Years prior to acquiring the indoor court space we now have, the MLTC had been focused on broadening its base and forming relationships with local community programs. Like building a house on a strong foundation, we recognized that building an exceptional junior tennis program would begin at the grass roots level. The bigger we built it, the stronger it would become. Although we had some tournament level juniors, that portion of the program was always limited by the lack of indoor court space. By 2013 when we had bubbled over the courts at MLTC West and 2014 when we took over the building at MLTC East, it had become a very different game.
To understand the philosophy at the MLTC, I thought it was time for me to share more of my background than I have ever put to print. I have never cared to do that as there are many pros who name-drop along with a lot of chest-thumping. I would rather not be part of that club. By the same token, parents want to know who it is they are entrusting their child to. They want to know that for the limited time their child has to work on his/her game, their child is being given accurate information and their child is being guided in the right direction. That is completely understandable.
Below is a history of my background as a player and instructor relative to the inception of the JTP and the MLTC Masters programs. I hope parents and players will find it useful in determining whether or not our programs are a good match for their needs.
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After playing all of the traditional sports of baseball, basketball and football, I dropped baseball my freshman year of high school so that I could play on the tennis team at Lunenburg High School in Lunenburg, Massachusetts. I had hacked around in the summers hitting a tennis ball around with my brother a handful of times, but baseball was just too boring to continue with during the spring season. The gratification in tennis of hitting a ball every few seconds was unparalleled to me and I immediately discovered my passion.
I played the first doubles position during my freshman and sophomore years. It wasn’t until age 16 that I had acquired a job at a health club and then received my first real tennis lesson (for parents reading this, if your child started playing and taking lessons before age 14, then odds are, he/she was better than me when I started). By this time I had dropped football and basketball and played tennis through the winter for the first time.
For any serious tennis player, there is no substitute for playing year-round. While seasonal tennis players are engaged in other activities during the winter months, it’s an opportunity to jump ahead of them and be completely ready for the spring season. In my case, I went from easily losing in challenge matches against our first singles player, to not dropping a single game when I faced him as a junior after just one winter of consistent training.
By this time I could not get enough of the sport and wanted to play it incessantly. Although I was receiving competent instruction from the pros, the real key was hard work and a lot of it. Ball after ball after ball after ball of drilling, playing and practicing serves. Within four years I had gone from being someone who had played very little tennis and was at the middle of the pack of the high school team to being a semi-finalist at the state tournament my senior year.
Realize that I was a good athlete, but by no means exceptional. I could play any sport, but I was never the kid who was the star of the team. It’s also worth noting that I came from a family that did not have financial means beyond the basics. Every tennis lesson…every tennis clinic…every racquet…tournament fee…can of balls…you name it, I paid for it. The job at the club gave me discounts and sometimes I could fill in on a class, but otherwise I worked about 20 hours/week while in high school which helped to finance my tennis.
Although I had made great strides in only four years, it was still miles away from top collegiate tennis. Nonetheless, I chose to matriculate into the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) where they had a great science program, and of course, a great tennis team. The year before I arrived, UCSB was in the top 25 in the country in Division I.
My freshman year in college I was cut along with nearly every other candidate since there was only one opening on the team. I continued to train with some of the other players who also did not make it, and when I returned as a sophomore, I was proud to have earned a slot on the roster (near the bottom, but still good enough to be there). During that year I had met with my professors to discuss how to also reach my career goal of becoming a geneticist. I had dreamed of doing research since my days as a kid growing up on sci-fi movies, however upon being told that I would be in school through most of my 20’s, that my work would be owned by the school or corporation I worked for and that I would only make peanuts while doing all of it, I decided that I would “rather be playing tennis” and returned to Massachusetts to train. Although California has a lot of players, I had a stronger network back east. I also needed to finance my ambition and there was a tennis teaching job at home waiting for me.
After about 4 years of saving pennies and training continuously, I hopped on a plane to Portugal and spent most of 1995 slugging it out abroad. I won my very first match (woo hoo) and had other victories along the way, but the overall experience was an eye-opening endeavor that I was ill-prepared for. There were many things that I had wished I was better informed about that would have made a difference in my overall performance, but I was enjoying the thrill of competing against ATP ranked players.
After my funds were exhausted, I returned to the area to teach tennis once again. I decided to take a few years off from playing as I was somewhat burned out from the travel and constant pressure. I also needed to pay off the sizable debt I incurred from the experience.
I gradually started to think about returning to playing when a friend of mine came to me and said, “Marcus…I have a 14 year-old student who is so good, that he would beat even you!” Granted, I had not played a real match for close to two years, but a 14 year-old?? Never!
We put $50 on the match and set a date. When that date came, I found myself across from a slender lefty who hit a heavy ball and had a wicked lefty serve. To my dismay, I was summarily dispatched by this kid in straight sets, lightening my pocket by $50.
The benefit from the loss is that I saw the potential for a great training partner. His name was Jamie and he and I worked out 2-4 times a week for the next 3-4 years. We did drill routines that I had put together to ensure that we would both continue to develop a complete game. Although I was playing even better than I had before, I eventually had to make a difficult decision to leave competitive playing and put my energies into the growing tennis academy that I had started at Nagog Woods in Acton. It paid the bills whereas playing tennis only grew them.
What of Jamie? His full name is Jamie Cerratani. He went to Brown University and this is how things turned out for him:: http://www.atpworldtour.com/tennis/players/top-players/james-cerretani.aspx At the time of writing this, Jamie is still competing as a world class player who reached as high as 45 in doubles on the tour.
Although I was indefinitely delayed from playing due to finances, I vicariously focused on the next best thing which was the pleasure of helping other players progress; particularly the juniors. I knew I had a unique background along with knowledge that could help players make similar gains like I had done. I was not someone who started at age 6 or 7 with lessons every week for years. I was someone who started in high school far behind his peers, but yet had made up the difference. I had studied video, looked at stroke mechanics, applied my science background and read anything I could get my hands on relative to tennis to give me any edge against the competition. I even became a certified aerobics instructor so that I could get paid for staying in shape (no, I never wore a leotard). I always found it surprising how players would hit the ball but seldom understood the physics involved or the geometrics of the court. Knowledge has always been power in my book.
In my late 20’s when I was still associated with an indoor club, I had launched a training program called “Excalibur.” Excalibur was a blueprint for serious junior players and it gave them the same formula that I had followed. When juniors were accepted into Excalibur, they had to commit to being on the court a certain number of times each week along with a certain amount of playing and service practice. The end results were obvious to both the players and their parents. (This part of the tale will be of great importance later in the story).
I eventually left that club and started the Marcus Lewis Tennis Center in 1997 as a small seasonal tennis operation in a condo complex in Acton. By the early 2000’s, I had received a call for from a friend, John Ippolito, to help coach the Assumption College tennis team in Worcester, Massachusetts; a team that had a record 0-39 losing streak. John had instantly flipped that losing record into an undefeated legacy the very next year by recruiting player phenoms from countries such as South Africa, Columbia and Russia; some even had Davis Cup play experience. John was a master marketer at recruiting talent, and as the Assistant Coach, I was tasked with improving the stroke mechanics of the players and helping them to better understand their point construction tactics.
By 2010, I applied my life experience to the town of Littleton where the tennis program was on the precipice of being dropped from their high school sport offerings. I took over their boys’ team which included a small group of players that went 0-12 their first year. In a few years, the program grew to have both a boys and a girls team. By my fifth season, the school was celebrating its first ever undefeated league record as well as the team’s first league championship in 40 years.
In 2013, I had orchestrated the bubbling over of the four condo courts in Acton and then took over a second tennis facility in the same town in 2014. By the end of 2016, the Marcus Lewis Tennis Center was logging over 1,000 memberships annually; a metric that some multi-recreational clubs have difficulty achieving.
Remember that Excalibur program? I literally had to wait 17 years to resurrect the project. In order for the new iteration of the program to be a success, it required not just physical resources such as the additional courts we now had, but it necessitated instructional firepower. There was a time when my operation was mostly a one-man show and I did 90% of the teaching, but that has not been the case circa the year 2000. Like most clubs, I first tried hiring talent from a résumé. After meeting with more headaches than good hires, I decided to train my instructors in-house. I was not looking for good players; I was looking for dynamic and patient teachers. I can show anyone how to diagnose a forehand or correct a service motion. I cannot teach things like interpersonal skills or how to relate to people. You either have it or you don’t. The instructor program was a huge success to this day with a number of the trainees going on to become directors in a number of clubs in the area.
Although I could write quite a bit on each instructor, what should resonate with parents is that the pros at the MLTC are consistent with their information and that they are matched with their strengths. We can work with a child as young as four who has never held a racquet, all the way up through players having ATP points or Davis Cup experience. We also make it a point to build players up and NOT break them down with negative reinforcement. You get the most from players by building their esteem and enabling them. The other route is a quick path to burnout and far less enjoyment of the game.
We ultimately launched the 21st century version of Excalibur and offered two levels: The Junior Training Program (JTP) and the Masters Program.
