30:43.716)
Right.

I love it.

Alvin Owusu (31:00.586)
So with that, how important is that for the way that you look to develop players?

Torrey Hawkins (31:08.113)
It's hugely important because let's face it, it's their child and between them and the kids, the Goltz. My uncle was an architect, Alvin, and he always gave me this great short story. says, my first 10 years being an architect, I was so quick to show you how good I was that I was giving you my design. He says, my second 10 years, I started listening to the client more and I started,

Alvin Owusu (31:31.096)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (31:38.661)
drafting what they wanted into my design. And he says that by my last years as an architect, I realized it was all about what the client wanted and I could give them some ideas and may help them to figure out what they wanted on paper. But the reality of it was, it was all about them. I was just a really good tool, you know, helping them reach that goal. And I thought that was a neat way he always said it. I've helped him helping the perspective go a little bit away from you.

and a little more on to the kid and what they want to do. Your parent, there was a great example. Often, I find, we don't get enough parents like that that aren't, that are so laissez faire about the whole situation. Most of them are manic about the results and we're having to kind of bring them back down a notch, if not two, about resetting a realistic expectation. You got a kid that does a day a week of drills, want to why they're not making the tournament, not going to nationals, and you're like,

play one day a week. know, what do you expect to do anything on one day a week at any high level? But that parent taught you and parents like that have taught me a very valuable lesson of let's not always project our wants to get the kid good into that kid. We don't coach them necessarily any different, but maybe not as urgent. Maybe we don't raise our voice as much. the urgency of the deal may not be there as well. You still have a care. You still want to get good.

I feel all people to some degree are competitive. And then you kind of, maybe if the competitive part isn't as big of a deal, maybe it's a little more to be the best. know, a lot of people kind of see it as a quality thing or maximizing the potential kind of a thing or the truly hit it. If you could hit this cone in this spot, you're pretty accurate. At that point, now you're kind of getting away from, you know, the quantitative and more into the qualitative in that sense.

I like that. Again, typically it's the other way around. We have the parent that's a little more manic. How they lose. They've been at UTR this for so long. They're not improving. We need to change. And you're like, maybe not. Let's look at what got you there and let's look at where you're at. Where's your game? Where's your skills? Compare it to your group that you're in. And I think that's where you need to kind of maybe take a little bit of inventory. I'd like to add one more thing back to what you're talking about with your parent is that

Torrey Hawkins (34:03.883)
the parent probably did a nice job indirectly by the kids that went on to play college tennis because they just kept developing perhaps inside of a better bubble where they didn't have to worry so much about the outside impact of results. And so this whole, every kid that I know that over stresses about UTRs and rankings, they're constantly, constantly dragging the weight of

Results behind them and it's it's a it's like it's like driving around town with the emergency brake on you just You just will never reach your full potential because at every stroke every match and worried about your utr you're worried about it's gonna go up It's gonna go down this player's below me. I can't lose this match this kid I mean and those kind of kids are basket cases And often because they use that metric to define who they were and how good they were Not using them just as checkpoints

Alvin Owusu (34:34.242)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (34:59.208)
It's just reflective of my last 20 match. That's really all it is. It's not a big deal. And those are things that I think need to really be stressed. Again, I go back to that mindset. It has to be done right. And once that bad thing kind of kicks in, my brother would tell me about if you put the wrong kind of wood, you know, let's say I put some pine or whatever else in my green neck, you can't get that smoke, that bad smoke out of a piece of meat. can't.

Alvin Owusu (35:02.605)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (35:25.504)
It's in there. might as You're better off throwing the thing away. It's just it's going to have a pungent and a different aroma and the same. Meat was good. Everything else is good. Prep is good. Doesn't matter. That was that smoke just has a way of just acidifying instead of adding flavor. You'll never get it out.

Alvin Owusu (35:41.966)
Okay, so let me okay. Let's take a look at this though from a from a parent standpoint And I can I can appreciate this because our sport is not a cheap one right the cost of development In our sport can can easily exceed forty fifty thousand dollars a year when you're talking about private coaching equipment Proper proper place to train track. I've even gotten in the tournament aspect of you have to travel all that stuff It's an expensive sport is in and it's in

Torrey Hawkins (35:50.389)
Right.

Torrey Hawkins (35:58.827)
100%. 100%.

Bravo.

Right. Right.

Alvin Owusu (36:09.804)
it's often seen as an investment, right? An investment into this child, into this player, and with the unspoken kind of, the return on that investment is usually like want to play college tennis or something like that, right? Which is becoming more more difficult for American players anyways. But, and it's very hard to say this to a parent, have them understand it, but like tennis is the sport of a lifetime, right?

Torrey Hawkins (36:17.887)
Return on investment. Sure.

Alvin Owusu (36:36.638)
And if a kid starts, as a parent is responsible for a kid's tennis from age, let's say eight to 18, right? That's a very small window into their overall development potentially as a player, right? A guy I met this weekend, or the last week said the same thing. He's 42, the same age I am. He's he's like, man, I'm still getting better. I'm still getting better. This guy's pretty good. like, you know, I feel like I am too. I might not be as fast as I used to be. I might not be able to recover as well as I used to be, but.

Torrey Hawkins (36:48.395)
100%.

Alvin Owusu (37:05.026)
I still feel like I can get a little better each week. I can hit the ball a little bit cleaner. can maybe be a little bit sharper in my decision making, but that's really, you know, at that point I'm well past there being any stakes to this, right? And I wish I could have as a player have felt that freeness and I wish parents could allow their children to feel that freeness as they go through the junior development process because there's so much more after.

Torrey Hawkins (37:24.361)
Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (37:34.604)
So much more tennis to be played afterwards.

Torrey Hawkins (37:37.529)
Dare I say some of your best tennis afterwards? Because you'll understand it better. Your physical peak isn't at 18, right, for most people and so on. You touched on... Right.

Alvin Owusu (37:39.726)
Probably so, you know, you consider your, yeah, and your physical peak is much later.

Alvin Owusu (37:49.078)
And thinking on a tennis court is really hard when you're going through puberty, man. It's like 13 to 15. Like you can't see straight half the time. How are you supposed to?

Torrey Hawkins (37:56.361)
You can't see straight nor can you nor are your emotions allowing you to do so I would there's two things I want to touch on number one and I've said this to parents if you're already thinking especially in the pre-15 14 You know 13 age group if we're already thinking about return on investment Stop just stop right now get out of the game find a cheaper sport It won't get any cheaper, and I'm not here to sell hope

to you that this kid will go somewhere and get that scholarship. And then many times the investment towards said scholarship is not the same return in terms of dollar amounts. You might spend that 50 grand a year for seven, eight, nine, 10 years, right? Or maybe it starts off at 10 and it ends up ballooning up to 50 as you start really getting into the throws of it. But that was a decision along the way that you wanted to continue to roll the dice and see how good your kid could get.

Alvin Owusu (38:52.93)
Roll the dice. It's a dice roll.

Torrey Hawkins (38:54.182)
Right? Right, it's completely a dice roll and a decision you made to roll said dice. You invested in your child, not in the investment of him going to said school. You invested in your child's journey. How good could they get? And again, 15, 16, you're starting to understand my kid can be pretty good. I've spent, we've gone through three age divisions now, he's made nationals, the national level ones, all three times. The 12s, 14s, now 16s.

feel pretty good about where he may end up. And you know what? He really wants this to play at the next level. We're going to go through it 18. We're going to see him through. Your kid's a bit of a crossroads. He's not making masses. He used to. He's not getting as good. need to look at your coaching. Look at your kid. More importantly, is your kid wanting it enough to continue? Don't look at the money. Look at your kid's effort. Is your kid wanting to hit balls? Is your kid waiting in the car for you? Is your kid setting up hits on his own?

Cause your kid hitting serves down at the neighborhood courts, you know, or he said, Hey, time for tennis. tennis. Then you might already be done. You know what I mean? So forget the investment at that point. You might need to just cut your losses and say, Hey, we tried and you will still have the game for a lifetime, but let's not pour sand down this rat hole. And the other part of it is, I think that I want to speak to is too often when the return on investment becomes the focus.

Alvin Owusu (39:59.82)
Right, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (40:18.52)
You're not looking at all of the many wins that that kid is having on the court. You're not looking at all of the maturity that the kid is having. You're not looking at all of the, he's facing a lot of his own demons, know, talking up for himself to handling some sparks on the court, dealing with some bad calls. Those are things that are gonna prove that kid to be a lifetime worth of achievement. He or she will reflect back on tough moments on the court.

on in their lifetime and you can't put a price tag on that either. and the last add to that is how many kids do you know Alvin that you grew up playing with you had some of the most well-to-do parents that ended up being the person that helped sign off on their internship the person that helped get that person the job when they got out of school they end up being roommates in college or played that kid in college and that the the resources and networking they had from the sport which again

are it's a huge deal not to mention they ran with a pretty good crowd you know what I mean with the exception of the of the two brothers out there in California that are trying better that had some unfortunate situation with their parents the tennis crowd's a pretty good crowd you know what I mean and the community it's a support group I mean everybody's there supporting each other why you want to beat each other on the court that time to one up the other one when you come back and you clap hands man and it's it's about respect and how

Alvin Owusu (41:19.618)
Yeah, yeah.

Alvin Owusu (41:29.07)
It's a great community. It's a great community.

Torrey Hawkins (41:44.905)
And buddy, I can't wait to play you again. That was fun. You know what I mean? And whatever happened, you left it out there on the court and you're probably going to, you're probably going to go to Chipotle together later. And hey man, you playing doubles next weekend? Let's play doubles next week. That's the sign of a great match is when your opponent, who you may have thought was a jerk, whatever, asked you to play doubles and it was your first time beating him or taking him three. And he's like, man, you've gotten better. There is no better.

Alvin Owusu (41:47.404)
Right. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (41:55.02)
Haha

Yeah, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (42:14.53)
compliment than having that come from an opponent who didn't have any no reason to tell you you know to tell you anything for your own benefit he just told you the truth and so those are things that I think also happen that that you really don't always appreciate in your child's development as a person.

Alvin Owusu (42:30.572)
Yeah, let me ask you this, you kind of going back in the conversation a little bit, you mentioned that 15 year old who's playing 16 and under tennis with their kind of their same 12 and under game style. You briefly touched on what I'll call the ways of winning at each age group category, right? So that was one of the two things I wanted to kind of hit on.

Torrey Hawkins (42:42.656)
Yup.

Torrey Hawkins (42:49.836)
Yeah. Yep.

Alvin Owusu (42:54.542)
what does it take to not necessarily be successful at, but are these, well, are you saying to be successful at that age group or as a marker of, okay, this player is on the right path to get to X goal because they're doing this by age, in 12 and unders, they're doing this in 14 and others?

Torrey Hawkins (43:15.041)
I think it's more the latter. Let's just break it down and hopefully in a very concise way. I'll go to eight since you said eight through eighteen. Eight and under, ideally a kid gets to the ability to be consistent at least off of one side. They can make balls. They can rally enough balls with a parent. I don't care if they're hitting red ball, orange ball, or green ball. It doesn't matter. They can rally.

Alvin Owusu (43:32.299)
Okay.

Torrey Hawkins (43:42.546)
Ellie, the one of the ladies I work with at the River Club, has a little four-year-old named Emma. And this girl, cute little black girl with braids, Alvin, she's four years old. The girl can rally red ball, both sides, 20 balls. It's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. And she's in pink crocs in about that big, and she's hitting balls. You already know she's gonna be a good little player because she can rally already at that young of an age. It's just gonna be a matter of how good could she get.

Alvin Owusu (43:59.586)
Hehehe

Torrey Hawkins (44:09.884)
and our parents keeping our humble and keeping our hungry, right? Eight and under needs to be able to rally, period. Ten and under needs to be able to rally and understand the basics of spin. Top spin, drive, or top spin and maybe even a little bit of slice if they're pretty handsy. If they're really good, they'll have all three, but they just need to understand that and have the weakness, if you will, fixed, patched, under construction to a large degree, something. They don't have that wing.

that's a little bit weaker. 12 and under, now you're starting to understand how I can match up what I want versus what you don't want. And this is now where tactics really start coming in. Where it's a little more skill set based early, now it's a little more tactic based and more I'm hitting my strength to your weakness. I know how to do it. And if I'm pretty good at it, can start, hopefully I don't have one myself that gets exposed. And at some point I have that going through.

14 and under, I'd better start having a weapon. And the weapon doesn't have to be big serve or big forehand. Although those are nice, sometimes those are size induced, right? If you're 5'2", playing on the 14's, you're probably not gonna have a huge serve. You may, but chances are it may not. But again, as I said earlier, your turn could be good. Your on the run can be pretty good. Your slice can be pretty good. And you may have the best passes that no one, that the world's seen. And that's again, let that be your weapon. Your fitness may be unbelievable, right? Whatever the case may be, but have it.

based on kind of where you are, but have one, right? Because in 16s, I gotta have two. And so everything, so at some point it continues to go. In the 14s, I wanna make that point, no weaknesses left, period, if you could help it, zero. I'm not saying everything in your tool and your golf bag has to be phenomenal, but you can have no weaknesses. In the 12s, you should have pretty much every tactic. You should have the drive.

Alvin Owusu (45:43.53)
Yeah

Torrey Hawkins (46:06.717)
the spin, the roll, the slice, the drop shot, the lob, the angle on both sides. They may not be your best, you may not be the best at it, but you're not hit one. You know what mean? And at that point, you may have what you like to do, but you can still do this. Going into 16, you need two weapons and you need the ability to counter a common game style. that big serve, big forehand, right? Be that the inside out with your back in on the line, whatever the case may be, you have to defend one and have to yourself, right? I see you want and I raise you to it,

Sort of thing. 18s to me is all about putting it together and you have not one, not two, but technically three game styles. Your main, your backup, and I can do this if I need to. The big serve, big forehand, has the better grind, and buddy don't sleep, I can still come in and knock off a volley, but I need to serve a volley to close you out in the game. I can slice if I had to slice, even though I'm more of a banger. If I get out wide, don't sleep.

stay steady and break it down a point or two and just to change it up. But there is your eight through eighteens from heavy skill all the way down to heavy tactics all the way through and they both kind of convert in the middle. Obviously heavy on the fitness late you know not as much early right. No age old my eight year old's really fast. Well that's great you know and at the end when no one's looking at your technique per se by the eighteens you can't fix it much much now anyway. You to go with what you have.

But everything starts going a lot more tactical, a lot more execution, a lot more, you know, match tough. And are you really problem solving at that point in time? So there is your eight through 18 window. Back to that 15 year old. Does he or she have those 12s and 14 skills? I coached a young man named Andres Martin. And Andres was a pretty good player, but wasn't that high in the rankings in the 12s. Had his transition and volleys were phenomenal.

His hands were great. Well at that age, didn't have a great serve, he's 12 and he's coming forward, but he's really kind of plans to make some approaches and having Di Valle's. But once he got a serve, the transition kicked in. The kid went from, you know, probably 20 or 30 in the state to probably 20 or so in the country, like all within a year. So ranking wise, he wasn't as strong, but you knew he was going to get better once he got other weapons. Kid didn't play number one for Tech. He was a great player. I say it to Seth, I I'm still out there playing some.

Alvin Owusu (48:15.266)
Right.

Torrey Hawkins (48:33.977)
You understand the concept. It's not to say where that kid who was number one in the 12s, right? Who was a kid that we also coached at that time, didn't end up playing college tennis. He was a top player. I want to say top 10, top 20 in the country. Had great field, good hands, fast little kid. They ended up both going to tech. One didn't play college tennis. So just game could have continued to mature and develop. again, he had great 10 year old game and great 12s game. Didn't continue to develop his game toward 14s, 16s, and 18s as he could have.

Alvin Owusu (48:35.416)
Yeah, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (49:03.833)
A little tied to some of his early wins and didn't want to, for whatever reason, wasn't able to make the other steps, get the weapons, make the other changes needed to continue to be relevant toward the later age groups.

Alvin Owusu (49:17.678)
Okay, that makes sense. I like that, I like that. Last question I've got for you. You mentioned that, I don't know if it was like eight or nine I mentioned as an age to start. No, you got a kid at 10, you said that was too late. Ideally, give me the ideal scenario here. Kid at age 18 is playing division one tennis high level. What?

Torrey Hawkins (49:21.901)
Go!

Alvin Owusu (49:45.08)
take me all the way back, when does that kid start? Because there have been lots of different ways that this has been poked at.

Torrey Hawkins (49:51.571)
Crazy, crazy way I would never be the person to tell you there's only one way to do it. That's number one. I have seen kids start at 12 that will play D1 tennis and were great. I have seen kids that played multiple sports and committed to tennis full time by 12, 13 that were great. I've seen kids that played, started at the age four, five, that were completely average by the time they got to college level.

Alvin Owusu (50:08.94)
Mm-hmm.

Torrey Hawkins (50:19.606)
To me, it's very, it depends on the kid, back to the five rings. How much did they develop all five rings?

One of the things that gets parents, in my opinion, today, especially, and I see it happen with baseball a lot, not so much with tennis. They are committing so early to baseball. I got in this conversation with one of the parents who I was talking to who played many years pro baseball. And we were laughing at some of the parents that played pro ball, baseball, football, that were all big on their kid playing this.

Alvin Owusu (50:40.162)
Yeah, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (51:02.036)
this travel baseball deal, each one of them played four, sometimes five sports in high school back in the day. They know the benefit of playing multiple sports, but they're all in to keep their kids on this roster, this travel team roster, for all the kudos and all the trips and all the being included. And me and the player were laughing about what are they doing? You know, they know better. You know, they're not some guys, some bozos.

Alvin Owusu (51:09.336)
Mm-hmm.

Alvin Owusu (51:15.402)
Right, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (51:31.413)
good business guy and had money to show up for his kid to play, but he never played. These guys played and they know what it's like to be an athlete and play at the highest level. And they're not giving their kids the chance to play those multiple sports. it can, it can, it's easy to get caught up on. Yeah. In that, that world of I got to specialize, we've got to do this all the way through. And you've, you've seen the research on number of kids with Tommy Johns on pictures that were, that overthrew their arm by the time they were 14, 15, all on the pursuit to get to the college role series. And none of them got

Alvin Owusu (51:55.232)
Yep. Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (52:01.106)
sorry to Little League World Series and none of made college World Series. I see that that's a big problem. It's a big problem in lot of sports that I find that people are specializing too soon. I would tell a parent do your best to maximize each of the five rings. Start as early as you can and by start I mean just that hit balls with your kid. Take them out drop feed. You have a little one who's three or four you think you got a little hand eye get a paper plate.

and tongue depressor and glue and get a balloon and fill it up about hand size and have them hit that darn thing where they can and make sure they're not knocking on any flower vases and whatnot in the house and have them hit that thing and see what they do. They get to about five or six. Have them take the garage, the courts at the local, get you a foam ball and have them hit that bad boy back and forth a few times if they can. Put them in the middle when you and the wife are hitting back and forth. Let them hit the ball too.

That's what I mean by getting started. If the kid looks like he's got decent attention span, some decent hand eye, you know what? We'll throw him in the tennis drill and see what he can do. Get him playing a little bit of junior USTA. Get that little one on the team. Let him kind of have little taste of competition early before he gets too bad. Now, could you do all that by the time the kid was eight? Of course you could. Usually, this is what happens a lot. The better kid of the family started a bit earlier, right?

Travis was a little better at certain ages than you were. My brother was a better actor than I was. But they also had us to look to. So there's that practice and that biosmosis and that, I want better than my brother, that every younger sibling's wired to have, that they had. And the parents made better decisions based off what they knew from us, right? So Larry Hawkins and Dickson also knew, well,

Alvin Owusu (53:38.85)
Right. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (53:57.062)
The second one, they'll better now. I figured out on the first one, and not that we were trials or experiments, but they just knew better. So I think the second one, whatever, starting earlier, is a little more convoluted in terms of look at the environment was a little bit different from the knowledge standpoint. That second one could have started at a younger age, simply because the old one was already going on. Serena is a great example of being this. So I say that to say, I hate to get pinned down on the age.

Alvin Owusu (54:02.318)
Yeah, that's the first time through.

Alvin Owusu (54:06.379)
Ahem.

Alvin Owusu (54:14.605)
Right.

Torrey Hawkins (54:26.193)
I do think 10 is a bit late there, but I don't like a five-year-old if they don't have a tension span. And I think at some point, if they're just over there doing hit and giggle and they're whiffing 25 times out of 25, it's probably not the best use of your money and your time. You could do a little better with that with something else. Have them play some soccer, have them something else, swimming.

martial art, where they can kind of master another level of athleticism, body control, core strength, know, basic motor, motor skill movement, right? And where tennis is gonna always need the athleticism, but it won't necessarily give it to you. Tennis, soccer, basketball, sports that will make you happy. It will demand and improve just due to you having to compete with the speed and the

Alvin Owusu (55:03.01)
Yeah, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (55:21.784)
and the matching of an opponent. Tennis will reward you for having it, but if you specialize on tennis too early, tennis won't give you that. In fact, you have great looking strokes, but your athleticism may be actually to the detriment because you didn't do enough of another sport or something else to continue to work on those skills so that you did get the speed, the power, the agility, the reaction time down pat. And that's one of the issues I see as kids that go to tennis early often negate the other sports.

that they need to give me a kid who's played four sports, who's coming to tennis by 10, I can catch him up very quickly. Give me a kid who's played tennis since he was five, only done tennis, did nothing else, and he might be a bit slow and a little bit heavy in the foot. He's gonna have a tough time being good in the later stages of the game because he didn't play as many other sports to help that athleticism.

Alvin Owusu (55:52.341)
Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (55:59.959)
and s-

Alvin Owusu (56:16.717)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (56:19.896)
keep up with this tennis. Again, that's where that I put those three things in the middle. The tactics, the stroke, the technique, and then the fitness slash athleticism has to be there to match. Otherwise you won't get to your full potential that you could have.

Alvin Owusu (56:35.916)
Yeah, and I referenced this book earlier. It's called Range. It's written by David Epstein. And I'm a huge proponent of the kind of the path that he lays out for athletic, junior athletic or youth athletic development. And I'm in my early 40s and when I talk to other parents and.

Torrey Hawkins (56:40.256)
Range, sure.

Alvin Owusu (56:56.77)
You know, I tell them that I played tennis in college and, that I've, I've coached, you know, various levels of junior players and they're like, well, what do you, what's your, like, what are your thoughts on it? Like as their kids are get just getting started in sports, I'm like, look, my, my view is this have them play as many things as they want as early as possible. Let them play a lot of things because one, one of the downsides of specializing too early is like, you might've picked the wrong sport. You specialize in tennis, maybe.

Torrey Hawkins (57:16.385)
Right. Right.

Alvin Owusu (57:26.4)
softballers are calling or you're going heads down on baseball and maybe you had a picture that was itching to get out. You don't know. You don't know until they try things, right? So I feel like a sport like tennis, if you combine it with basketball and soccer and let's just say swimming, Tennis is so skill driven that I'm right there with you that pick up these skills.

Torrey Hawkins (57:35.789)
Yep.

Alvin Owusu (57:53.462)
especially like the spatial awareness with like a stick and a thing coming at you, like get as comfortable with that as early as possible. So like you can start playing at five, like doing it doesn't mean you need to be playing tournaments at six. Doesn't need to be going to drills at eight, like, you know, play some other things, but then like, by the time we start to like, assuming this player has the, has some stuff, right? Knows how to hit a forehand back answer, volley overhead, all that kind of stuff.

Torrey Hawkins (57:53.559)
Yup.

Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (58:06.742)
Hunters.

Alvin Owusu (58:20.494)
and they've played other sports, so once we start to get to 12, that's about the time we need to start getting serious about where we're going with this thing. And then when you start seeing it at 13, something's there, gas pedal, like now we gotta go. And that's probably when we need to start dropping the other, the other sports gotta go at that point because it does.

Torrey Hawkins (58:36.075)
Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (58:41.291)
Yeah. And let those sports choose, right? Let the schedule and the length of season of said sport choose. At some point, you're going to go to state with this sport and this team, right? At some point, that's dictated to you by the success of said team. And you're going to be with that team the next year, hopefully, and continue to it. And at some point, the other sport, let's say it's just Wreck League or Church League.

Alvin Owusu (58:44.779)
Right.

Torrey Hawkins (59:08.651)
is not as important. You did, you were a nice little player. You played one season on the better team and you rode the bench and you were not really as good as you thought you were. But you're really good on this team here and that happens, right? My son played soccer for a lot of years. He was a decent little tennis player, played soccer, loved soccer, pretty, pretty fast, but wasn't as strong, loved being a striker, ended up being more of a defensive mid, ended up being a pretty decent goalie. You know, he was pretty tall. He had good instincts for the ball.

Alvin Owusu (59:14.667)
Right, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (59:35.818)
kept moving further and further back toward the goal because he wasn't as big a ball. Right, so now here's the irony of it is, as we look back on it, to your point, my son had a pretty good leg and I always used to tell him, we joked about it sometimes, you ought to just work on kicking and be a field goal kicker or like a punter for like, you know, for one, for your high school team. You got a pretty good boot. I mean, could boot the ball darn near three, four or some of the length of a whole soccer field, of a regulation field. mean, huge leg.

Alvin Owusu (59:37.966)
Same thing happened to me.

Torrey Hawkins (01:00:05.993)
But it was one of those things where he was so tied up in soccer. I was obviously coaching a lot of tennis. We never pursued that part of it. And when we laugh now about watching the games, like, that guy's making half million dollars a year right now, kicking the ball straight. He was like, I had a pretty good leg then. I'm like, please don't bring it up again. I think about it all the time. But to your point, you get sore up in that one thing. And I think I've seen a lot of kids do that. I've seen a lot of kids, parents kind of.

Alvin Owusu (01:00:12.716)
Right, yeah.

Alvin Owusu (01:00:19.97)
Yeah. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:00:33.885)
kind of almost make the order. We're all in on tennis, know, you know, I'm like, yeah, one or two things happen. You got cut from the other sports. So this is what's left. Or you just decided that this is one that you liked and that you and the kid could play. You didn't want to waste your time in taxi driving all around Atlanta for the other sports. And so you thought this was one you'd be all in on, but you didn't.

Alvin Owusu (01:00:42.21)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:00:56.561)
You chose it, the sport didn't choose you. And I think that's a big problem. We tend to, my kid's gonna be good because we've said so. And that's just because you wanna be good at something does not make it so. The real neat thing I like about all this album is I'm hoping our listeners and viewers are understanding wherever you are, BU10, BU15, BU20, right? The tennis journey is still going on. BU20s, 30s or 40s, right? Or older like me.

Alvin Owusu (01:01:24.579)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:01:25.057)
your tennis journey is still going on. You're still figuring out things. You still figuring out decisions and tactics. There's still a lot of decisions made on that cross-court versus down the line. You can still decide when to do and what to do. I feel like that's one of the parts that I love about tennis. You can always get better. Your skills can always get better. Your tactics can always get better. Unfortunately, father time is undefeated, right? So at some point you may come down, but as your physical and your fitness and your athleticism,

Alvin Owusu (01:01:48.28)
Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (01:01:54.662)
tends to decrescendo your mind and your acuity and your steadiness and your hopefully your emotion. You're a little more steady in the mind too. And that tends to make up for if not surpass any step slow. And you're playing on the 50 year olds, right? You're not playing on the 20 year olds, right? Now it's all relative, right? So don't go out there and play the Kalamazoo winner. I mean, and like, oh my game is still, no, no, buddy. It's not, that's passed you by. You know what I mean? That the game is.

Alvin Owusu (01:02:10.104)
Exactly. Exactly.

Alvin Owusu (01:02:21.672)
They'll humble you real fast.

Torrey Hawkins (01:02:23.602)
my God. we had scope on on our episode a few episodes ago and Alvin I never forget. Sco was probably 15 or 16. So I had to been about 30 31 give or take. I was still in really good shape. I was hitting balls. I was hitting pretty good and we were you know, by this point in time, he's had a lot of players and I'm in a half court setting feed balls, but I still was hitting a little bit and one day.

We were over my neighborhood court and I said, Skoll, let's play a set. I mean, we literally, I was hitting well. Skoll looked at me and he smiled. He says, you sure you wanna do that? And I said, I was almost incredulous at his answer. And he says to me, it ain't the same as half court. And so now he's called me out. I mean, I thought that I'm like, buddy, I'm gonna lace you up. if I can't move for two days,

Alvin Owusu (01:03:02.402)
Hahaha

Alvin Owusu (01:03:18.03)
You

Torrey Hawkins (01:03:19.716)
I'm gonna tear you apart right here, right now. I opened up Alvin with probably two or three aces right off the rip. I mean, I was bombing serves, hitting the ball pretty well. 40 Love turned into, he got the return back deep. I should have round around it, Alvin, but I said, no, I'll hit my backhand fine. I'll get the next one. I never got the next one. He kept me in a backhand hook angle rally.

Alvin Owusu (01:03:42.486)
Never got the next one.

Torrey Hawkins (01:03:46.116)
where I had to slice a backhand, I had to get back. He ran me side to side for about 10 balls. Alvin, 40-15, I had to go to the towel. I did not realize, and he looked over at me and he smiled at me, he says, and he's kind of shaking his head. Like, yeah, I told you. Alvin, I'm in pretty good shape, but I haven't played sets since college. Missed my first serve at 40-15. Second serve.

Alvin Owusu (01:03:55.918)
Yeah

Alvin Owusu (01:04:04.322)
Heh.

Alvin Owusu (01:04:08.152)
Yeah, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:04:15.076)
He backs up and goes heavy again. I'm like, oh, I had another long point. Came in, missed the volley by about this much. Oh, Alvin, now I'm panicking. I'm like, oh God, I'm gonna blow this game. I'm gonna blow this game. Alvin, we probably had a 10 minute first game. The only problem was the longer it took was more of a death of a thousand cuts. I mean, I was literally using my.

Alvin Owusu (01:04:25.56)
first game.

Alvin Owusu (01:04:39.991)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:04:42.403)
whole set worth of energy in this first game. Needless to say, he ground me down and won the first game and got the break. Mentally, I was already done. I couldn't let my pride go. I had a couple of good points. We had a couple of deuce games in his game, returns whenever my strong suit. I saved this for the list that's out there. 30 versus the top in the country 16 year old. I was overmatched.

Alvin Owusu (01:04:44.216)
Yep. Yep.

Alvin Owusu (01:04:54.498)
Yeah. yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:05:13.57)
I got down 5-0 and I pulled some anonymous injury in. Just so wouldn't, just so he couldn't say he bagel me in the set. But I would say it to say, man, me and Scoop talked about this and he laughed at me. says, T, people don't realize how brutal singles is. When you say you play tennis, a lot of people play some doubles. They do a little drilling, hit a few balls. They ain't playing singles.

Alvin Owusu (01:05:19.278)
Yeah, yeah, there it is. There it is.

Alvin Owusu (01:05:39.565)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:05:42.882)
And they ain't playing high level singles. And it's funny because Scow was close to the age now that I was then, right? And so we're laughing about it now. he's like, man, I can't be no singles. You kidding me? Singles work. And we're laughing about it. But we were even, you and I had them on the air, online before we went on air. And I was, I'm like, oh, you see what I mean now? And he was like, man, I saw it then. He goes, I saw it then. I didn't know what you were doing. It was like, you, and I was in good shape, Alfred.

Alvin Owusu (01:05:50.402)
Yep. Yep.

Alvin Owusu (01:06:05.703)
Yeah!

Torrey Hawkins (01:06:12.706)
You know, I'm still running a 40 sub five seconds. I'm pretty good shape, but the endurance, whoo, buddy. It's a whole different talk show. Oh, well.

Alvin Owusu (01:06:21.698)
and it's chaotic, it's chaos, singles is chaos. It's not cross-court groundies, it's not a four ball drill, it's just nutty nonsense.

Torrey Hawkins (01:06:28.03)
Got that right.

Torrey Hawkins (01:06:31.775)
No, but it is not feeding, it's ball machine, you know what's coming. Nidal had a quote one time about him playing somebody and he says he liked playing him and he said, we both like to suffer a little bit. And he said it just like that, like both of us like to suffer a little bit. Like you have to kind of be willing to suffer a little bit on the court if you're really gonna be gladiator, a tennis player like that out there. And I thought that was kind of a neat word.

Alvin Owusu (01:06:44.942)
Ha ha.

Torrey Hawkins (01:06:57.899)
Because you don't think about playing singles as suffering, but buddy anybody who's pretty good knows you're suffering out there going chasing those balls side to side so

Alvin Owusu (01:07:07.15)
I think the wise words of Rafael Nadal is a good place for us to wrap up. TH, I appreciate it. I think the plan is we're gonna expound on these five rings in a bit of a more of a series slash episodic breakdown over the next few months. We're gonna really dig into it and do something that we both love to do, both love to teach and to coach and to, I think you're gonna be doing the majority of the talk talking, but I've got a lot of questions for you, my friend.

Torrey Hawkins (01:07:11.871)
100 %

Torrey Hawkins (01:07:17.448)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:07:23.261)
Yup. Yup.

Torrey Hawkins (01:07:29.311)
100%.

Torrey Hawkins (01:07:35.507)
Well, you keep them coming and for those parents, juniors, players who are coaches, hopefully that are chiming in, please continue to work a little on all five rings. Please continue to work a little bit on all of them. Don't eat your corn, turn the plate, then eat your potatoes and then turn the plate, then get to your protein. Keep it going at all times. I've seen so many players that have one part that looks so good and one part that just looks like it was never even.

worked on or touched. And it just, to me, it kills the kids eventual because one part, the other parts can't be, they can't be worked on, they can't even be used because one part is so far behind and one part may be so far ahead. You know, the biggest thing I see is in forehands and backhands. The backhands are just awful. Forehand looks pretty good, big forehand, but they've let the kid run around it for the last three years and guess what? A thousand forehands to...

110 backhands, guess what? The backhands never gonna catch up. So little things like that. The kids that are mental, get them working on how to be calm now. Don't wait until they're 14, playing big time tournaments and then you knew they were powder keg at 10 and you never gave them some things to work with and gave them some coping mechanisms and whatnot early on. It's only gonna get harder. Every age only gets harder. You know what I mean? So it's something that, know, the dare.

24 year old self will look back at their 14 year old self and thank you for, you know, for working on all those wings and not letting one of them go.

Alvin Owusu (01:09:09.11)
Amen. All right, with that, best of three, we are out.

Torrey Hawkins (01:09:12.059)
That's the three. Thanks, Alvin.