Today’s Guest Post was written by Mark Johnson, CEO of UTR Guide, a collection of FREE resources for tennis families.
Your phone already holds the most underused coaching tool in junior tennis: your camera roll.
Every tennis parent films their kid. The serve that finally clicked. The rally that went 20 balls. The meltdown after the double fault (we’ve all been there). Most of those videos sit in our phones doing nothing. But a tiny habit — filming one stroke on purpose, once a week — can teach you more about your kid’s game than a season of watching from the fence.
Three Tips
1. Film from the side, not from behind.
This is the mistake almost every parent makes. From behind the baseline, every forehand looks roughly the same. From the side — phone propped on your bag at the net post — you can actually see what’s
happening: where the racket drops, how the body rotates, whether the kid is hitting off the back foot. Side angle is the whole game. Ten seconds is plenty.
2. Watch the feet before you watch the racket.
Parents obsess over the swing. Coaches watch the feet. Is your kid split-stepping as the opponent hits? Are they recovering to the middle after each ball, or admiring their shot from the corner? In almost every junior video I’ve seen, the stroke isn’t the problem — the feet are. And footwork is the cheapest thing in tennis to fix: no new racket required.
3. Compare your kid to last month’s video, not to the kid on the next court.
This one matters more than the technique. Line up two clips four weeks apart and watch them back to back. You’ll see progress that’s invisible day to day — a fuller shoulder turn, a calmer toss, feet that stopped crossing over. Show it to your kid, too. Nothing motivates a 10-year-old like visual proof they’re getting better. It also ends the comparison trap: the only player your child needs to beat is last month’s version of themselves.
What to do with the video
You don’t need a coach’s eye to start — but it helps to have one on call. We built a free tool for exactly this: upload a 10-second clip of any stroke, add one line about what your kid is working on, and it comes back with 3 practical, personalized tips. No signup, no cost. It’s called the Virtual Coach, and it lives at utrguide.com.
Use it or don’t — the habit itself is the win. But if you’ve ever watched your kid’s match feeling helpless, knowing there’s something specific to look at (and fix) changes everything. You stop being a spectator and start being a student of your kid’s game. Kids notice that. And it means more to them than any pep talk.
Film ten seconds this week. Your camera roll will thank you.
Mark Johnson is the CEO of UTR Guide (utrguide.com), where he builds free tools for tennis families — including a free AI Virtual Coach that turns a 10-second video of any stroke into 3 personalized tips.
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