Emma Doyle Interview: What Makes a Great Tennis Coach?

Emma Doyle is a high-performance coach and author with a wide-ranging background in tennis.

We discuss her book “What Makes a Great Tennis Coach?”, how she views modern coaching, and how you can become a better coach or student.

In this conversation you’ll learn:

How to make your relationship with your coach/student better.
How to find the best coach for you.
How to better coach yourself and your doubles partner.

You will also hear how Emma got into tennis, what inspired her to be a coach, and how she thinks we can make doubles more popular.

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Interview Notes from this Podcast

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Follow Emma on Twitter, Instagram, & check out her website.
Buy her book: What Makes a Great Coach?: Top 10 Practices of the World’s Best Coaches
Special offer: Buy 10 copies or more to gain access to The Coaches Toolkit – online tools that provide you with practical (off-court leadership) strategies aligned with the top 10 practices. Buy 100 copies or more – Emma Doyle will do a talk for your team (in-person if you are in Denver, or virtual if you live outside of Colorado, US)(Screenshot your purchase and send it to: info@emmadoyle.com.au).
“It’s not what you say, it’s what they hear”
- Too often coaches communicate and coach how they like to be coached, rather than how their student learns.
- Knowing what you want from a coach and how you receive info is good for both you & the coach to know.
- Understanding your partner and their personality is very important.

The Curious Champion Mindset
- Curiosity is a coach’s superpower because it helps them learn and adapt.
- Always ask questions to better adjust your own game and your opponent’s game.
- In his podcast with Emma, Darren Cahill discusses his changeover philosophy of reflecting on the past two games, thinking about the current situation, and preparing for the next two games.
- Curiosity helps build resiliency and prevents anger because you’re thinking about improvement.
3 Practices from Emma’s Book
- Decision-Making
  - Empowering your students with decisions is important to allow them to build intuition and thrive under pressure.
  - Pulling decisions out of people helps them solve problems in every part of life and gets them more invested.
- Purpose
  - Purpose is directly linked to motivation, if you know your purpose, practice is enjoyable.
  - Purpose also allows you to track progress and better reflect, but that doesn’t necessarily mean goals for every student.
  - For example, in our podcast with Luke Jensen, he discussed his intense training regimen while his brother Murphy practices very loosely. Both players are former pros.
- Communication
  - The four types of learning styles are visual, auditory, kinesthetic, & auditory-digital.
  - Make sure you know which one you are, which one your partner is, and let your coach know (you could be several).
  - Having values and making sure everyone on your team is striving towards those helps to make better decisions.
  - Remember, you don’t always have to be teaching to coach, you are just helping students to learn.