It is now fairly normal to hear children say with great pride:

“I’m orange ball now” or “I’ve moved up to Green”

I can understand this sense of pride and achievement in feeling that you are making progress and getting closer to playing full court / full ball tennis.

Whilst, we in no way want to take the sense of achievement of ‘moving up’ a ball colour away from the child, we believe referring to a child as “green ball” or “orange ball” is too narrow.

The future is constantly in motion and the children constantly in transition and I believe a better view is to utilise the full spectrum of constraints and challenges the mini tennis system has to offer.

I encourage children to consider splitting their practice time between 2 different ball colours, for example doing an orange class and a green class and/or playing matches on both.

Children often develop better topspin technique on the red and orange court (at least initially), and the development of their serve, slice and volleys is made easier on the smaller courts. The green court often requires far greater forward and backward movement with the ball coming further and bouncing higher.

All 3 ball colours remain useful in their own way and are tools to help the child improve at the fastest possible rate. A recent YouTube video posted by the LTA showed Emma Raducanu honing her topspin skills on the mini tennis red court.

We caution against children being moved up too early as this can result in matches becoming wars of attrition with both players simply ‘making the distance’, rather than utilising the full range of skills, they have worked hard up to develop on the red and orange courts.

Physical development also plays a huge part, you don’t buy size 5 shoes when you turn 11 unless that happens to be the right size for you at that time.

Whilst players see themselves ‘moving up’, ‘up’ or bigger isn’t necessarily better, the court needs to fit the child not the other way around. There is no rush to get through the stages, and progress should not be measured by what ball colour a child typically plays with, the different balls are tools to help the player as they grow and develop.

On the LTA Competition System a child might fall asleep on 31st December and wake up on 1st January having changed ball colour. The child hasn’t physically or emotionally changed overnight but yet they are expected to instantly change their tennis.

We believe in the sports science concept of ‘Non-Linear Pedagogy’, which in essence looks to optimise a player’s skills of adaptation, cognition, perception and decision making through the manipulation of varying constraints.

We adopt a ‘mainly Constraint Based Approach’ and want children to be adaptable and continue to learn through varying constraints which include different court sizes, equipment, rule changes and obstacles. We want children (especially those aged 7 – 10) to continue to play on at least 2 if not all 3 of the varying size courts mini tennis red, orange and green offer.