Ep. 51: Jonathan Stokke Talks Coaching

Alvin Owusu (00:42.894)
And welcome to another edition of the best three podcasts. I'm still Alvin, that's still Tori.

Torrey Hawkins (00:43.162)
Ha ha ha.

Jonathan Stokke (00:54.76)
That is so brutal. I feel for you there. Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (00:57.67)
Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (01:02.406)
Thank

Alvin Owusu (01:09.742)
We've got Jonathan Stokke here with us, Mr. nine time national champ, Mr. how many time All-American in doubles? Only once, only once, okay, one time, one time, that's one more than me. And then two time US Open doubles participant main draw, that's, as we lead up to the US Open here in the next few weeks, that's a big deal. And now he's the online coaching stud of the South, if you will. Jonathan, welcome.

Jonathan Stokke (01:18.01)
Only once. Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (01:26.489)
Yep.

Yep.

Jonathan Stokke (01:37.566)
Hey man, it's good to be here. And if you told me that I would be doing online coaching, social media, actually anyone who knows me from when I left Duke. So that was 2020 during COVID and they're all like, are you okay? You know, you're in the social media. Like I had posted like twice on Instagram before they're like, what happened to you? You hate talking, you're doing podcasts now you're talking all the time. And so it's been a big change, but it's been a good change.

Torrey Hawkins (01:46.866)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:55.589)
you

Alvin Owusu (01:59.906)
Yeah, I mean that's.

Torrey Hawkins (02:00.75)
Who was your partner that your solo incidentally all-american year?

Jonathan Stokke (02:06.29)
That was Joey Attis.

Torrey Hawkins (02:07.812)
I remember Joseph Addison. I remember him back in the day. He was up East Maryland maybe. Where was Joey from? That's what I thought.

Jonathan Stokke (02:13.894)
He's from, he's from Maryland. He transferred from Ohio state. And the ironic thing is, at least in my opinion. So when I was a sophomore, I played the fall with a guy named Peter Rodriguez, a really good Portuguese player. And we had a great record. And then in the spring, my coach switched me to play dual matches with Philip King, who won Kalamazoo twice. So the, the thing that bothered me. I think I lost like twice in the fall.

Torrey Hawkins (02:31.269)
You know, I know Philip I know Philip and Vanya very well

Alvin Owusu (02:31.936)
yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (02:39.046)
And then Kinger and I went 23 and two in the spring. I remember this so vividly. So for the year I was 37 and four in doubles and King and I played two the entire year because our number one team had won national indoors and our coach kind of admittedly was stacking us a little bit. And the two matches we lost, we were up six, three. We used to play pro sets back then we were up six, three both times. So we were very close to going 25 and O together. But because we played two, we didn't get into NCAAs.

Torrey Hawkins (02:53.989)
Sure, sure.

Torrey Hawkins (02:58.201)
Yep, yep, Wow.

Torrey Hawkins (03:04.997)
right.

Jonathan Stokke (03:06.416)
And I was so upset because he was incredible. He was obviously had won Kalamazoo twice in singles. I had won it three times in doubles. And I was like, I think we can win into Lays. And we never got in the draw. then, so that's the year I thought I should have been an All-American. And then my senior year, Joey and I played number one. And because we were playing one, we didn't have quite as good of a record, but we had better wins. And so we got in, we got to the quarterfinals. So I feel like that senior year was like payback for the sophomore year where I feel like I should have had it. Exactly.

Torrey Hawkins (03:17.06)
wow.

Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (03:27.468)
Right.

Payback for your sophomore year. Yeah, yeah, And Lapidus, right? Jay was your coach back then? Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah. Yeah, I had a couple of good combos with Jay. Anyway, I'm glad you're some names back that I haven't thought of in a while, and Addis and King, and obviously even Coach. So that's good stuff. Real good stuff.

Alvin Owusu (03:32.651)
Yeah, yeah.

Alvin Owusu (03:39.575)
Very nice.

Alvin Owusu (03:53.326)
You know, we were catching up a little bit before this. think Stokely before you even popped on and we were talking about kind of Smith-Sterns Academy in your days back there. And Tori was talking like, yeah, I'm pretty sure Stokely was like one of the guys that helped kind of bring that program along. But if I got this right, you were there before they were Smith and Sterns, is that correct? Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (04:17.63)
Yeah, I can give you the whole story. I don't know how long these podcasts usually go for, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So when I was a junior in high school, about to be a junior in high school, my dad got a job. So I lived in Chapel Hill. He got a job in Princeton, New Jersey. And I basically told my parents, like, I'm not moving to New Jersey. Like, that's not going to happen. So they sent me down to the closest Academy at the time, which was Vandermeer.

Alvin Owusu (04:20.947)
way too long. They go way too long and we just we keep going anyways because

Torrey Hawkins (04:22.593)
Hehehehehe

Alvin Owusu (04:28.875)
Yep. Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (04:35.651)
Hmm.

Torrey Hawkins (04:41.155)
Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (04:41.352)
So my mom came down with me, we stayed a little apartment like on VanderMeer's property. She hated being away from my dad, but she didn't want me to, she was a little bit of a hover. So like, didn't want me to be by myself in the dorms. So she came down with me and about halfway through that year, Billy Cerns came to work at VanderMeer. And I vividly remember telling Pat at the time, like, hey, I have a coach, his name was Alan Oded. He was good, he was a younger guy, I got along with him. And I said, look, I don't need any Billy in my life. Like, I got a coach, I'm happy, I'm good.

Torrey Hawkins (04:45.392)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (04:49.617)
What the?

Torrey Hawkins (04:56.882)
I know.

Torrey Hawkins (05:08.174)
Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (05:10.082)
I don't need anything to do with the guy and she's like, yeah, no problem. Like we won't make you do anything. And so a couple of my friends started taking lessons with them. They said they liked it. I was like, good for you. But you know, I already have my guy. I'm not interested. And there was one time in the summer where everybody was gone at Wimbledon and he was the only person there, Billy. So I was like, I guess I'm just gonna take a lesson with them. So I took one. And at the end of the lesson, I was like, that's my guy. That's it. I'm taking it. He was he was phenomenal. And a couple months later,

Torrey Hawkins (05:26.347)
Yeah. Yeah. How about that?

Jonathan Stokke (05:39.4)
They had some tension, some friction. so obviously he was removed from Vandermere. They didn't like that he was kind of moving in on some people. And so when I was at Smith Stearns, like there was eight of us and we were hitting on a public court or not a public court, but a court in Spanish Wells right next to where Stan Smith lived. And Billy would just run an afternoon practice with eight of us. And it was me, a 14 year old girl, a couple of 12 year old state boys. That's why I always laugh when people say you can't get better when you play with people worse than you. Cause I was like,

Torrey Hawkins (05:55.849)
Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (06:06.149)
Hehehehehe

Jonathan Stokke (06:07.516)
The best person I had to practice with that year was a good 14 year old girl and I got so much better that year. So yeah, I was like, I was there before it was actually a place. I think at the end of my time, they moved over to Sea Pines, but yeah, I was there from the very beginning.

Alvin Owusu (06:19.882)
Okay, okay, I was gonna ask you which location that was. We go to Hilton Head, my family, every summer and like, yeah, Stearns is right down in Seapines and always good players out there working out.

Torrey Hawkins (06:32.511)
I'm gonna, I'm gonna reserve a spot with you on a future show. That very topic to me is one that I feel needs to be told more and more. Every top player I talked to has had very much the same exact situation, even if it was just for a year or two or maybe during the pivotal years.

I think the right coach, the right player, and honestly, being the best player might just be the secret sauce. Everybody's looking for the top player or who, who am I hitting with and so on. The difference is you, are you that top player? Because when Scho, before Scho won Kalamazoo, the two years before then, same thing. We had two good girls, you know.

Mallard-Bredette were going to be an All-American at Stanford, but at the time she was 12. He was 15. I mean, she was not even close. You know, the other players we had them with, I remember distinctly hitting serves over their head. I'm pretty tall. I had two girls doing two-on-ones with him. It was some of the best practices. They wouldn't miss a ball. They couldn't go through them. was two of them. And it was some of the best tennis he had received. And I remember he went from like, whatever, 30, 40 in the country to like, he got third at Kalamazoo that year.

They're like, man, what are you doing with them back home? I'm like, you'd be shocked. If I told you, you'd be shocked. Eric Dobbs, a good friend of mine, played a Florida, said the same thing. says, Tori, I was playing with high school kids. I was playing with guys at the end, the neighbor, guys in the park. He goes, didn't matter. I got better. I got better playing with whoever, who else on the other side of net. He goes, didn't matter. And I think that's a story. I know Al's got a little bit of a, a, of a agenda on this one, but that story, I don't mean it like that, but that story right there, Jonathan, to me,

Alvin Owusu (08:18.344)
No, no, think that's, I think it's.

Torrey Hawkins (08:23.778)
That's when tennis is pure. You want to work on your game. You want to get better at certain things. A smaller group, be one of the best in the group, and then just work on what it is you need to work on. And it doesn't matter on the side of the net. You are there, and that's all that matters. And if you're there and you're locked in, and you got the right instruction, and you're locked into what the coaches have you do, it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter.

Alvin Owusu (08:49.676)
Well, I've heard kind of both sides of this. I'm actually interested to hear, Stokke kind of like what your experience was at that time, because like, yes, in that instance, Skoh was working with Mallory and some of the top girls there, but there was also that point where those late night sessions at UTA with some of the top players were also happening at like eight o'clock on Friday night. So yeah, Stokke, what was kind of like your experience that you feel like you got so much better in that type of environment?

Torrey Hawkins (09:09.835)
Sure.

Jonathan Stokke (09:18.769)
I'm allergic to illogical arguments. So like if you say, how can you get better unless you play with people better than you? Well, how is Alcara's going to continue to improve over the next 10 years? Cause he's going to and every person he practices with unless him and center get together in the off season are going to be worse than him. And you can say, well, but look how good they are there. It's a, it's a guy who's a hundred in the world or a guy who's 200. Okay. But they're nowhere near Alcara's level. And so when I was an 18 year old junior, and if you say, oh, well you're

Torrey Hawkins (09:25.537)
Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (09:46.002)
You know, you're only playing with a good 16 year old state player. The gap is probably the same anyway. So if you have good coaching, you have a motivated player, and you are attacking the things you need to work on, you can get better regardless. Yes, at some point, you're going to have to taste the level above you to see what that's like and see what you need to work on. When I'm a good 18 year old player, I got to go play a future and go, those guys dog walked me and I suck. What wasn't good? I can't return their serves and I can't move out wide to my back end. Okay, I go back home and I work on that.

Torrey Hawkins (09:59.11)
Yep.

Jonathan Stokke (10:14.546)
but I don't always have to have a better player. personally, that's a thing that's never made sense. And usually the argument is coming from lower level players. It's it's a four O saying I can't play with a three O and I'm like, okay. Like you definitely can, you can definitely get better. And I always felt like if I'm the better player and I play with someone lower than me, I can get super selfish. I can be like, Hey, I'm going to work on my backhand slice today. And like, they're going to be happy to hit with me. If I'm playing with a pro right now.

Alvin Owusu (10:22.476)
Right, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (10:22.911)
Almost always.

Jonathan Stokke (10:43.388)
I might literally I'm going out there and number one, I'm nervous and I'm going, I just hope they have a good practice. So yes, I I got used to their ball. That's great. But actually like, I probably didn't really get better. It just felt good. So yeah, I'm, I'm a big proponent of like, you're going to get whoever you get. If it ends up being someone better than you, great, good for you, but that doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean you're going to get better unless you do all the same things that I had to do anyway.

Alvin Owusu (10:47.296)
Yeah, I can't miss.

Torrey Hawkins (10:51.041)
Great.

Yeah, I'm going to piggyback on that. I also feel one of the reasons, and you may speak to this as well, Jonathan, that some of the top players I know that had that environment, they never made too big a deal on the person across the net provider because it was never big deal to them. If they were below them, if they were above them, didn't matter. You're the guy on other net. Typically that player on the lower side always measures.

the other side of the net as if that's the value. That's the one. Oh, I can't be this guy. This guy is. Whereas when you always play the guy on the cross the net, like it's just some guy, you played them the same way. There were years when the Haley would play. Haley at the time, talking about the gap, the Haley at the time was probably close to top 10, the country. I think our next best player was barely 50 in the South. And you remember back in the day, Jonathan, we didn't even, and Alvin, you both, we had the

the designated and then you had the challenger draw. This guy wasn't even seated in the challenger draw. Happy to get in to some of the challenger draws, right? I'm not sure if he, may have made one or two there toward the end. Brian played him full court to half court, played him where he had to beat him with his forehand. know, Brian had a phenomenal backhand. His forehand was always, know, Chad had to work with that forehand a little bit. But I laugh at some of the days we will,

Alvin Owusu (12:01.811)
Right. Yeah. The challengers.

Torrey Hawkins (12:25.194)
Who was that hit with? And I'm like, you guys have no idea. And this is, you know, my first day is kind of getting into coaching and I'm like, yeah, he played us, he played the coaches, you know, we all, he picked from us what he needed a little bit, but to be honest, he didn't really have a, we had some really good girls at that time, but he was our only real good guy. But you know, he did a great job and had almost nobody to play against. So to your point, he did, he worked so much on his forehand there, worked on his big serve. He didn't have to worry about what he was working on.

Jonathan Stokke (12:53.854)
I had a coach, I had a coach tell me this too, which is a great, he framed it a great way. He's like, someone wanted to hit with people better than them. And so he's like, oh, okay. You want to play with that person who's just slightly above you. And why is that? Oh, well, I can only get better if I play with someone better than me. And I've been killing these guys and I'm like, oh, that's cool. And he's like, well, how am going to convince them to hit with you? Like, that's how you feel, like, don't they feel the same way? Like they don't want to hit with you. And they're like, really? And you're like, I'm decent. And you're like, yeah, but you're way worse than them. That's why you want to hit with them.

Torrey Hawkins (13:13.119)
Exactly. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (13:13.8)
All

Torrey Hawkins (13:22.252)
Right. Right. What did they get out of it? Right. If you're looking to get out of this. Right. I had that same talk with the player who tennis players wouldn't play with anybody if that was the case. You know what mean? We'd all be about a half level apart. So anyway, that you touched on something I thought was great.

Jonathan Stokke (13:24.772)
Exactly. And the reality is it doesn't really matter. And so, yeah.

Exactly. As long as you have a good coach, yeah, you got a good coach, a motivated player and an actual plan and you have a player on the other side of the net who's good enough to make balls, then that is good enough. If I was to play right now, try to play pro tennis, and I was practicing with a 3-0, okay, that is not good enough. Like they can't make a ball back. But if you can keep a rally going with me, then I can improve, period.

Torrey Hawkins (13:45.447)
Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (13:55.72)
Right, right, period.

Alvin Owusu (13:57.728)
Yeah, no, I have a feeling we're gonna have a lot of these coaching segues. So, that's, that's fantastic. We usually call them coaches corner. This might just be a whole damn coaches corner episode today. all good, but no kind of speaking towards that. he like, okay, so you played, you played at Duke and then you came out and then ended up going to going to wake to coach there and kind of what got you into kind of going down your coaching journey. What was, what was that? What was that like for you?

Jonathan Stokke (14:02.588)
Shit.

Torrey Hawkins (14:03.874)
No.

Yeah, 100%.

Jonathan Stokke (14:25.18)
I was actually telling a player yesterday, so we lost at NCAAs 2006. I don't know what it was, middle of May, whatever. Joey and I lost in the quarterfinals of NCAAs and two days later I was coaching at Smith Stearns. And then I coached there for two years. I went to Wake Women for two years and I went to Duke Men for 10 years. I knew I wanted to be a coach probably my junior year in college. I had no interest in trying to pursue doubles as a career, zero. Which is why I didn't play a single point after college.

Torrey Hawkins (14:36.648)
Well.

Alvin Owusu (14:36.756)
Okay, yep.

Torrey Hawkins (14:44.927)
Okay. Right. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (14:46.837)
Okay.

Jonathan Stokke (14:55.59)
It didn't, it didn't seem intriguing to me. I have no idea if I would have been a lot of my contemporaries have done very, very well. I'd like to think I could have done just as well as them. I don't know. Maybe I wouldn't have, but it doesn't ever. Reggie, Santiago Gonzalez, like all these guys that we were playing ITFs together that are all been top 10, top 15. Obviously, Reggie has done fantastically well. I have no idea. Maybe I would have been great. Maybe I wouldn't have, but it, the idea of pursuing that.

Alvin Owusu (15:06.463)
And you played with the Rajiv

Jonathan Stokke (15:22.716)
did not get me excited, but to me the idea of being like, what if I can take a player that I think, I don't know, maybe they have average skills, whatever, and what if I can help them turn into a beast? like really, like that puzzle seemed more interesting. It's easy to tell myself to go work hard. That's easy. It's very tough to plant an idea in someone else's brain and get them to buy into it. And that little psychological puzzle was always interesting. So I knew I wanted to pursue that. And I basically looked at it like, hey, I'm gonna go to Smith Stearns for two years.

Torrey Hawkins (15:25.823)
Yeah. Right.

Jonathan Stokke (15:51.218)
I'm not a coach, I'm just a good player. I'm gonna learn something about technique. I'm gonna make mistakes here. It's low level. It's, yeah, exactly. I'm gonna get into wake fours. I'm gonna get the first thing I can to get into college coaching, which is the time when I wanted to ultimately be, hey, I got into wake, that was great. And then Duke opened up, which obviously since I played there, I'm gonna try to make that move if I can. But yeah, it was, I knew I wanted to be a coach. I think it's an absolute blast. There's nothing better than actually having a relationship and getting someone better.

Torrey Hawkins (15:54.431)
All right. Learn, learn the coaching. like that.

Torrey Hawkins (16:10.12)
Sure.

Torrey Hawkins (16:18.014)
I agree.

Jonathan Stokke (16:18.686)
And so yeah, that was kind of like my goal probably from age 20 on and I've been doing it basically every day and since I graduated.

Torrey Hawkins (16:25.416)
Who was your coach at Wake?

Alvin Owusu (16:25.429)
Gotcha.

Jonathan Stokke (16:27.742)
Chad Skrupka. So he's at San Jose state now. Um, actually funny story. My, my second year there, I was at clay courts and, uh, Ramsey, the position open his assistant position opened. And so I texted Chad and said, Hey, like, I mean, I'm happy here, but like, it's my alma mater, like it's Duke men. Like, of course I'm going to like apply for that. I just, I want to give you a heads up. Like I'd like to do that. And I didn't hear from him like all day, which is very weird. He's always on a

Torrey Hawkins (16:29.096)
Gotcha.

Torrey Hawkins (16:42.076)
Right.

Torrey Hawkins (16:47.389)
Sure.

Jonathan Stokke (16:56.442)
and he calls me back and he calls me back that night and he goes, Hey, listen, I thought about it. And if, if you go on that interview, you're fired. And I go, I go, I'm like, really? And he goes, no, no, no, I'm just messing with you. But he goes, I am resigning. And I'm like, is, that true? He's like, yeah, my wife got a job in Santa like San Jose. I'm moving. like, yeah. So he was just totally messing with me. He's like, yeah, like, look, the people at wake will keep you on as an assistant for a year if you don't get the job. but he's like, yeah, I actually am.

Alvin Owusu (17:06.152)
Wow

Torrey Hawkins (17:06.343)
Wow.

Torrey Hawkins (17:16.844)
no way. Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (17:25.886)
Like I'm done here. And I was like, my God. But for that second, after he told me he was going to fire me, that five seconds, I was like, my God, like, are you serious? Yeah. Yeah. But he was totally, he was totally just, yeah, he was just messing with

Torrey Hawkins (17:26.793)
No way. How cool is that? Right? Yeah. You're like, wow. Bill Belichick outside.

Alvin Owusu (17:37.397)
That actually wouldn't surprise me. I've heard some stories about how cutthroat it is from the assistants to the head coaches at these D1 programs. So when you said that, I was like, damn, it is pretty bad.

Jonathan Stokke (17:46.686)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (17:49.063)
Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (17:49.17)
I'm sure there are some people who probably have done that seriously, but he was a great guy and he was totally supportive of it and then obviously it worked out. But yeah, it was pretty funny and scary at the time.

Torrey Hawkins (17:55.218)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. That's, as you know, we worked with Brett Ross and who played at Wake. And so I want to say, wasn't his coach, the old Vandy coach, God, I'm trying to at Wake, the years he was at.

Jonathan Stokke (18:11.23)
At Wake? His coach was at Wake, was Zinn. Jeff Zinn. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (18:16.445)
Jeff Zen, that's what I was thinking. And wasn't Zen the coach at Vandy years ago? I'm pretty sure, because I was David Drew's old coach back in the day. And Drew played at Wake. I'm pretty sure, I played at Vandy. played at Vandy. Anyway, my point is I thought it was Zen. Anyway, but that's a funny story. That's a great story, actually. That's kind of come out full circle. So you were, I think when I saw you, you already coaching at Duke. And so in that couple of your interim, right, I probably hadn't seen you. And I thought you just went from one to the next.

Jonathan Stokke (18:23.26)
Yeah, I don't know where it was.

Alvin Owusu (18:26.9)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (18:46.128)
kept going, I didn't realize there was that little couple of those little small pivots there, but that's good stuff.

Jonathan Stokke (18:49.981)
Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (18:51.146)
So that time at Duke, right, so you were there for 2010 to 2020, something like that, that 10 year run. You mentioned that college coaching was kind of always the, like I said, that point in your life was the goal from the coaching aspect. Did you have opportunities to go take your own team at some point or were you trying to maybe wait Ramsey out for a bit? what was your, what was your, because 10 years as an assistant coach is a, that's a long time. Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (18:56.712)
Yep, exactly, 10 years.

Jonathan Stokke (19:17.096)
Yeah, long time. I wanted to be a head coach. So I interviewed at San Diego, University of San Diego, that was 2015. And I was in the final two and I pulled out. I don't know if I would have gotten the job and Ryan Keckley has been there since then. He's done an amazing job. either way, either way, way they got the right guy. I interviewed at Miami and I was down to the final three. And then I interviewed at Nebraska maybe like 2018, 2019.

Torrey Hawkins (19:27.516)
Great, great, great guy, right. Right.

Alvin Owusu (19:32.148)
Yeah, they're

Jonathan Stokke (19:45.36)
It's very competitive. It's very tough. And like you talked about like, playing up a level and seeing what you're bad at. I can tell you one thing I suck at is networking. So a big part of becoming a head coach is, hey, I network in my own university. I know these ADs who know other ADs and like I play the game. I always just thought, hey, if I'm a really good assistant coach and I know the game of tennis, that will get me somewhere, which, know, there's an AD at Nebraska has no idea if I'm a good tennis coach. No idea.

Torrey Hawkins (19:53.82)
Hmm

Torrey Hawkins (20:00.592)
Right.

Alvin Owusu (20:01.866)
Hmm.

Torrey Hawkins (20:07.548)
Sure. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (20:11.11)
Right. He assumes you're a good tennis coach, but like

Jonathan Stokke (20:13.02)
Yeah, he's like, I don't know. I've known nothing about the game of tennis. I don't know if you can coach it, but can you recruit? Do I know someone who knows you that speaks highly of you? I think you're going to be responsible. Do I think x, y, and z? And so that was a part that I purposely just had no interest in, and I didn't really realize how important it was. And by the end of my college career, I was ready to take a break and do something different. But yeah, that was a skill that I sorely lacked.

if there is a college coach listening, like that is definitely the number one skill for becoming a head coach is like, you got to know the ADs at your school. They're going to become ADs at other schools and associate ADs. They're going to know people. And that is far more important than being like, you got that guy better when he came to Duke. Like no one cares. No one knows.

Torrey Hawkins (20:42.624)
Yeah. Right. True. Right. Yeah, that's true. Billy Pate would always tell me that. Billy Pate said, I think he's at Princeton now, but he was at Bama for several years and obviously he was assisting at.

Alvin Owusu (20:47.828)
Right.

Alvin Owusu (20:55.178)
Yeah, you know that?

Torrey Hawkins (21:02.619)
I want to say at Notre Dame before, after he left here, he was the assistant, he was the head coach at Georgia perimeter years ago. Jordan, not John, Jordan Isner. And you remember my main man, Jonathan, another Jonathan, Ed McNovia, were his top two studs back in the day. And Billy would always say he was an assistant AD or part of, I guess there was an assistant AD program that he was part of. He said,

Alvin Owusu (21:08.483)
wow. That's a nice run.

Torrey Hawkins (21:30.299)
you got to play that assistant AD card. He says, because that's how the other ADs get to know who you are. And he says, Tor, I got to tell you, that's the back channel, you know, in the getting here and there. And Bobby Reynolds, who used to work here in Atlanta, said the same thing. He says, that or get your team to win a championship. He says, then they'll take you either way. He says, you can be the best coach in the world. No one knows. When you win one, they assume that magic, he said, magic glitter.

Alvin Owusu (21:50.559)
Hehe.

Jonathan Stokke (21:51.239)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (21:59.51)
Falls off of you because you want a championship says you could have done nothing You could have done everything because it doesn't matter if you win you win and I was I always laughed at how how you know I'm thinking of the right word Help, you know how weird and the choosing of the coaches and that's not to say that those coaches who got the job aren't deserving but the criteria and the process is very Very I'm gonna say dicey at best and sometimes it's just it's just time

It's just 100 % timing.

Jonathan Stokke (22:29.042)
Yeah, it's not like, I mean, if I look at another sport like football, like you're probably hiring the offensive coordinator from another team. So you're like, wow, their offense was really good. I have no idea if he's a good leader, if he's a good recruiter.

Torrey Hawkins (22:36.494)
Right. Right. Right. And you're measuring numbers. You're measuring, there's metrics that you're usually, and probably a lot of it, right? Where in tennis, it's a lot more on the who you know. I've seen that in, again, I've had four or five guys that I've worked with that are now that have coached top D1. So they've all said a very similar story. So that's, I have a quick question for you, John, before you go with that. College tennis. And I think this is a, it's a catch all, but it's a big catch all.

What does it get right and what's it missing? I know there are two big questions. What does college tennis get right? And I say that for, in relation to other college sports. Obviously there's a segue in there for tennis specifically. And then what's it missing? And I'm interested in both from a guy that's played it, coached it, obviously was a very, very good player. You have a very good perspective. And I'll let you man it on that for a little bit.

Jonathan Stokke (23:34.192)
Yeah, that's a really good question. have one. Yeah, I have a clarification question for you. When you say what does it get right? Does it in terms of what in terms of growing the sport in terms of what's good for the collegiate athlete or just broadly just whatever I think.

Torrey Hawkins (23:35.768)
because I'm curious your response.

Thank

Torrey Hawkins (23:50.306)
I'm going to say broadly what you think you can touch on all three. Growing the game to me, that's not college's purpose per se, right? Certainly it's a link further along the chain. It's under the umbrella of most really good juniors will pursue it as a goal. So it serves a destination purpose of, if not anything else. What does it get right?

What does it, and then as an athlete, college athlete, now we've all been college athletes, what does it get right in terms of, know, most people don't realize the work that goes in, right? And it's not as glamorous. It's not all the TV stuff you see on ESPN, which thank God for ESPN to even shine a light on the college athlete. You know, by definition, get a little, players get a little bit of the, of the, the afterglow. But what does college tennis get right? And then maybe my bigger question.

What's it missing to perhaps take it to a larger field? I played at Morehouse in Georgia State. Alvin was at Catawba. Good programs, good schools, not necessarily Duke. And in terms of the, just ACC, but also the level of Duke basketball, everyone knows about it. one of the, especially the times you were there, was one of the best programs in the country in basketball. So you're seeing, you're that athlete getting the...

extra cream right from how well the other programs did. What's it missing college tennis to catch up to a high level sport like basketball without all the X's and O's of this is what they do and this they can do this with revenue but what does it get right what's it missing and then maybe a segue into you know it may be its impact and pro tennis and such those are because I feel like there's a couple of things that I don't think college tennis still gets the credit deserves.

in of being the impact on pro tennis, but what is it getting right to achieve that? What could it do better to do more? And in general, what's it get right? What's it missing?

Jonathan Stokke (25:50.302)
Okay, I'm gonna start with what it's missing or what it's getting wrong. So one for me is on the coaching side, one for me is like, why would it not be more popular? When I watch a collegiate match on a stream right now, a coach has to say something on every fricking point. There's a coach walking across the court, giving a high five, saying something, I'm like, hey, they just want their whole junior career without you in their ear. And they're about to go play pro without you in their ear. You're telling me this is the one special stage in life from age 19 to 22 where you gotta hold my hand on every fricking point?

Torrey Hawkins (26:12.631)
Right.

Right. Right, right.

Jonathan Stokke (26:20.456)
Quit over, quit over coaching, go sit on the bench and clap. You coach them before the match. If something needs to change, change it. Yeah, so I feel like there's a lot of hand holding and a lot of, I mean, I went through that a little bit as a college coach where you're like, well, if you're just standing there, what are you doing? So then like, I felt like I had to say something, but I think you're doing the athlete to disservice like, hey, it's a five, four, 15 love in the third set. I got to walk out there and tell you where to serve. Like it really isn't that complicated. Like go with your best serve. And like, I hope it works out.

Torrey Hawkins (26:25.24)
They should be prepared by now, 100%.

Torrey Hawkins (26:36.376)
Right.

Torrey Hawkins (26:45.334)
Right.

Jonathan Stokke (26:49.756)
So from a development standpoint, I see that and I always cringe and it's every match, it's almost every coach I've seen. What is getting wrong for me in terms of the sport? I mean, again, it's tricky because you don't want to change it too much, but to me, it's too long. And it's also like kind of like some matches obviously go past the four, you're playing to four, right? Sometimes it's a five, two. It's tough to explain to someone after doubles. Usually people show up for doubles, they're all into it. 30 minutes, 40 minutes pass and they all left.

Torrey Hawkins (26:53.622)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (27:05.046)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (27:18.89)
Done. Right. Right.

Jonathan Stokke (27:19.198)
I'm like, no, that was like literally like we're not even, 25 % of the way to the win. Like we're not even a half time, but they thought that was it. And then you come back out and there's singles and you're all playing simultaneously. So maybe finding a way to make it just a little more dynamic and shorter where it's like very easy to understand everybody's gonna finish or everybody's not like just stop it and get rid of all that stuff. So a fan could just be like, hey, Duke won, it's over. Individual stuff means nothing. So I do think that's tricky. Sometimes matches are so long.

Torrey Hawkins (27:30.648)
Right. Right. Right.

Torrey Hawkins (27:47.32)
Right. Almost like if you think about it, almost like we're trying to get to, I'm going to spitball a number here, 50 games, right? And then, and then all of a sudden you come out of the doubles point and you know, you do the, whatever the set scores are and let's just say, you know, easy math, let's say it's 18 to 10, right? Or whatever. And then, then, okay, we got 18, 10 lead, right? And now you're, you're planning to get to that 50. Now every, now every point counts, every game counts. You see the up and down. That's a great, that's a good point. I've always thought of that in terms of a different format.

Keep going, I don't want you to lose your thought. But this is the stuff I'd love to hear from

Jonathan Stokke (28:17.116)
Yeah, so I would. Yeah, so I would say what they're getting right is obviously there's a lot of college players that are going on to be pros, right? So that's definitely a newer thing. I don't feel like it's as common when I played 20 years ago, but the way they're able to get people pro experience during the season, the level of training, the level of coaching, getting people around, it's kind of become a year round thing. So there's a lot of players that are developing at a very, high level. So the level in college is phenomenal. I mean, I

Torrey Hawkins (28:37.683)
Right. Yep. Right. Getting great. Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (28:46.428)
Yeah, you're asking a recreational adult to go watch two of the top college people play and then go watch two people who are seated one and two in a challenger. They're not gonna know the difference. Like there is a difference sometimes, but they're not gonna know. So I think they've done a really good job of raising the overall level with that's recruiting, training, getting them pro experience. So I think the actual on-court product is fantastic. And then I forgot your third thing, what the segue was.

Torrey Hawkins (28:55.659)
Right. There. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (28:55.687)
Right.

Torrey Hawkins (29:03.436)
Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (29:09.195)
Right.

Alvin Owusu (29:11.378)
Well, let's before we go before we go to the third thing, I want to ask you something about those two. The last two points you made about the the fan experience in college versus the players experience in college, right? Because those two those two things are almost juxtaposed against each other, right? These top players that are coming in from, you know, both the United States and abroad are coming to especially to these top schools, right? To get top level competition, top level training to hopefully then go on and play professional tennis. So that's what they are there for. But as you mentioned,

Torrey Hawkins (29:26.358)
Yep.

Jonathan Stokke (29:39.72)
Mm-hmm.

Alvin Owusu (29:41.437)
the format itself does not necessarily lend to being a digestible fan experience, both in person or if you're trying to stream it. Let's take streaming out of it for right now, because it is not fun to watch college tennis on television in any given way. what do you think should be the goal then? Should the fan experience be more important or should what the players are actually there for be more important?

Jonathan Stokke (30:10.226)
mean, it's a good question, but I mean, if the interest in a sport dictates whether that sport's gonna continue to exist, then I think it should matter what people care about. know what mean? At the end of the day, if you say, that's not perfect for me, well, cool, you've got the summer, you've got the winter break, you've got the fall where you can play pro events. Like, you played a little bit of a weird format in the spring and it was no ad and okay. Well, you don't know how to play tennis now? Of course you do, that's fine. It's just a little bit of a different thing.

Torrey Hawkins (30:17.135)
100 %

Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (30:37.276)
And guess what? You're getting paid a scholarship and maybe NIL money to do it. Like that's not a huge sacrifice. It's not like you're going to forget how to play tennis. So yeah, I would want it to be, I don't care if they really changed it up and you're like, Hey, college tennis is almost kind of like we were going to talk about Intennse later, but like something that's something that's totally different. Be like, great. You're still hitting a ball. You still have to win the point. You're not going to forget how to play with that. You're not going to forget how to do any of these things. And like I said, you're getting amazing training along the way for me. That'd be a very easy sacrifice if I had to make it.

Alvin Owusu (30:41.672)
That's a good point.

Torrey Hawkins (30:52.362)
That's. Right. There's no draft, you know.

Alvin Owusu (31:07.238)
Right, and pro tennis is not like recruiting you from college. It's not a hit.

Jonathan Stokke (31:10.32)
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I mean, again, again, like the argument like you're like, it's the three point line the same in college. it's not it's shorter. do they do they play with aluminum bats in college baseball? Like, it's literally a different piece of equipment. So you're telling me, but you you know, this might be a little different with the scoring. I'd be like, Okay, but I still get to use the same racket and a ball that's better than baseball. Right. But no one talks about that. It's not a problem. So

Alvin Owusu (31:22.918)
Yeah, yep, yep.

Torrey Hawkins (31:23.52)
Yeah. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (31:32.448)
Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (31:35.806)
Again, I would love to keep it pure, but like no one's staying for a four and a half hour duel match and no one wants to watch that on TV. I don't want to watch that. I didn't want to be there for four and a half hours. yeah, exactly. mean, yeah. I mean, yeah, hopefully you wouldn't have to, but yeah, would value, I would prioritize making it popular over like, well, is that like the best format for someone to improve? They'll get better. It'll be fun.

Alvin Owusu (31:40.86)
Yeah, it's a, it's, when I was at Flow Sports, we couldn't sell it to anybody, so it's a tough one.

Torrey Hawkins (31:41.351)
Right. Right. Yeah. And you play.

Torrey Hawkins (31:50.943)
Yeah, it's too long.

Torrey Hawkins (31:57.059)
That's

Torrey Hawkins (32:00.691)
Yeah. I actually think they'll get better regardless to your point. The product is getting really good. It's the viewable product is what we have to maybe condense and find a different way. The third point was its impact into pro tennis. And should that be celebrated more? Should that be something that we're beating the drum more over? And again, shout out to guys like, you know, your coach Jay and obviously even, even Ramsey to that point, but

They have roaded. He's done a phenomenal job at TCU for years, getting top level players, Chuck Canole, but you know, at Baylor for years, even ones that, know, my personal face, Bobby Reynolds, right. And other, other coach like him, we've been doing it for a long time, getting players through. And I just feel like there needs to be more. There needs to be more publicity on, Hey, did you know, and I'm just spit balling number. I think I'm pretty close though, that 25 of the top.

hundred and in a given time play college tennis and you may not realize that that number may be that high because they're from other countries. You don't realize they came through the NCAA system. And I think those are some including five, five to 10 of the seats, right? That are in various tournaments. I feel like players like Cam Norton, players like Sarundalo. You don't realize, and it's been happening to your point for years. And I feel like that's something that we don't need. don't, most people would look at them as

pro players now and don't necessarily see the college track they took where in basketball, for an example, that's almost something that we speak to. Football, we speak to in the pregame. John DeStoke, Duke University, I mean, you'd almost have that in your introduction. The Duke University, whatever. It's just something that would happen. And I just think that's part of the, it's almost part of the fabric, right? And then tennis, you all.

Alvin Owusu (33:35.826)
Well, it happens, so like the-

Alvin Owusu (33:41.928)
It's the, it feels like the distance though.

Torrey Hawkins (33:52.212)
did she make her own sentence? We know who know, but the rest of the average viewer doesn't know. I'm sorry, Alvin.

Alvin Owusu (33:58.268)
I was gonna say like, but in, you know, I think the football-basketball comparison is valid except for once someone leaves college tennis, they more or less go into the tennis woods before you see them, like, in the main draw of the US Open, right? It's a journey before they get there and then you're like, yeah. Four years ago, they played at TCU.

Torrey Hawkins (34:12.936)
Fair, and that's fair.

Jonathan Stokke (34:20.402)
Yeah, but that lingers forever. like, for example, Jason Tatum, dude guy, really? He was there for nine months. Like, he's not he's not a dude guy. Yeah, exactly. Every, every, used to watch a Duke, you know, they're out of there every year. And that was the problem. They were awesome. But like, okay, well, what about john john is there's more of a bulldog than Jason Tatum is a Duke Blue Devil. So I mean, if you're gonna say always from Duke, look at that Duke, you know, the Duke heritage, the Duke program, like, well, I mean, he got a taste of it. He was there for a year.

Torrey Hawkins (34:20.506)
It's, it's, it's a.

Alvin Owusu (34:28.048)
Right. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (34:28.136)
Yeah, Kyrie the same. Kyrie made the best six months.

Alvin Owusu (34:31.129)
Well, a lot of them. mean that

Torrey Hawkins (34:49.588)
for years. Right. Agreed.

Jonathan Stokke (34:50.536)
John Isner was with Manny Diaz for four years and Kevin Anderson was at Illinois for three or four. Like all these guys usually are there for multiple years. I'm like, they actually have more of a connection to the school than a lot of these basketball players do. Obviously football, have to stay for three. So that's a little bit different. But yeah, I do think like what makes a sport engaging is the personalities. And so if you go, well, how many people love Georgia? Okay, well, it's probably a big deal then to tell everyone that John Isner went to Georgia. Like get some more fans on his side if they weren't there already.

Torrey Hawkins (35:15.336)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (35:18.098)
Hey, cool, one of our guys. cool, a Duke guy's in there. it's cool, it's one of our guys. There's no downside to that, and I do think they undersell it a little bit. They might make a brief mention of it, but every time Cam Norrie's playing, and then who's the new guy out? Jacob Fernley. There's enough guys where you're like, wow, TCU's got it cooking. Are they the Duke basketball? Are they getting all these guys in the pros now? Wow, it's interesting, all these Horned Frogs, and the guys in Dallas could be more interested, so.

Alvin Owusu (35:33.509)
Furnley, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (35:41.457)
Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (35:45.138)
Yeah, I do think it's something they could publicize a little more. Obviously doubles players, it's probably half the guys in the top 100 who college. Yeah, it's basically all good.

Torrey Hawkins (35:50.003)
I was going to say I lost track of doubles players and it's guys and girls now. It's not just, it's not just the men there for a while. The women were still going to the jump, making that jump to the tour. And you know, John, you as an Academy player, as a college player, as even as a coach, there was always this, are you good enough to go straight to the pros? I think that was, know, uh, going, I talked with this a lot because I really want to school to play college tennis. want him to play college tennis for the benefit of college tennis, just

Alvin Owusu (35:51.142)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (36:19.411)
So he could knock it off the list. He could have a year, not just to grow up physically as a person, but also to play and be part of that team environment. And I always told him, and we talk about all the time, I really felt like he, he was robbed in some ways, you know, signing, signing a contract and going pro was a big deal. And do I think he was good enough for sure? Do I think he would have, he would have really appreciated at least one year of, of confidence. really do. And so it's one of those things where there's this mystique or at least in juniors where

those that, you're clearly you're still in junior tennis. You don't, your, your, your, your knowledge base is not, it's not quite the full length, but I think the parents that caught up in it in a little bit of a two as if this player was so good, they could sue, they could just bypass this level. I really feel like that's one of the problems is that you don't realize all you're going to learn. You don't really, you know, you don't know what you don't know. And you're going to learn so much more just to be in that environment and that situation where you're going to be challenged in a different way. And especially with the Asian.

Jonathan Stokke (37:03.966)
Mm-hmm.

Torrey Hawkins (37:18.951)
being what it is, you know, don't get me wrong. Y'all for sake is going to be a great player either way. And perhaps he was, you know, being from Brazil and backing and the track he was on and whatnot. It's great to have him, but you can't tell me that he went, if he didn't go put a year in school, he might've come out of school after that year and broke from let's say 200 to top 30, as opposed to a hundred, not getting around in the main. And then finally, because look at the matches he's missing, right? And so I don't want to get.

too much in the weeds on it, but I just feel like and Yao is the best 18 year old we know of right now, you know, in terms of the tour. And I say that to say, I feel like college tennis does not get the plug. It's deserved that is, it is improved to get players that level. used to be way back before you were coming through Jonathan. College tennis to me was boring. College coaches made you worse. They didn't want you taking many risks and funny things happened.

More former college players got, like yourself, got back into college coaching. And I literally saw, coached for Emory and Georgia State back in the late nineties. And I remember thinking to myself, wouldn't mind coaching more, but some of these old fogey coaches have got to change. You know, at the end of the day, it's their call. They're the head coach, but I got to tell you, I'm running practice. I know the players, I'm recruiting them. I know who they are. And we still got to go back and you're still the one doing lineup because you've got some old school ideas. I love you, but I got to tell you.

you we got to change this up a little bit. You know what I mean? And I remember thinking to myself, Dan, at that point, I decided to go left from college coaching. I'm like, screw this, these guys will never change. And they're out to retirement. I'm like, who's gonna stay, the two-year guy or the 32-year guy? The 32-year guy's gonna stay, he's got his own parking spot. I'm interchangeable, you know what mean? I'm replaceable by next week.

Alvin Owusu (39:06.948)
That kind of explains why the assistant coaches, the assistant coaches keep moving, but the head coaches just stay there. It's a good gig. It's a great gig.

Torrey Hawkins (39:10.738)
Oh my God, it's a revolving door, right? So I say, right. And the money is diagelically opposite. So anyway, I don't get in all that. I say it to say, feel like over that 10, 20 years, I started seeing more and more former college players getting into college coaching and those programs are starting to do like this. And I'm like, wow, that's exciting. And then more and more got in. And then before you know it, got more and more exciting and competitive, right? So anyway, that was my segue. And I know we want to talk a little bit about pro tennis.

Jonathan Stokke (39:13.358)
Once you get it, it's a good job.

Torrey Hawkins (39:39.858)
Perhaps, perhaps Jonathan a little bit on what you've seen from the college level to the pro level. You obviously watched a good bit. In general, what, what say you on the, and again, two simple questions. How prepared is a good college player, a top college player in for pro tennis, right? And then the second, what do most.

players who don't quite make top 200, let's just say doubles or singles. What did they not fully get improve on? Again, it's a limited space, right? They all can't make it. What do the ones, the majority that don't, what don't they do that you've seen in years past?

Jonathan Stokke (40:28.094)
Probably the thing that stands out to most to me when I see high level pros is I look at them right away and I go, that's a man or that's a woman. Like they are jacked. They are built. they're not tall. Cool. They're strong. That always stands out to me when I show up at a pro event. I'm like, whoa, like that's a, they are built different. So sometimes when you say coming out of college, like

Torrey Hawkins (40:38.087)
Mm. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep.

Right, physicality. Yeah.

right.

Jonathan Stokke (40:55.11)
Some people just are underdeveloped and that's just natural that there's a late bloomer. Some of them maybe just haven't been just working hard at the gym, but that is the thing that always stands out to me when I'm looking at people who are currently making it versus people who are on the rise is like, it almost looks like a boy versus a man or a girl versus a woman, right? And so your skillset has to be insane if you're gonna overcome that physical deficit. So that's one. And then, you know, why don't people make it? I mean, to me, a lot of it...

Torrey Hawkins (41:08.87)
Right. Sure.

Torrey Hawkins (41:14.288)
Right. Right.

Jonathan Stokke (41:22.43)
again, like you said, there's a finite amount, there's only 200 people. And so if you got there and you're 25, yeah, and you're staying in your prime and there's only 10 people aging out every year, then there's a bunch of people trying to get those last 10 spots and like, okay, it's tough. To me, it's mental. So one thing that always surprises me is people assume that if you're good, you are maximizing your strategy and you are maximizing your emotional nature. are just peaked mentally. that's like,

Torrey Hawkins (41:25.401)
Right. All the 200 makes the top 200.

Jonathan Stokke (41:49.416)
they're getting everything out of your ability. And I'd be like, nah, I bet you most of them aren't, right? I got like Novak has just rung it completely dry, right? But if you look at a guy who's 50, I'm like, no ringin'.

Torrey Hawkins (41:57.489)
And still ringing. And he's got two machines on the other side. Right.

Alvin Owusu (42:00.774)
If it rings too hard, you pull a hamstring, so.

Jonathan Stokke (42:03.556)
Exactly, exactly. like people don't people don't want it. It's almost seems like it's easy. So whatever, I might be exposing myself. One person on YouTube said they thought I'd be a lot meaner than I am based on my coaching style, which is actually hilarious. one of the guys in my group did a kid, he had a running slap one hand backhand pass, really good shot 90 miles an hour in the corner. And he starts celebrating it was my god, so sick. And he missed 20 before that. And I

Torrey Hawkins (42:23.995)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (42:32.497)
You

Jonathan Stokke (42:33.264)
I said, you, I call them all together and I go, do you know how unspecial that shot was? Do you know how many people I've seen hit that exact shot? I've seen everyone who's athletic hit that shot once. I go, do you know how many people I've seen that actually have a head on their shoulders who know what they're doing and they're composed? I go, I don't see it here. And I see it so much, it's so much more rare than it is to see someone who can hit a ball. And that is how I feel when I'm watching.

Torrey Hawkins (42:39.119)
Yeah, right.

Torrey Hawkins (42:47.16)
One time.

Jonathan Stokke (43:02.034)
tennis players who succeed, the best players in college, I'm like, they get it. They have a little more up here. They all hit the ball well. They're all pretty physical. What is separating? What is separating a guy who's five from 20? I find it hard to believe it's a massive gap in the way they hit the ball. And yet one will be five for 10 years and one will be 20 to 30 for 10 years. What is that difference? Like, so I always look there and I always want people to have more of an ego about like, hey, I do everything right mentally. I take care of my body.

Torrey Hawkins (43:06.383)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (43:13.475)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (43:17.039)
Bye.

Torrey Hawkins (43:21.155)
Right. I agree with that. I agree with that. that, and to your point, and the ones that may fail to reach that pro level of top 200 maximize it even less. And that may be, and to your point, that's, that's the tough side in it. That's the tough side of seeing that player not

Jonathan Stokke (43:30.736)
and my skill set will be what it is and you'll maximize it, but I don't think a lot of pros actually maximize those things.

Torrey Hawkins (43:51.055)
quite get to the level you might think they could because they mentally could never truly get this part here together. I called it MRU, Mind Right University. You gotta get your mind right, you know? And a lot of times people don't get the mind right to be able to play this game for the length of time that it needs to play to improve. So Alvin, I'm sure I've gotten, once again, I've gotten a little bit, I've gotten, my Pirellis are on the skids over here on the corner next to the guardrails.

Jonathan Stokke (44:01.576)
I like that.

Alvin Owusu (44:18.237)
It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. I do all the editing anyways, so it's fine. We can go as long as we want to.

Torrey Hawkins (44:21.306)
Hahaha!

Jonathan Stokke (44:22.293)
Yeah. So I actually have, I have one side note on that. So one question I I forget where someone said it, but to me, there's no such thing as under or overachieving. Like when you say someone overachieved, I'm like, oh my God, you achieved it. And then if you say you underachieved, go, well, how do know what I'm capable of? So most people label an underachiever as someone like Nick Kyrgios, where you can see physical talent, but mentally they don't have it. And I'm like, well, mental is part of the game. He doesn't have a mind. So of course he was never going to be good.

Torrey Hawkins (44:32.601)
Okay, there's just achieving.

Torrey Hawkins (44:44.589)
Right. Sure.

True. Right. Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (44:51.26)
Like he doesn't have the brain for it, but people don't value that the same way. So they go, he's an underachiever because I saw how good he can hit the ball, but he has no brain. And if you see someone with a great brain and a great mind and they maximize, but they don't look good, you say they're an overachiever. Yeah, because no one values that part the same way. And for me as a coach, I almost value it more.

Torrey Hawkins (45:03.777)
Right, you say the overachiever, right, right, right.

You're saying all the skillsets should be equal, the mental and the physical component.

Jonathan Stokke (45:13.566)
Does anyone does anyone call Bill Belichick and underachievers a football player? Because he's the smartest. He's the smartest guy alive, like football guy, right? And he played football, but he never made it. So no one would say that because physically he didn't have the skills. But if you're a physical beast, but you don't know what you're doing out there. he's an underachiever. Well, having that brain and having the knowledge of what's going on is part of it too. So you'll see a lot of guys like that on the pro tour who don't make it that look awesome.

Torrey Hawkins (45:17.593)
Bye. True. Yep. Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (45:32.441)
Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (45:39.998)
So what they're clearly lacking are things you can't physically see, which are usually happening between those two ears.

Torrey Hawkins (45:43.853)
Yeah, yeah, it's a great perspective.

Alvin Owusu (45:45.99)
Just kind of like moving from your timeline wise, moving from your time at Duke, right? You left college coaching after almost 15 years of being a college coach, four years of being a college player. What was your reasoning? Tor kind of spoke to it earlier. What was your reasoning for leaving college tennis? And then kind of like take me through your, I've left Duke and now I'm in Charleston and I am the

And now I'm an online, I don't want to say, I hate saying that you're an online coach, but I've heard you say that you're an online coach. So we're gonna, we're gonna go with it and kind of dig into what that actually means in 2025.

Jonathan Stokke (46:24.382)
Mm hmm. Yeah. So I think at the end of 10 years, I was a little burned out. Our last couple of years at Duke were at least below my standard. I mean, I remember there's one time in when I was a player where we lost a couple of four or three matches in a row, we fell out of the top 10. And it's the only time in my four years we were ranked on the top 10. And Jay, my coach said, I'm not talking to you guys until you're back in the top 10. That's embarrassing. He's like, this is embarrassing. This is not what I do. And we were all embarrassed. We're like, I can't believe we're 12 in the country.

Torrey Hawkins (46:43.917)
Wow, Yeah, stop me, yeah, yeah.

Alvin Owusu (46:46.448)
Oof.

Jonathan Stokke (46:52.71)
And so there were a couple of years at Duke where we were in the seventies and I'm like, my God, like I'm a coach. It's on like, I'm embarrassed. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, this is embarrassing. And so we had a couple of tough years. It was weighing on me. We ended up doing a little better like my last year or two, but I was not happy. I was like, I don't feel like I can make the change that I need to. I'm not impacting the program enough. Losing is wearing on me. It's five straight years of.

Alvin Owusu (47:00.197)
The brotherhood is looking at you.

Torrey Hawkins (47:03.146)
Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (47:19.57)
by our standard struggling, by other schools making it some places great, not by our standard. Round of 16 used to be the floor and it became making the tournament was a success. And so it was just stressing me out a little bit. So I was kind of ready. think Ramsey after 10 years had given me a long leash to have my own opinions about things. And I think he was ready for some new ideas. And so I kind of moved out. Like I called a bunch of people said, hey, am I making a mistake getting outside of college tennis? And every single who had been in college who had gotten out.

Torrey Hawkins (47:29.737)
Right.

Getting out soon.

Jonathan Stokke (47:48.252)
was like, the only mistake you made was not getting out five years ago. They're like, life is great on the outside. So was like, okay, like, I'll give it a shot. And I moved down to Charleston, I knew a guy there, and it was not what I expected. And I started coaching some kids privately, but that was fun. was it was just pure coaching. There's no recruiting. It's their game. It's not like when you're at Duke, you take a lot of responsibility. It's my team, we are part of this team. When we sucked. I'm like, it's because I suck. Like I'm one of the two coaches.

Alvin Owusu (47:51.238)
interesting.

Torrey Hawkins (48:06.071)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (48:16.053)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Jonathan Stokke (48:18.204)
It's not their fault, it's my fault. When I look at juniors, I still think it's my fault because I'm a coach, but it's their game. So if we sit there and they, me and a player have a disagreement, I was like, okay, we can go with what you want, your game. If you want to change your mind in a few weeks, because you might realize I probably was correct, we can do that. But it's your life, I want you to do what you're doing. And that was a lot less stressful for me. So I enjoyed that. And then the two girls that I coach privately down here,

they're the ones that got me to start the Instagram, because I had moved during COVID, I wasn't at a club, I was teaching them on a court by the beach. And they're like, like you need to let people know you're here. So that's why I started Instagram was just, I was just liking people who were members of tennis clubs on Instagram, just to basically nudge them and be like, hey, I exist, I moved down here, whatever. And then the Instagram kind of took off. you know, I've liked online coaching just because I can put out whatever information I want. a

Torrey Hawkins (49:03.308)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (49:11.946)
I'd say on average, honestly, once a day someone will send me a message either on YouTube or Instagram and they'd be like, hey, I watched that video and I played a really good match today. I'm like, a compliment. Like that makes me feel good. Usually people are always complaining that I'm getting them good enough. And so that's been a really rewarding part of like the online coaching.

Torrey Hawkins (49:22.121)
Yeah. Right. Sure. And you don't know who you're reaching, right? To me, and you may, I want you to speak to this Jonathan, why do we coach? Right? And I'll leave that open ended before I, as I always do, put my 14 in my mouth. Why do we coach? Why do you coach, Jonathan?

Alvin Owusu (49:22.404)
Hehehehe

Jonathan Stokke (49:31.41)
No clue.

Jonathan Stokke (49:45.526)
I like, I used to always get in trouble with this at Duke, especially with like our sports psychologists and like the health and wellness people. I just like helping people reach their goal. That's what I like to do. I like maximum, for me it's a psychological puzzle. Here I got Alvin over there. He's got these issues mentally, he gets tight, he's blah, blah. His forehands like this. I like the puzzle of how can I get him better? And I love the joy of when I do that, feeling like Alvin knows that we were a part of that together.

Torrey Hawkins (50:09.415)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (50:14.956)
Did you work with Alvin

Jonathan Stokke (50:15.166)
Like you're not on a team and yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was not there. I'm using you. I'm using you as an example. Yeah. But, that, that going on that journey. So I just had a player, she became an all American. Uh, she's a sophomore at Michigan. So she just became an all American when I started working with her as a junior in high school, she was good. Uh, but she has made some leaps in the last couple of years. And I know she feels like I was a big part of helping her get there.

Alvin Owusu (50:17.86)
I was at a Tori's club earlier this week. was like, damn it, Stokke, you in the clubhouse?

Torrey Hawkins (50:22.508)
Stalky was Stalky was Stalky Galvin.

Alvin Owusu (50:25.444)
You

Torrey Hawkins (50:30.156)
That's great.

Torrey Hawkins (50:41.228)
Right.

Jonathan Stokke (50:45.15)
And that is super rewarding. So if you're asking why I do that, I like the challenge. And I like at the end, whether it's a four, who became a four or five or three, who became a three, five. It's like, dude, you went on that journey with me. You were helpful. You were supportive. And we have that bond. And hopefully actually got better. That is why I coach.

Torrey Hawkins (50:46.838)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (50:57.26)
Yeah.

Yeah, I like it, I like it.

Alvin Owusu (51:03.682)
Interesting, it's very kind of cool being here with two active coaches, myself being a former coach and kind of left for the technology world, but I would say when I was coaching, it's almost the exact same thing. It's the ability to impact, especially when you're working with young people, being able to impact someone's life in a way that's like, sometimes it happens right there in that moment, and sometimes it happens a year later.

Torrey Hawkins (51:10.966)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (51:18.016)
Yeah. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (51:29.897)
Years later.

Alvin Owusu (51:30.754)
or sometimes it's impact is four years later to myself and Tori's relationship. Like Tori was one of my coaches when I was 16 years old and here we are almost 25 years later and this is a relationship that was born originally out of player coach, right?

Torrey Hawkins (51:39.531)
From that. Yeah. And gets better. And I feel it gets better. I think that's one of the coolest things of coaching is you live long enough to see some of your former students become buddies and friends. there's times when Alvin said this or that or Skoll or even Bobby said something to me and I was like.

Alvin Owusu (52:08.409)
You

Jonathan Stokke (52:09.756)
Yeah, or the bad though, some of my old players at Duke like, remember when you said this to us, like that was pretty, I'm like, whoa, I said that, that's horrible. yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (52:15.819)
Right, right. I'm like, my God, that was a bit harsh, but I hear you. Hey, if I said it, I said it. But I said it say those are some neat things and some great stories. And Jonathan, I agree with you 100%. And I feel like, you it's funny, even in you describing it, it sounds like there's a lot more fulfillment, a lot more reward in coaching, right? As opposed to the result and the pressure. Let's face it, because I know, you know, Ramsey and you,

Let's face it, the AD, I don't know the AD at Duke, but I'm sure they were looking down their long nose at you to say, hey guys, know, we used to be, as you said, round of 16 used to be the floor. No one knows that better than your AD. So they're looking at some things going forward. that's, and that's, know, and that kind of, that kind of tees up perhaps another question I had for you, maybe another two-headed Hydra. We're in an era now.

And I want you to go back to 2015, 2016, 2018 when maybe some things weren't as good. And then go back to your 2010s, 2011s when you guys had some top players. was reading some of your bio earlier. You had a couple of players that got to the top. They're all American first team, blah, blah, blah. You've got two different issues now in IL. And of course, an issue that's been around for a long time, which is

And this is a tough one in the transfer portal. Talk to me about NIL, talk to me about transfer portal, and then I want you, if you can, I know those are two big ones. How does it affect the longevity of college sports, tennis specifically? I know it's a big question. What are your thoughts?

Jonathan Stokke (53:58.93)
Yeah. Okay, so I'm so glad first of all, that I don't have to deal with any of that. people asked me if I want to go back, I'm like, Nope, hell no, zero chance I want to deal with that. The portal and NIL are interesting. So obviously, there's no tennis player in college is worth a couple hundred grand, which I'm hearing a couple players are getting like they don't have the the notoriety or the market that's not they're not selling it like the quarterback at Alabama.

Torrey Hawkins (54:04.09)
Right, Yeah, right.

Jonathan Stokke (54:26.652)
I get it. If he's repping a car dealership, that's valuable. Like he's a marketable athlete. The number three player at Ohio State is not a marketable athlete. No one knows who they are. They're not moving product, whatever it is. You're just getting boosters and fundraisers to pay them money, which is fine if that's legal. Yes. If that's fine, that's fine. Then you've got separate, you've got transfer portal. So obviously the tricky part is I bring Alvin into Duke. You're not a great player. You get 10%.

Torrey Hawkins (54:29.468)
Right. Sure.

Torrey Hawkins (54:40.469)
Help your coach, help your program,

Jonathan Stokke (54:55.23)
and I work with you every morning at 6 a.m. and you get awesome and you have an amazing year. Well, guess what? At the end of the year, Stokke, want 70%. We don't have it. Cool, I'm going to the portal. bet you I can find a bunch of people who give me a full and give me 20 grand. So you're almost penalized if you do too good of a job, right? And I wish they kind of almost like, I've heard people talking about how it'll eventually go to, they'll be employees, but if I'm giving you $150,000 to come to Duke on top of a scholarship.

Torrey Hawkins (55:09.534)
For getting the guy better.

Jonathan Stokke (55:24.306)
then I think you need to sign something that says you're not going anywhere. You forfeit your right to get in the portal. Sorry, bud. Or you can pay me the money back. It's one of the two things. it's such a one-sided, it's tricky. They're unhappy, they can transfer. Okay, good work. Because when I was in school, like transferring was almost like a stain on your, like, you transferred? Like, well, are you a problem? And you had to sit out a year.

Alvin Owusu (55:27.018)
Right, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (55:32.074)
Right, right. Or the other school can.

Alvin Owusu (55:36.46)
He

Torrey Hawkins (55:41.47)
What can you do for me? Bless you, chill.

Torrey Hawkins (55:51.646)
Right, right. Why did you transfer? Right, right.

Jonathan Stokke (55:54.376)
Yeah, you a set out a year and it was definitely not now it's just like, like people have gone to three schools, like that's so normal. And so yeah, I think it's a it's a problem. And by the way, with that IL, I think there's going to be a lot of mid level to lower level programs, at least financially, that just completely either get rid of the program, they either get rid of it, or they just go, you know what, let's just pay the coach 50 grand, no assistant, let's go down to two and a half scholarships, like, if we're going to be last in the conference trying, we might as well be the last saving money.

Torrey Hawkins (56:09.844)
Yeah. Can't compete. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (56:24.363)
Right, yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (56:24.766)
And so that is coming for sure. But yeah, those are a couple of problems that I have no interest in being part of and I'm so thankful I don't have to deal with that on a daily basis.

Torrey Hawkins (56:34.482)
Sure. I knew those were loaded. You did a great way of dancing around the minutia of those two and nailed it, knocked her out of the box. I agree with you. Alvin, what are your thoughts on NIL and transfer?

Alvin Owusu (56:46.753)
Well, mean, first and foremost, right, we're talking about when you talk about people playing revenue generating sports like basketball and football, right, who are bringing money in for the university. Like I feel like there should be a, you know, a commiserate level of compensation for those players who are driving that revenue. Right. So, but when we talk about it on the tennis side, since this is a tennis podcast, right. It for me almost feels like a pissing contest for donors, like

Torrey Hawkins (57:03.549)
Right.

Alvin Owusu (57:15.351)
I graduated from UVA. have some, work at this company where I'm on the board for this company. And we also have some guys on the board who also graduated from Duke and graduated from, you know, University of Florida. It's like, you know what? I can't beat these guys in golf. So I really want to stick it to them like here. And I have, it's a, it's a nominal contribution on my end to help my alma mater do better. The thing that we all kind of look at and it's just, it just feels like it's just rich people.

getting their hands involved in things. And I think it's very, it's kind of obvious when you see the schools that are, know, fantastic academic schools who have donor bases that are quite affluent, who are able to just pump that money right back. now these schools are also fantastic tennis programs. It's like, well, yeah, it used to be because smart kids go play at good schools, because tennis players are usually really good students. But now it's like 150K to play tennis.

for matches that no one comes to and like.

Jonathan Stokke (58:16.616)
Well, you talk about you talk about fulfilling, but like if I if I somehow was just an amazing fundraiser at a school that had the ability and we went into blaze, I'm like, is that fulfilling that I was able to just pay enough people to come here and get good? Like is that is that I'm going to go home and put my head on the pillow. Like what an amazing like I'm so good at that. Like I got that guy 200K and got him into all these pro tournaments like I know there's more that goes into it and there's a lot of schools that have great players, but that seems to be.

Torrey Hawkins (58:16.629)
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right.

Jonathan Stokke (58:45.32)
priority number one, it used to be recruiting and selling someone on the overall program and am I the right coach and do we the right culture and do you like our team and do you like being a part of this school? And now, yeah, right. And I'm sure that, yeah, I'm sure that stuff is still there, but like, item number one is like, what's my scholarship? How much NIL am I getting? And how many pro tournaments are you taking me to? And then we can talk about your culture. You know I mean? Like then I wanna know about the other stuff, but like.

Torrey Hawkins (58:54.172)
You'll improve. This is what we've done with this number of players. You'll, you know, we can develop you.

Torrey Hawkins (59:07.272)
So.

But.

Jonathan Stokke (59:11.772)
If you're not paying me any money and I'm a top guy, I'm sorry, I'm not coming to your school.

Alvin Owusu (59:15.661)
mean, the upside is like, the other side of it is it's a fantastic proposition for the player, right? So like, as opposed to being, and let's just take, let's take US players out of it, right? Let's say I'm a kid from Argentina, I'm quite good, you know, as opposed to having to have my federation, you know, back me for a year. And hopefully I'm, you know, I'm bouncing around South America, maybe even North America, and I'm trying to make it. now that the college campuses are hosting so many,

of these lower level pro events and you have obviously the facilities are fantastic. Your equipment is covered, right? All the things that Bobby talked about, support psychologist, strength and conditioning, your travel, it's the best environment for those who want to or maybe like you mentioned Stoke, not quite there yet to go forward on the pro tour. I can't think of a better place for them to get ready to go do that.

Torrey Hawkins (01:00:08.261)
Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (01:00:11.774)
And so for the players, if it also comes with a financial contribution of, know, 80, 100, 150K, dude, get rich or die trying, like go get your money. But like, are we talking about? Like what is the point of college tennis then? Like let's just call it something else. Like let's just, let's call it something else for the top schools that have the money to do that where your, you know, University of Alabama at Birmingham, like has no chance. You're Georgia State.

Jonathan Stokke (01:00:21.702)
Absolutely.

Torrey Hawkins (01:00:21.733)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:00:34.631)
Thank

Alvin Owusu (01:00:41.472)
has no chance. NC State, like NC State can't compete with Duke in Carolina from a money standpoint, but actually they're getting a lot of good growth. A lot of women players.

Torrey Hawkins (01:00:41.799)
Right.

Jonathan Stokke (01:00:52.434)
They do, they do. But again, it's, it's yeah. I mean, it's like, cause I've seen good coaches maximize and like, wow. Like you got up to 10 and like you have, you don't have the resources. Okay. But are you going to be able to win into the blaze? Like that's some people's goal. Like obviously coaching still matters. All this stuff still matters. It just seems from the outside like a mess in some schools don't deal with it all. Some schools, that's all they deal with. but I don't think you're to see many teams winning into blades that are not giving out substantial NIL.

Alvin Owusu (01:00:55.394)
Or can you get six of them? Like, I don't know.

Torrey Hawkins (01:01:17.989)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:01:21.446)
100%. I agree.

Alvin Owusu (01:01:22.73)
Right. And it also changes the, it changes the required skill set for the coach as well. Like, you know, Bobby's been at, at Vanderbilt for, I'm sorry, Vanderbilt at Auburn for a while. and, and I, I just recently learned that, Baker, Brian Baker's at, at Wake Forest. I didn't know he was, he was there, but like Brian Baker was a top 60 ATP pro. Like Bobby was, was as well. Like that's what it takes. You need those kinds of coaches, but like, are those coaches comfortable with or the best people to be?

Torrey Hawkins (01:01:30.019)
Ob, yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (01:01:37.683)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:01:38.724)
Bix. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (01:01:52.724)
Essentially buying players like being a part of that of that, you know conversations that's what they want

Torrey Hawkins (01:01:57.222)
Right, right. They're players and coaches, they're not agents, right? So they're...

Jonathan Stokke (01:01:58.782)
Well, take Brian. So he's been the assistant at Wake. They just won it. He's an amazing coach. Tony's a great coach. They got good players. And I have no idea how much they are paying people if they are. But Brian's going to get a head coaching job. And then what's his number one priority? I got to get players. It's not like, I got to use all my tennis knowledge to get these guys better. Yes, that's going to happen once he gets the players. But that is all irrelevant unless he can

Torrey Hawkins (01:02:22.63)
Bye.

Jonathan Stokke (01:02:26.93)
find a way to raise some funds and go out and recruit his ass off and get those guys in otherwise.

Torrey Hawkins (01:02:29.734)
And the school he goes to, right, Jonathan, will matter heavily in his decision because they don't have the pockets, right? He won't be able to compete against Tony and Wake, right? And Tony spent years at UVA, you know, with Boland, you know, doing that same thing there. you're absolutely right. We used to coach Jameer. I coached Jermaine. I coached Jackie, the whole Jenkins clan. And obviously Behaley was part of old UVA crew. I've been seeing this for a while now and, you know, I'm old in the both of you.

in that sense that I've seen it. think it's, don't, you always look forward to the next iteration and see what's coming up. This is the one that I'm not so looking forward to. I feel, and then I'm seeing all the stuff in the news about the whole, you know, are they gonna be employees now and blah, blah, and I'm like, yeah, you're kinda not, you're kinda missing the point, you know what mean? We're taking away the very fabric of what it means to play college ball, you know, out of the picture. So anyway, I don't wanna belabor this point.

Jonathan Stokke (01:03:21.469)
Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (01:03:25.671)
Absolutely.

Torrey Hawkins (01:03:28.693)
Alan, I know you want to get to a couple of the questions.

Alvin Owusu (01:03:29.217)
Yeah, but-

Yeah, you mentioned iterations though, like, kind of Stokke, where you're at right now as a coach, right, you've been coaching for 20 years, but you've coached college players, you've coached high level juniors, I know you always talk about the 3-0 players, I'm assuming you're doing some adult doubles coaching as well, but you've also, with your time with Jessica and helping her out, Jessica Pagula here and there, you've seen the highest end of the professional tennis, so like,

I guess it's not necessarily a question about like I was thinking about a question about like how the through line between those we can get to that later. But like for you now that your kind of online profile has started to grow as a coach and it's giving you opportunities that weren't necessarily available to coaches let's say five years ago. Right. What does that how does that change your outlook for the next I'm going to say next 20 years of your coaching career. But like let's say the next five years of your coaching career like how does that change what your

Torrey Hawkins (01:04:20.505)
No.

Alvin Owusu (01:04:32.138)
your next your next goal is.

Jonathan Stokke (01:04:35.08)
Yeah, it's a good question. Yeah, like you said, I've worked with top players. I've worked with OK college players. I've worked with good juniors, OK juniors, poor juniors, good adults, poor adults. It's just fun for me to coach someone who wants to be coached. So I found that if you give me tomorrow a top 15 WTA pro and she's just brutal and she's pulling teeth to get her, I'd be like, that sounds miserable.

Torrey Hawkins (01:04:49.481)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (01:05:02.384)
If she was super coachable, it sounds incredibly fun. my God, I get to go to all the majors and like work with someone. Okay, but they have to be coachable. And you work with a 3.0 and they can barely hit a ball, but they're just all ears and they're totally into it. I have found that to be an absolute blast. And they're so thankful. When you go back to like maximizing what someone has and the relationship you guys get through that, I have found that to be surprising because I never would have thought I'd love teaching recreational adults. And it's been fricking awesome. So.

Moving forward, like I do camps throughout the year, like they're kind of specialized during Indian Wells, Charleston Open. I have one of the US Open coming up. I have a lot of free time, which is why I can do content. I can do YouTube. I can do my podcast because I'm on court all day. And then when I'm in those down periods, I'm basically just doing nothing but with my ears open, like, is there a cool coaching opportunity with someone who wants to be coached? Cool. Someone came last week here and I'll work with them. If that doesn't pop up, I have no interest in feeding balls to people who just want to stay the same.

Torrey Hawkins (01:05:50.881)
Right. Right.

Jonathan Stokke (01:05:59.73)
Like, just, to me, just, I don't want to spend days of my life doing that. So, yeah.

Alvin Owusu (01:06:05.761)
So is that something that the, as online coaching has become more and more of a viable, even say revenue stream for coaches these days, is that what allows you to not have to do the stuff on court that you would have had to do were you in the same position, let's say 10 years ago?

Jonathan Stokke (01:06:23.518)
So there's two things, I do coach people remotely. So obviously that is great. I watch matches with them so that I'm still working but it's taking me offline. So that's been great. The main thing is I just have to keep my wife happy. As long as she's working. Yeah, as long as I keep her happy and she's working that I can get away with some of these long stretches in between. But I'm still on court.

Torrey Hawkins (01:06:29.123)
Yeah. Home and at home are two different things, right? Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (01:06:35.329)
Amen.

Jonathan Stokke (01:06:49.426)
But yeah, I started to do a lot more like online coaching, match coaching, which by the way, I actually think those players get, they improve twice as fast as people I work with in person. Because they're not obsessed with how they hit the ball. They learn how to play a match. I'm sharing a screen. They're not emotional. They're just sitting here at their home, quietly, calm, ready to receive information. And they're also probably the type of person who will improve because they're willing to go through that process. So it shows me they're motivated and dedicated. So that's been rewarding. So I do, like when you talk about online, like,

Alvin Owusu (01:06:57.214)
Interesting.

Torrey Hawkins (01:07:12.579)
100%. That's a great poem.

Alvin Owusu (01:07:12.82)
Right.

Jonathan Stokke (01:07:18.928)
I do camps and people have come to camps because they've seen my profile online and maybe like the information they see from me. But then also I've been able to work with people I'm working with five or six at a time at all times remotely and those relationships have been just as rewarding. And like I said, I almost feel like I do a better job there than I do on the court.

Alvin Owusu (01:07:37.577)
Interesting. Are those generally like your traditional junior competitive players or these these adults?

Jonathan Stokke (01:07:44.19)
100 % adults. Juniors, I mean, I swear to God, it's pulling fricking teeth. know, I ask them, well, you think this, you think of this about your backhand line? Well, have you ever watched yourself on video? No. Okay, well, sorry, you can't have an opinion about my facts. I have facts. I've watched a million points and I can go show you these points. And by the way, I just videoed you, I can show you those. And those are just things that happened. And kids really do not wanna watch Imagine if I said,

Alvin Owusu (01:07:50.015)
Yeah. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:07:50.083)
Hmm.

Torrey Hawkins (01:08:01.264)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (01:08:14.238)
what skill do I need a kid to be good at to be a good player? I'm like, I want you to know how to play a match. I have you ever seen a kid win a match with a bad forehand? Of course, a bad serve. Of course, a bad return. Of course, if they don't know how to play a match, they're just a beautiful loser. So I'm not stressed out about your forehand. I'd like it to be better. But like, I'm stressed about the fact that you don't even know the score. And you don't know what happened three points ago. And you keep missing balls in the net for no reason from behind the baseline. That we can fix but kids

Torrey Hawkins (01:08:35.268)
Yeah. Right. It's a huge tool. I will go back to something. You said something earlier, Jonathan, about not only being coachable, but you made the point that

Jonathan Stokke (01:08:42.354)
typically from what I've seen are not excited about watching matches.

Alvin Owusu (01:08:48.681)
I mean, it kind of makes sense though. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:09:02.771)
Are they, regardless of what level they are, are they looking to get better? Can you help them? That's where the reward comes in for you. I would also throw in there on the flip side of that.

You, another point you mentioned, we over coach. Too many juniors have had too many coaches that have over coached. I don't need, at some point by the time you're 16 years old, if you've been with me for six years, A, you're hitting with one of my former players and you're hitting more because you should know pretty much everything I would have said. If you can't tell me what I would have told you at that time, I've already failed you.

Cause I would have told you that for last five years at some point, you know, I would have told you this and this. And so you should already hear me in your head, whether it's margin of error, whether it's where to miss, whether it's what you're looking to go for. So if I'm still over coaching you at 16 or 17, my job's already failed. And on top of that, if you're relying on my over coaching, that's, that's actually dysfunctional, right? You're not learning.

Jonathan Stokke (01:10:09.608)
Mm-hmm.

Torrey Hawkins (01:10:17.256)
I'm not putting you in a position to where you're able to be you without me. I should be coaching myself to completion or into obsolescence. don't, I should not be here. You should know everything I know for your game within this three to five, and then be on the drip, the IV drip for the next year and a half or so. And then at that point, it's just management, getting you good players, getting you some good tournaments, maybe a little tweak here and there with some scheduling, little help with recruiting.

To be honest, we're pretty much on a different scale. You know what I know or so I hope. And I think you're over coaching point. Well, but you say that Alvin, but Alvin, but you think about it. Now Alvin, were a bit different. Is it? Is it? After eight years, Alvin? After eight years?

Alvin Owusu (01:10:55.424)
That's all.

Jonathan Stokke (01:10:57.35)
Alvin,

Alvin Owusu (01:10:59.712)
man, that's a hard ask.

It is, okay, yeah, okay, one, one, if you get a junior player for six to eight years, that's rare. One, that is extremely rare. Two, yes, two, and this is the part that I wanted to mention, Stoke, you talked about kids not wanting to watch themselves on film. It's like, they're still kids. And especially when you're talking about someone between the ages of 10 and 16, well, you're going through a lot as a person, right?

Torrey Hawkins (01:11:17.066)
I would say more rare today.

Alvin Owusu (01:11:34.753)
You are, you're very, especially middle schoolers, right? Extremely self-conscious. Like I don't want to, I don't, I don't want people looking at me. I don't want look at myself because I'm, I'm still busy trying to build up who I think I am. I don't want you to put a mirror in front of my face for me to have to be forced to reckon with what I actually am. That's like, that's another thing right there. And then two, like tennis is so technical and it's such a hard game to master. Like we start talking about, like we're all, you know, over the age of 40, we've been playing tennis for a very, very long time. Like.

Jonathan Stokke (01:11:38.11)
Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (01:11:46.545)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (01:12:03.848)
Mm-hmm.

Alvin Owusu (01:12:04.19)
I mean, have a testament that I am still trying to get better as a tennis player. Now that window between 10 and 18, like your tennis dumb at that point. Like I, it was interesting to me when I came to your, your academy the other day and you were, you were working with that, with a, with one of your players, lefty girl, and you were giving her these, these instructions. I was like, she, I don't think she gets it. She can't get it. She doesn't, she's still learning how to play tennis. She can't actually, she's thinking about how to hit the ball.

not thinking about what you're telling her. It's a lot to take in. It's just a lot to take in.

Jonathan Stokke (01:12:37.758)
So when you when you talk about kids, like you said, I was actually going to mention this, you said, it makes sense to me that they don't want to watch video because they're kids. To me, it doesn't. Because guess what, when I was a kid, I did that stuff. Because guess what, I wanted to be the exception. So if you say, right, right, right, right. So when you say if someone comes to me and says they want to get good, but then they know there are these things out there and they don't do them. I'm like, I'm sorry, I actually don't think you do. I think you'd prefer to be good.

Torrey Hawkins (01:12:38.617)
Yeah. 100%. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:12:49.739)
Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (01:12:52.192)
Well, you were an exception.

Alvin Owusu (01:12:59.2)
Okay.

Torrey Hawkins (01:12:59.681)
Yeah. Thank you. Bye.

Jonathan Stokke (01:13:06.172)
And if it was given to you, you'd be happy about it. I think you have no interest in wanting to be good because all the resources are out there now. And so I would tell my guys that do because they by the way, when we were by our standards not doing very well, we had great, great, great. And I would say, hey, did your professor in that class tell you how long to study tonight before your test? And they go no. And I go, well, how'd you know you studied enough? They go well, till I knew I was going to get an A and I go bingo. Do you know you're going to beat UNC in three weeks? Because

Alvin Owusu (01:13:12.179)
Right.

Jonathan Stokke (01:13:35.134)
Practice is class. So did you go out and hit serves on your own? Did you go watch a video on your own? If you're not doing that, I'm pretty sure you're good losing to UNC or at least leaving it up to a gamble, which you would never do with your academics. And so that's how I view it. Like if you really want to do something, you're going to do it. And if you go, I'm dying to be a Wimbledon champion. I can't imagine a coach would come to you at age 14, be like, hey, you should watch some video. Yeah, no, I'm good. I'm gonna go play a PS5.

Torrey Hawkins (01:13:35.68)
Yep. Yep. Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (01:14:00.384)
Yep.

Jonathan Stokke (01:14:03.228)
Like that doesn't happen if that really is your goal.

Alvin Owusu (01:14:06.6)
Yeah, I mean, I think it's fair to just push back on the premise if someone says, I want to get better, I want to be good. And it's like, OK, well, you did this thing. It's like, well, no, I don't want to do it. It's like, OK, well, then I then can now throw out the premise of you actually want to be good. You don't know what it takes to be good. You don't know what good looks like.

Jonathan Stokke (01:14:25.99)
Right. And how much work it takes with zero guarantee that you're going to get it. Yeah, you're not going to get it. I want that. That's cool. Okay. Like let's say I said I want to have the number one podcast in the world. Number one is probably impossible because it's tennis. But if I did, go the amount of work that would take would be insane. And it is absolutely not worth it for me. So of course, I'm not going to do any of the things that would take whatever the first step would be because I'm like, well, even if I got there wouldn't be that fulfilling. So of course, that would feel like like work.

Torrey Hawkins (01:14:28.348)
goes into that statement.

Alvin Owusu (01:14:48.91)
Hahaha

Jonathan Stokke (01:14:54.942)
Right? And so if you're a kid and you're like, Oh, I want to be, you know, I want to play D1. you go, cool. Well, you got to practice more than twice a week. And that feels like pulling teeth. I'd be like, it seems like that goal isn't quite worth the work that it takes, which is totally fine. But it's good to be honest about that with yourself. Yeah. Change your goal and be like, Oh, you know what? I actually don't want that. I'm actually happy playing, you know, not playing college tennis. That's great. That's no problem. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:15:07.535)
Right. Change your goal.

Torrey Hawkins (01:15:16.497)
Yeah, high school tennis and maybe club and doing your thing. Alvin, you make a great point and I hear you. There's two parts of this. There's the reality of the masses, right? That is going to be normal. There's going to be, we're going to say average. And then there's Jonathan, to your point, and you were the very past above average, excellent elite. And I say that to say in a lot of ways.

Alvin Owusu (01:15:23.114)
I usually do, yeah, I appreciate that.

Torrey Hawkins (01:15:44.963)
Most people don't fully understand the gravity of the goal they may have to say something as simple, but yet as deep as I want to play college tennis. I don't think most kids even understand how deep, how big of an undertaking that is. And that's the first thing needs to be discussed. Do even know a college player and what they put into it? Have you been to a college match and have you seen a player when he was a junior than when he was

in college, have you talked to a college coach? Have you seen a college practice to understand what you need to do? And to your point, Jonathan, have as a, as the coach, let's be really real, you know, old days, keep it real. Let's keep it real. Okay. No problem. But let's take those three goals you just mentioned and throw them completely in the trash because I think I'm in a better position to tell you where you're going to be than you are.

Haven't been there, haven't done that. And I will understand everything you're saying now with the glasses of you have no idea what you're talking about and you're just talking to the side of your neck and I totally get it. I'll feed you some more points, you'll feel good about yourself and let's just go ahead and go forward being number five on your high school team and hey, you'll be the best number five on this team that seems ever seen. Good for you. And go from there.

Alvin Owusu (01:16:56.948)
So.

Alvin Owusu (01:17:04.703)
Okay, so there are things that I've learned doing this podcast. So I was a good Southern player, not a great Southern player. I was a good Southern player, got a little bit better each as I went on. And then there were players who were seated at Southerns, there were players who were going to getting seated at National, so on and so forth. There are always levels to this. But I think the beauty of the Academy system is that you have all of these players.

Torrey Hawkins (01:17:26.183)
always.

Alvin Owusu (01:17:34.098)
Around you at the same time like when I was at when I was at Jerry's like there was myself Right, and I was chasing the you know, the Chuck Perrons and the Trevor Wilson's of right there with those guys But then those guys were also chasing, you know Robbie junipery at that time right and Adam Van Loon and those guys so there's there there are always levels I think that's what the one of the benefits of of having people who are better than you and worse than you around you because if you want to know what it takes to get that

good, you're seeing how hard those players work. You see how much they're putting in. And I remember we had this conversation with Scoville, beginning of this year, and he was talking about these night sessions that you guys used to have at UTA back in the day. And I was, know, another good buddy of mine, Dasif Williams, who listens to the podcast as well, and he's same year I was, played at Furman, he was like, yeah, I didn't, he's like, I used to hear about.

Torrey Hawkins (01:18:11.842)
Okay.

Torrey Hawkins (01:18:28.254)
Yep. Yep.

Alvin Owusu (01:18:29.801)
those sessions and he was at UTA at the same time as well. He's like, I used to hear about those sessions. I was like, well, then there are your levels right there. Those guys were doing those late Friday night sessions, right? And they were top national players. Dasif was a middle of the road national player and he heard about those sessions. I didn't even know they were going on, right? So like that's, I think that's kind of the having that going back to your early point, about like not needing.

Torrey Hawkins (01:18:44.094)
Yep.

Alvin Owusu (01:18:57.661)
the best players around in a group and all that kind stuff. Sometimes you need them just to show the other players what it actually takes to get there.

Jonathan Stokke (01:19:07.454)
Yeah, and just talking about, again, because sometimes I know I come off as like harsh, but to me it just makes sense where if I look at it like a menu, so I honestly could not care less about food. So the idea of going to a nice, nice steakhouse and spending $75 on a steak, I'm like, I would just pay 20, like, why am I paying 75? A steak's a steak. So you go, here's a menu. Nice Wagyu, whatever. This is $125 and here's.

Alvin Owusu (01:19:27.369)
Right.

Torrey Hawkins (01:19:30.717)
Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (01:19:34.238)
uh, whatever, a lower level, say an outback steak and it's 15. I'll be like, Oh, give me 15. Like I got a worst steak at a price that I liked. Right. And I go, here's your tennis menu. Oh, you want to be a pro? Guess what the price is? Uh, you're playing all the fricking time. You're, you're watching video all the time. Boom, boom. That's the price. Does that seem like something you want? Some people want the Wagyu steak. And I'm like, yeah, good. Go. It costs a lot. It costs a lot of your childhood free time, all that stuff. Oh, you want to play nine on your high school team.

Torrey Hawkins (01:20:00.635)
Yep. Right. Yep. You can't confuse.

Jonathan Stokke (01:20:04.2)
You know what that costs? Almost nothing. Like, hey, you just gotta go out to practice and you can kind of be checked out half the time. You know, like, is that what you want? And some people want that and there's nothing wrong with that. You just can't confuse the two items on the menu and be like, I want the Wagyu steak, but I also want to be a friggin' zombie at practice and only come out twice a week. Be like, that ain't how it works. You know what mean? Like, it's not gonna happen that way.

Alvin Owusu (01:20:23.977)
Right.

Torrey Hawkins (01:20:25.915)
Yep.

Alvin Owusu (01:20:26.495)
I don't want to let us get out here without talking about Intense tennis I want to we want to talk about since because we were all we were all together I guess it's probably two weeks ago now, or maybe last week at the at last week. Okay at the Intennse event Jonathan you were commentating did a great job But the format right? That was my first time seeing it in person and Tori Tori has been talking to me about it And I've obviously been seeing it online. How did you get involved in Intennse tennis one two?

Torrey Hawkins (01:20:30.973)
Thanks

Jonathan Stokke (01:20:34.183)
Mm-hmm.

Last week.

Alvin Owusu (01:20:56.509)
What are your kind of thoughts, we'll go big 10, thoughts on Intennse tennis. And maybe explain it first because I just threw it out Intennse like people know like what it is.

Torrey Hawkins (01:21:01.324)
.

Jonathan Stokke (01:21:03.314)
Yeah, so.

Yes, so I got, I'm friends with J.Y. Abone, who's been heavily involved in the league. He's like the play-by-play. He's like, basically does every, he does a lot of things for that league. And so he asked me if I want to yap, which I always do. I'm just happy to talk. So he's like, Hey, would you, you know, would you do some commentary weekends remotely for these matches? So what the league is, is it's a teams of three guys, three girls, the guys play three 10 minute rounds.

the girls play three 10 minute rounds and then you play a men's doubles, women's doubles and a mixed for 10 minutes. So it's nine total 10 minute rounds and you can sub people in. So in the three men's rounds, all three dudes can play. can sub a minute out. You can call timeouts. It's a 10 minute running clock. The time in between points is quicker. It's 14 seconds and clean winners count for two. Like those are the, what one serve. Yes. One serve only. So those are the major rules that are different.

Torrey Hawkins (01:21:38.896)
Nice. Right,

Alvin Owusu (01:21:54.889)
And they get one serve too, right?

Torrey Hawkins (01:22:00.591)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Jonathan Stokke (01:22:01.672)
Being there in person, got to guest coach last week and then I was commentating, which is super fun. Coaching it was a blast. It is not normal tennis. One serve only, people are running in between points. Sometimes it makes sense, like for example, my team, I said, never ever in your life hit a slice lob. Someone's gonna get a two point overhead. You can't do it. So in some ways, it changes the tactics in the sport a little bit.

Torrey Hawkins (01:22:28.301)
Right, right. Right.

Jonathan Stokke (01:22:30.01)
I it plays, I think Intennse or other things like it, or if they want to keep changing rules. I think it is a little bit the future because I actually, I saw this with golf and I actually know it for myself. I would rather watch YouTube golf right now than pro golf. And I love golf, but I watch YouTube golf a hell of a lot more than I watch a standard PGA tour event. And they're doing all kinds of weird things. can I break 75 with only my driver and my putter? I'm playing these types of guys. They're not even pros head to head.

Torrey Hawkins (01:22:56.285)
Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (01:23:00.094)
it's entertainment. Sports is entertainment. And so if like, personally, I like seeing a coach call timeout, like I was like, I seen the kicker, I wait right till they toss the ball. And I called before and everyone was so confused. And I was like, I freaking love it. Like, that's perfect. Right? I wish I could do that in a real match. So for me, that's fun. It's still the sport of tennis. But like, that might be the yeah, oh, I was going to Yeah, I go to the official right before I'd be like, Hey, I'm gonna call it right before they toss. And like, he got right here. And I called it the guy was so pissed. And I'm like, that's awesome.

Alvin Owusu (01:23:02.322)
Right. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (01:23:20.126)
I saw the clip. I saw the clip.

Jonathan Stokke (01:23:29.916)
So for me, that's fun. It is a little bit of a different sport, but like it's quick, which I think people appreciate nowadays. They don't want to be around forever. Like who's going to watch a full five set match unless it's Alcara's and center, right? You're not going to watch four or five hours in a row on a weekend. So I liked that it's fast paced. I liked that the rules are different. I liked that there's something exciting there. Being a part of it. I enjoyed it a lot more than commentating from my guest bedroom here. Like that was a blast, but I do think there's a place for Intennse.

Torrey Hawkins (01:23:36.399)
Right. Right. 100%.

Torrey Hawkins (01:23:47.003)
Right.

Jonathan Stokke (01:23:56.646)
and other cool formats in the future because I think that's where a lot of people are consuming things on streams and on YouTube.

Torrey Hawkins (01:24:02.816)
My two questions, and I've asked them before, what does Intennse get right? What's it missing?

Jonathan Stokke (01:24:11.006)
They get right quick pace and Like I said like everything goes fast 14 seconds boom boom boom. There's not much time in between so it's just constant action they get right 10 minutes total they get right the team environment So you get your teammates cheering you on so the energy is always very good and they get right that coaches Like I I want the pro. I don't know why in the ATB tour There's not a coach. I I know Taylor Fritz would probably hate this why there's not a coach sitting on the bench

Torrey Hawkins (01:24:20.343)
But 10 minutes total. Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (01:24:40.178)
Like, why do I have to sit in the box? Like get there. I wish I could call a timeout in a pro match. wish like if I'm actually coaching you or do I work for you? So I like that Intennse, like the coach is involved just like a normal, like an NBA game. I can call a timeout. I'm looking at you. struggling. You just lost six points in a row. I'm calling a timeout. You look, you look raggedy and you don't know where you're going. To me, that is what they're getting right.

Torrey Hawkins (01:24:42.37)
Right. Yeah. 100%.

Right. Thumbing you out, timing you out, something. Right. Get your momentum back. Stop the bleeding. Yeah, no, I agree with that 100%. And what's it missing? Yeah, what's it missing? Is there a few more tweaks to be made to the format that you think would be advantageous?

Jonathan Stokke (01:25:05.564)
Yeah. And then with your second question, is it?

Jonathan Stokke (01:25:19.464)
Hmm. It's a good question. The format itself.

I kind of like it's different. I'm still kind of seeing if the rules work. I think a league like that to succeed long term, I could see it going down a YouTube path where they're also doing things simultaneously where they're doing. So here's our league, right? We've got Intennse, but on Mondays we're doing things with regular people. We're doing challenges with people on YouTube. Like it's a fully immersive experience instead of just here's the British open on TV and then here's what a yeah, like

Torrey Hawkins (01:25:51.5)
Just those pros. Sure. Yeah, you're over here and the pros over here, right?

Jonathan Stokke (01:25:56.382)
I do feel like eventually you're gonna start integrating and being like, are cool little challenges and here are parts of the league and here's our junior team. Hey, Atlanta has a pro team. Well, we have a junior Intennse team and they build up and it's a feeder system so everyone feels like it's together. This is the first year for the league. So like obviously they're changing rules. They're trying to figure out what's working, what's not working. So it's tough for me to say what's not working since it's so new. I actually, I surprised myself with how much I enjoyed it because it sounds so different.

Torrey Hawkins (01:26:11.45)
I like that.

Jonathan Stokke (01:26:26.074)
So I've loved it. I'm going back to commentate August 9th. So I'll be there again, which will be a blast. So remains to be seen, but I think eventually they're going to have to work in some junior feeder system and also find things outside of the matches to engage people because I think people want to watch that almost as much as they want to watch matches themselves.

Torrey Hawkins (01:26:29.719)
Yep. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:26:35.704)
Sure.

Torrey Hawkins (01:26:40.657)
Right. I agree. J.Y. reached out to me over last few days. Go ahead.

Alvin Owusu (01:26:45.765)
Yeah, that's a that's an

No, go ahead, go ahead, Tori.

Torrey Hawkins (01:26:51.393)
I was thinking, JY reached out to me the last few days, I guess there's a challenge match coming up and I'm gonna be the color commentator here coming up in think the 26th. So I look forward to giving my own color, you know what I mean?

Jonathan Stokke (01:27:01.928)
I love it.

Alvin Owusu (01:27:03.837)
Look at you, Barry in the-

Jonathan Stokke (01:27:04.902)
Now, Tori, the point is they use about eight seconds. You're going to have to get all your thoughts out in eight seconds now.

Alvin Owusu (01:27:11.621)
Yeah

Torrey Hawkins (01:27:12.993)
You have no idea how fast I can talk. I will blitzkrieg this thing. No, I think it'll be great. I am 100 % looking forward to it. Trust me. And Felipe Acosta is gonna be one the guys with me. used to work with someone with Junior, so he's a good kid. I've known him for long time. Long story, I'm looking forward to it. I am a huge fan of anything trying to add.

Jonathan Stokke (01:27:28.894)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:27:40.023)
to tennis. I love tennis. I've always loved tennis. It's one of those things where I just love anyone trying to make their own iteration of tennis. That's going to be more fun and more exciting. It'll never replace the actual tennis and I love tennis. So the purists to me will always love the three out of five. Alvin and I have had, I don't know how many discussions on, I want women to play three out of five, right? But at the same time, if there's an iteration, I love team tennis back in the day, world team tennis.

Alvin Owusu (01:28:02.136)
Hahaha

Torrey Hawkins (01:28:08.842)
I love Intennse. love the format of it. I love the fact that it was on one chord and people were there playing. I love the atmosphere. I love the look of it. I was just talking to my son. He does a lot of things with projection mapping and does cool things with concerts and for lighting. They actually need like almost more. You know, I think they almost need more, you know, I'm going to say production in that sense. But to my point, why stop? Why stop at the little club lights in the corner? Right. Let's, let's just really make this thing, you know, let's really blow it out.

But maybe even some cool music when there's a winner being hit. Almost engage the crowd a little more. Old school Tennessee knocking out pushups in the end zone on touchdowns. That kind of thing to me is just fun. And I think that the more people that are attracted to tennis, the better. And I think to your point, help people reach their goal. But I think also helping people to...

Jonathan Stokke (01:28:45.404)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:29:05.036)
Helping people to realize how fun this game actually is. If you actually invest the time to get halfway decent, the better you get, the more tennis rewards you and how much fun it can be. And that, I think that's one of the things that I've always loved about the game. So bottom line, I look forward to it. I'll be asking you some more questions on some of your color. And you know, it's something I look forward to chatting with you when we get offline. But I enjoyed not only seeing you there, but obviously catching up with you here today.

as always, you know, before Alvin sticks his proverbial pin in this whole thing. This has been a great episode. buddy, buddy, I know you well enough to know that pin is coming and I saw old Bill Belichick over there with the time out.

Alvin Owusu (01:29:40.669)
Did you feel it? Did you feel it coming? Did you feel like I was about to call it?

Alvin Owusu (01:29:54.526)
was debating, I was debating. was gonna give my one and a half cents on intents, coming from a sports media technology background, right? What does it look like? What is the value for a consumer who's not there? I don't know yet, I don't know. The in-person experience was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. Is that enough to stand up a league long term? Obviously it's not, you can only.

Torrey Hawkins (01:30:10.609)
Right.

Alvin Owusu (01:30:21.895)
put so many bodies in that building, right? So you need to be able to be engaging people who are not there. But I think they're really onto something with that format. And I noticed that the Clemson women's team is getting involved in some way. And I'm like, okay, now we're talking about, like you mentioned, Silky, would this be a cool concept to try in college? Like to keep fans engaged, like it's fast, we're running to, we're playing to points, we're all working together to get to this thing and.

Torrey Hawkins (01:30:35.96)
Yeah. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (01:30:51.205)
it's all happening at same time. Like that could be a little more engaging for fan in that. I don't know how you do it in that environment. You still gotta go six wide, but whatever. But then also as a training aspect, it felt like a little bit of like winners up, losers down, like kind of like half court games, cause like you're running around trying to get as many points played in as possible. So I got that kind of vibe, but like is there, like I haven't done it myself, so I don't know how hard it is to play tennis.

Torrey Hawkins (01:31:10.723)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Stokke (01:31:14.344)
Thank

Alvin Owusu (01:31:21.255)
for 10 straight minutes with very limited time in between points, I feel like it's actually quite difficult, like from a conditioning standpoint.

Torrey Hawkins (01:31:24.584)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Jonathan Stokke (01:31:28.926)
Yeah, it's tricky. mean, 14, the one thing that I found in that is 14 seconds is short, but I kept telling my team, I'm like, run it down to, you guys are serving with seven seconds left. you have, yeah, you're, you're, if you're serving, you control it. So I'm like, Hey, like just why are you rushing? Like I played very fast as a player anyway. And I would say I probably, I probably naturally played it like a 10 to 15 second pace. That was just my thing, but they feel so rushed because they they've been told it's faster.

Alvin Owusu (01:31:39.877)
If you're up, yeah, take your time.

Torrey Hawkins (01:31:45.938)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:31:56.996)
Right. Making it almost too fast. Because the serving, the serving switches so fast on a miss serve, right? Sorry, all the.

Jonathan Stokke (01:31:57.168)
And so they're actually like jogging to get a ball and they're serving with seven seconds. And I was like, take two deep breaths. through your routine and you're fine. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (01:32:04.22)
Well, the whole thing, when I walked in there, like, I felt rushed.

Jonathan Stokke (01:32:10.738)
Yes.

Alvin Owusu (01:32:10.832)
Well, the whole environment, it's like it's there. There are for those who haven't seen it, like there are the it's one court that there's lights. There's an emcee walking around yelling things. There's there's music. I'm like, I feel like I'm going into cardiac arrest here and I'm not even playing. I'm just watching and I'm stressed the hell out. So I can imagine the players feel like and then you're you you get 50 percent more points if you are 100 percent more points if you go if you just like sell out and start trying to slap winners. It's like the whole thing is very

Torrey Hawkins (01:32:19.113)
Music? Yeah.

Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:32:36.683)
Go big.

Jonathan Stokke (01:32:40.094)
It's a lot. that's, that's honestly, Torrey, what you're going to do as a coach. And if I could go back, the only thing I would do is I might actually physically walk onto the court when my players were serving and be like, wait three more seconds. Like I told you to wait to two, you're rushing, slow it down. And I'm standing here. So now you can't make that mistake. And I wasn't really worried as much about, should we go to that person's forehand? Or, you know, I just met the team anyway. Like, I don't know how they play, but I was like, take your time.

Alvin Owusu (01:32:40.11)
It's very stressful.

Torrey Hawkins (01:32:48.565)
Yeah, right. Right.

Right, right, right, right, right, right.

Jonathan Stokke (01:33:06.642)
do things like let's use these rules to our advantage. We're gonna get you your timeouts, we're gonna sub you out so you catch your breath, and hopefully you play well enough to win, even though I just met you. But yeah, like for me, that was the cool part is I felt very involved.

Torrey Hawkins (01:33:09.024)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:33:17.238)
Yeah, yeah, that's that's it you felt like you can actually commit commit a to it. Yeah

Alvin Owusu (01:33:17.574)
Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, Tori, thank you for bearing.

Yeah, thank you for burying the lead and not telling me that you going to be doing some Intennse work. That's awesome. That is awesome. That is awesome.

Torrey Hawkins (01:33:27.446)
Yeah man, yeah I'm looking forward to it. I'll be tagging, I'll be YouTubing your color commentary there Mr. Stokke and I'll be fine. As always, you're the bar, you know what mean? You're the bar. Since 18th Clay's in Louisville, Kentucky. I don't know about all that, but the bar all the same.

Jonathan Stokke (01:33:27.516)
Yeah, it's awesome. I love hearing that.

Jonathan Stokke (01:33:38.587)
Hahaha.

Jonathan Stokke (01:33:43.526)
Yeah, it's a low bar then. Yeah.

I love it.

Alvin Owusu (01:33:53.212)
Well, cool. Let's go ahead and this is what I do. I'm gonna put a pin in it. We've been here for a minute and I know you guys got things to do to get on the court. Jonathan, thank you so much for coming. Tori, always a pleasure and we'd like to have you back again and we'll talk some tennis crap about some other things another time. Cool. Absolutely. All right, best three, we're out.

Torrey Hawkins (01:34:09.588)
Got that right.

Jonathan Stokke (01:34:10.588)
Yeah man, been a blast catching up with you guys.

Torrey Hawkins (01:34:12.596)
Looking forward to it.