Why I Stopped Coaching From the Sideline

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It was a Saturday morning at a graded tournament, and my son was a set down. I was standing behind the fence, arms folded, doing that thing where you try to communicate through intense eye contact and subtle hand gestures. “Bend your knees.” “Move your feet.” “Come ON.”

He glanced at me between points. Not in a “thanks Dad, great tip” way. More in a “please stop” way. He lost the match. On the drive home, neither of us said much. When we pulled into the driveway she said, quietly: “Dad, can you just watch next time? Not coach. Just watch.”

That was a few years ago. I’ve thought about it a lot since. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Every tennis parent I’ve spoken to does some version of this. The whispered “come on” that gets louder as the match goes on. The involuntary wince at a missed shot that your kid can see from across the court. The hand signal that you absolutely do not think is coaching but very much is.

We do it because we care. We do it because we’ve sat through hours of lessons and we actually know a bit about what our kid is supposed to be doing. And we do it because it feels unbearable to watch them struggle when you think you can see the solution from ten metres away.

The problem is that it doesn’t work. In fact, it often makes things worse. When a junior player is already under pressure and they see a parent reacting to every point — wincing, gesturing, pacing — it adds a second audience to manage. Instead of playing tennis, they start playing tennis while also trying to manage your emotions. That’s a lot for an eleven-year-old.

WORTH KNOWING

Sports psychology research consistently shows that parental anxiety on the sideline transfers directly to junior athletes. Your kid can read your body language far more accurately than you think — even from the other end of the court.

After that car ride, I made myself a deal. For the next three tournaments, I would only do four things on the sideline: sit down, stay quiet, smile when he looked over, and clap when the point finished — regardless of who won it.

The first tournament was genuinely uncomfortable. There were moments where I could see exactly what he needed to do and I had to physically stop myself from saying it. I sat on my hands at one point. I drank an unreasonable amount of coffee.

But something interesting happened. He started problem-solving on his own. Between games I watched him pause, think, and then try something different — without any prompting from me. He’d never really done that before. I realised that when I was filling the silence with instructions, he didn’t have to think. I was doing it for him.

WHAT HIS COACH SAID

I told his coach what I’d been doing. His response: “That’s the best thing you could have done. My job is to coach him during the week. Your job on match day is to be his safe place, not his second coach.”

It took about a month before I noticed a real difference in how my son approached matches. He seemed calmer between points. He stopped looking over at me as much — not because she didn’t care that I was there, but because he wasn’t waiting for a reaction. She knew he’d get a smile and a clap either way, so he could just focus on the next point.

The car rides home changed too. Instead of me debriefing the match (which she hated), she started talking about it herself. What he tried, what worked, what he wanted to do differently. Real reflection — from an eleven-year-old. It turned out he’d had these thoughts all along. He just hadn’t had space to say them because I was already filling that space.

THE RULE I STILL USE

After any match — win or lose — I wait for him to speak first. If he wants to talk about tennis, great. If he wants to talk about something completely unrelated, also great. The only thing I always say, regardless of the result: “I loved watching you play today.”

I didn’t figure all of this out on my own. These books in particular shifted how I think about my role as a tennis parent — I’d genuinely recommend both.

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