Tennis Coach Gives Technique Tips, Insight Into the Lives of Professional Athletes

We're back here with coach John Williams. He's had over two decades experience and has worked with some of the world's best athletes, spanning a diverse range of sports even. So tell us about your coaching, John, what's your style? Wow, my style would be kind of cooperative. I believe effective coaching is more of a partnership. And when you establish that relationship in the beginning, it makes it really easy to communicate information, but also receive very valuable information, which then accelerates the developmental process. Right, and we just heard in the intro that you had a diverse range of experiences. Tell me a little bit about your journey and how you actually got into tennis. That's a great question. I actually started out on the strength and conditioning side and I still do a lot of performance training. I consult all over the world with athletes and organizations. But I started on that side and then very quickly realized that there was a component missing. And that came to light somewhere around, I wanna say maybe 2005, 2006, when I started working with some junior tennis players. And in being around coaching and on court with them and hearing the inputs and the feedbacks and looking at what the takeaways were, I was like, man, this maybe could be a little bit different. Like I would do it a little bit differently if I were the coach. And then the years progressed and suddenly I got an opportunity to do that and here we are today. John, there's gotta be just so much training that goes into something like the U.S. Open, for example. Can you give us a little insight into that? You know, believe it or not, the way that the tennis schedule is stacked up, there's not a whole lot of downtime for training. Because we were, right before coming to the U.S. Open, we were in Cincinnati. Taylor had a great showing in Cincinnati, but it was pretty much matches every day, every day. So there's not a whole lot to be done in terms of the training side. It's all tweaking and polishing. And you maybe pick one thing that you want to address in that window and then you have to go out and play. Wow, it sounds intense. So tell us about that with such little downtime. How did you approach some of the challenges and breakthroughs, maybe, if you can share with us? Sure, challenges are never-ending because in professional tennis, you do not have control over your schedule. You do not have control over the weather. There's so many things that you don't have control over. So you have to be what I call rigidly flexible. You have a routine, and you look to control that routine as much as possible. You have to be flexible to everything else around it. And some of the big occurrences that might derail you, if you have prepared properly for that, then they're just little bumps in the road. Tell us more about Taylor Townsend's performance at the U.S. Open. Taylor this year did amazing. I mean, we had some specific goals coming into the U.S. Open. We love coming to New York. I'm from New York originally. I'm from Long Island. But it's always nice coming back, and we had some big goals coming into this U.S. Open. We missed the French Open this year, which kind of hurt in achieving those marks and milestones, but we got really, really close. When we got here, it was super simple. It was, hey, just play the way you've been playing. Don't worry about anything else, and the results will come. And we unfortunately went out pretty early in singles. We made it to the second round this year. Last year, we had a third-round victory. So we were hoping to do a little bit better there, but we made it back to the semis in women's doubles and the finals in mixed doubles, so not a bad showing. Right, so tell us about the mixed doubles here with Townsend and Donald Young together. Yes. Yeah, great mix, right? And what were the highlights? You know, some moments where it had you hold your breath, for example. I think probably, I don't do the breath-holding anymore. Okay. That was very early, because I would probably have been long since expired, but there've been some really tight matches. Oh, I can imagine. But I think some of the highlights were pretty exciting just watching the chemistry. You know, they've got a long history together. Taylor started playing with the Young family. That was her introduction to the game. So Donald was kind of like an older brother to her as they were coming up, and they kind of swapped roles and positions as they developed, you know, their career paths, and to see them come back together for Donald's retirement was pretty special. Yeah, I mean, they lost the number three seed, and it was seven-six, seven-five. That's a nail-biter there. I mean, really, I mean, how do you, what do you tell them, like, okay, when you're in that kind of situation, like, how do you stay mentally fresh? Ooh, that's a great question as well. Mentally fresh in those situations, I don't think goes hand-in-hand, kind of like a juxtaposition. But it's mainly just, you know, focus on what you need to do in the moment and not get caught up in the emotions. And usually, if you're able to convey that pretty effectively, then the player can play the way that they're capable of playing. That's a good one, not being affected by the emotion. So what do you think is next here? What are you looking forward to tackling next? Any challenges or accomplishments that you and Taylor are looking for? Well, I'm really looking forward to getting to Asia. I've not been to Asia ever, and this year, I will miss China, unfortunately, due to some previous commitments, but Taylor will be there. But I am looking forward to spending some time in Asia and seeing that part of the world. So as far as next challenges, that will be next up on my horizon. That's awesome. Yeah, and Donald Young, he wanted to play one more tennis tournament before retiring to focus on professional pickleball. Who knew? Right, right, who knew? Exactly. All right, and well, I think we have one more moment, but I wanted to delve deeper into, when you were saying that you had, because you delved into different sports, you had condition building and all these things, was it challenging or do you think it was helpful when you transitioned into tennis? I think it's phenomenally helpful. The experience that I've had working with other athletes and other sports and other domains has given me what Samuel Lesteen called range. And I think that range provides valuable insight and also the ability to pull back and gain using various frameworks, how to create different contexts for approaching a problem. So it's pretty cool. Excellent insight, John. I want to get some more from you. What are some beginner mistakes and how do you avoid them? Probably first, oh, I see we have some rackets here. So probably first beginner mistake is not watching the ball. And we don't have one to play with here today because the Red Cross said we're not allowed to have balls in the studio. But if you practice just watching the ball and looking to see the ball behind your strings when you make contact, that will take you a long way toward making good contact and having a consistent ball strike. Wow. Got it. Yeah, okay, so you just keep an eye on the ball. Exactly. It can be difficult though to estimate the depth and how fast it's coming at you, right? So give us a little more tips. How would we even approach this? How do I hold it? Okay, that's a great question. So I'm going to put this down for a second and let's deal with your grip. So there are several different types of grips. Usually the individual player is most suited to the one that's familiar. So if we were to shake hands, this is called kind of the handshake grip. So keep your hand just like that. And what you are in now is basically, you're very close to what we call an Eastern Forehand grip. Okay. I'm just going to tilt you a little bit so you're on that flat panel right there. And now you actually have an Eastern Forehand grip. This is probably the easiest grip for a beginner to learn because it's typically how we do things. If I were to bounce a ball and say, just push it forward, that would be the natural grip that you would have. Oh, okay. Okay. So you made that up based on how I naturally grip the racket. Exactly. Great. Exactly. So it's a great starting point. Yeah, for sure. All right, John. So let's get into the advanced stuff. If you're just pushing, right? You're just pushing. You're not trying to spike it or anything. How do you form your hand when you do that? So typically, if you look at a C, the letter C, your swing would go from here. And then if you just watch the tip of my racket, it would go down and forward. So if you create a C with your arm, then you have the beginnings of an effective stroke. A sea of possibilities. A sea of possibilities, exactly. All right, nice. This is awesome. Do we have time for one more or no? Okay, one more. Sir, I have a big question with how do we avoid, because 50% of tennis players I heard, actually, according to the NIH, have tennis elbow conditions in the end. So how do we avoid that? Equipment set up and physical preparation. So equipment set up, I'll just deal with that really quickly. If the racket's too light or too heavy or your string tension is wrong, any one of those can also contribute to elbow irritation. The second part is if your forearm is really tight or not strong enough, that could also contribute. I see. So it's not just a question of technique. I think that was really insightful. Thank you so much. You're more than welcome. We're definitely going to practice on our own and we can now say that we got coached by Taylor Townsend's coach, John Williams. All right. Thank you so much. That was awesome. Thank you guys. Super fun. Yeah, and as for us, we're done here, but be sure to tune in to the 10 a.m. News Today show that's still coming up. Thank you so much. I'm Evelyn Lee. And I'm Kevin Hogan. Take care.