Why I Write Without Absolutes
A few years ago, before I started coaching seriously, I improved my tennis mostly through YouTube. I found channels I trusted, watched obsessively, tried things on court, and noticed what happened. It was a genuinely powerful process. I learned to see things in my own game I would never have noticed alone. There are specific moments from specific videos that I can still trace forward to real changes in how I play.
Online coaching content has been one of the most democratising forces in tennis in the last decade. Players who do not live near a good coach, who cannot afford regular lessons, who come to the sport late and need to build knowledge quickly, they now have access to more information than was conceivable a generation ago. That’s also why I have this blog: so I can spread my ideas about tennis to a wider audience.
But I also think we need to approach online coaching advice with a particular kind of mindset, not cynical, not dismissive, but curious and experimental. Try things, test them, see what happens in your own game, stay open to the possibility that what worked brilliantly for someone else may not work the same way for you. And for coaches especially, there is something more to consider: the way we frame our claims shapes how people learn, and that comes with a real responsibility.
An Experimental Mindset
When I watch coaching content now, I try to hold it the way a scientist holds a hypothesis. Here is something that might be true. Let me test it, observe carefully, and decide for myself whether it applies in my context. Staying genuinely open means not treating every confident claim as universal truth.
This matters because online coaching content is almost always created from a particular context: one coach’s experience, one population of players, one set of circumstances. That does not make it wrong. It makes it partial. And partial information is still useful, as long as we remember it is partial.
The problem arrives when partial information is presented as if it were a universal rule.
“A coaching tip is always an observation from a particular context. The question is whether it applies to yours.”
As a coach as well, I always try to understand: Is there any scientific evidence backing the claims? If the coach is questioned, does he reply in a open, friendly way, or is he defensive and arrogant? For me this helps me know what is the coach’s mindset.
The Distinction That Matters
Here is a small example of what I mean. Imagine a coach says: “Shadow swings are key to developing proper technique.” That sounds like an objective rule, a fact about how tennis skill develops. If you are watching and you trust the coach, you might take it as established truth and feel you are doing something wrong if you do not follow it.
Now imagine the same coach says: “In my experience, shadow swings have helped me and some of my players improve certain parts of their technique.” That is a different claim entirely. It is honest about being experience-based. It leaves room for the possibility that it might not work the same way for everyone, in every context, with every learning style.
The information in both sentences might be similar. The framing is not. And framing matters enormously, especially when a coach is speaking to thousands of viewers who each have different games, different needs, and different contexts.
There is a big difference between sharing something and declaring it. Sharing sounds like: “This is what I noticed.” “This is what I am currently exploring.” “This seemed to help this player in this context.” Declaring sounds like: “This is the correct way.” “This always works.” “This is essential.” The first invites you to experiment. The second instructs you to comply.
“Sharing is different from declaring.”
Why Coaches Have a Duty of Care Here
I think coaches, including coaches who produce online content, have a genuine duty of care in how they communicate. Not because tennis is dangerous in an obvious physical sense, but because the way a coach frames a claim shapes how a player approaches their own learning.
When coaching is presented as a set of universal rules, players stop experimenting. They stop asking whether something is working for them personally. They start measuring themselves against an external standard, rather than asking what is actually happening in their game. That is not a small problem. It gets at the core of how people improve and how they relate to the sport over the long term.
If something is personal experience, it should be presented as personal experience. If it is a hypothesis worth exploring, say so. If it is supported by research, explain what the research actually says, without turning a nuanced finding into a confident slogan. That kind of transparency is more useful than certainty, and more honest about the actual state of knowledge in tennis coaching.
Why Tennis Is Too Complex for Absolutes
Tennis is too complex for most absolutes. Players are different. Contexts are different. Goals are different. What helps one person may not help another. What works in one environment may fail completely in another. Even when something clearly works, the most interesting question is usually not “is this good or bad?” but something more specific: when does it work, for whom, and why?
This does not mean stopping sharing. If anything, it means sharing more, more honestly. Experiences, observations, doubts, failed experiments, things that surprised us, things we are unsure about, things we are still trying to understand. All of that is valuable. The framing just needs to match the confidence we actually have.
The goal is not to sound certain. It is to stay curious, open, and willing to be challenged.
When I write on this blog, I try to say so when something is a personal observation, or a working hypothesis, or a reflection from practice rather than a claim supported by research. That is why I avoid phrases like “you must” and “this is essential” and “this always works.” Not because I lack convictions, I have plenty, but because intellectual honesty requires matching the language to the actual level of certainty.
The goal is not to win arguments about tennis. The goal is to keep learning how to make tennis better, healthier, more enjoyable and more meaningful for more people. And that learning goes much better when we stay honest about what we actually know.
References and Further Reading
- Greenhalgh, T. (2014). How to Read a Paper: The Basics of Evidence-Based Medicine. Wiley-Blackwell.
- Epstein, D. (2019). Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Riverhead Books.
- Renshaw, I., Davids, K., Newcombe, D., & Roberts, W. (2019). The Constraints-Led Approach: Principles for Sports Coaching and Practice Design. Routledge.
- Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.