“Learn Tennis Now”: How the Junior Tennis Champions Center helps bring the sport to everybody

COLLEGE PARK, Maryland—It’s Monday morning, just past 7:30 a.m. on a beautiful spring day in College Park, Maryland, roughly 30 miles southwest of Baltimore. Eleven adults are spread across Court 23 of the Junior Tennis Champions Center (JTCC).

The vast majority of these men and women are hitting tennis balls for the first time. For this inaugural excursion, several useful teaching aids come in handy as instructors Langston Williams and John Marah direct the morning’s activities.

While a typical court is 78 feet long, these cover 42 feet. Six mini-nets rolled across the courts are six inches shorter than the standard three feet.

The junior racquets provided each time by the JTCC staff are two inches shorter and a little bit lighter than the ones these players will eventually play with. Red-dot balls are also slightly bigger and lighter too.

“It all starts with your ready position,” said John Marah, one of the two instructors. “Turn sideways. You want to be as still as possible.”

Here are these beginners, hitting balls back and forth to one another in what you could call the start-up phase of the tennis journey. It’s exciting and edifying.

“We did it—eight!” one student says to another. “Good rally. That was our best one.” The duo’s subsequent rally ends after two shots. Of course, that’s part of what learning is all about: failing, or better yet, getting feedback on the path to growth.

Marah is now explaining the all-purpose value of the Continental grip and how it will help players hit serves, volleys, and backhands. Next comes a short explanation about movement. “You have to get back home,” says Williams, as he stresses the importance of recovery.

“Hitting it back and forth was fun,” says Louise (name changed to protect her privacy) at the end of a session where she’s just held a tennis racquet for the first time. A contractor at a government agency, Louise had played lots of soccer in her childhood. But recently, after seeing the movie Challengers, she decided to give tennis a shot.

“That was exhilarating,” said Louise. “You really get your heart rate up.”

For decades, tennis has had its ways of getting players into the game. Free lessons, backboards, ball machines, musical accompaniment and the more recent technologies employed at JTCC are among the most notable.

Then, in 2020, COVID-19 hit the world, a state of distancing that triggered a tennis resurgence. As just one metric, sales of intro racquets rose more than 20 percent in 2020.

As more people enter tennis, the bigger challenge is keeping them in the game.

“You’ve got to offer the right kind of programming that easily gets people into tennis in a way that works for them,” said JTCC CEO Ray Benton. “And then there’s the social aspect, where you have the chance to meet people you can keep playing with.”

When it comes to building tennis programs from the ground-up, Benton’s track record is as epic as Rafael Nadal’s clay-court resume.

Back in the early 1960s, Benton was the pied piper of tennis in Dubuque, Iowa, bringing hundreds of people into the sport. From 1971 to ‘77, he was the first national executive director of tennis’ exemplary community program, the National Junior Tennis League (NJTL). During that time, the NJTL grew from three chapters to 50.

Those years also coincided with Benton’s 15-year-term as principal at sports marketing agency ProServ, the firm that represented such notables as Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith, Jimmy Connors, Ivan Lendl and Michael Jordan. In addition to working with those athletes, Benton managed Volvo and its wide-reaching engagement with tennis, including what’s become USTA league tennis.

Benton joined the JTCC in 2008. At that point, nearly a decade into its existence, JTCC’s heavy focus was on fast-track juniors. A number have emerged from this facility, including such pros as Denis Kudla, Robin Montgomery and, most prominently, Frances Tiafoe. Hundreds more have earned college scholarships. The banners from those universities are posted on the walls of JTCC.

But as Benton’s experience has shown, it’s vital to broaden the base as widely as possible. Hence, the JTCC tagline: Tennis for Everybody. The beginner program called “Learn Tennis Now” (LTN) is the result of many hours spent pondering the right mix.

“It’s not that we’ve reinvented the wheel with it,” said JTCC chief operating officer Joe Wilkerson. “But there are a few things that make it sticky.”

The LTN program has two progressive segments, LTN I and LTN II. Each segment lasts three weeks and is comprised of two 90-minute lessons a week. The cost: $60 per segment, and players are allowed to bring a friend for free (which means in the end each lesson can cost as little as $5 per person).

JTCC instructors conduct these lessons with exceptional precision. A 29-page document provides minute-by-minute details on what’s to be taught in each lesson, from tapping balls back and forth to an introduction to the serve to various games. As you’d expect, all of this happens quickly. Every JTCC instructor I spoke with stressed the importance of movement, fun, and the positive experience of connecting with the ball.

Wilkerson also notes that LTN programs are offered at six different times, as early as 6:30 a.m. and into the evening.

“You can’t just offer one a week and hope it works for people,” he said. “You’ve got to take into account how they live, work and play.”

Since LTN began at JTCC five years ago, approximately 6,400 men and women have participated in LTN I. Half went on to LTN II.

From there, Wilkerson said 2,000 have progressed to more advanced forms of instruction and become NTRP 2.0 players or better.

“The ideal tennis player will play at least twice a week,” said Benton. “They’ll take some programming and also play with a friend.”

As effective as JTCC itself is in providing instruction for entry-level tennis players, its bigger mission is to bring “Tennis for Everybody” to life all over the country.

The companion piece to the curriculum document is the “LTN Training Manual,” a comprehensive series of steps for marketing LTN programs effectively–everything from emails and digital ads to Facebook and Instagram posts and much more.

“There’s no secret sauce here,” Benton said.

JTCC team members have so far shared these details in-person with 12 clubs across the country in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Ohio, Tennessee, and Connecticut.

Jeff Gocke is president of TennisCT, a business that runs three tennis clubs in Fairfield County, Conn. Gocke and his staff have been working with JTCC for ten years, including teaching instructors how to teach players of all skill levels.

Since starting work with LTN in the summer of 2022, 2,000 players at TennisCT clubs have taken LTN courses—850 of whom have gone on to continue playing.

“LTN has been just flat out one of the best programs we’ve ever had," said Gocke. "It’s incredibly fine-tuned.”

Ideally, JTCC will train 6-10 clubs per year. Call LTN a tennis version of the Peace Corps. Back at JTCC, Louise is excited about the chance to make her way to LTN II and beyond.