ITA Coaches Podcast: The Long Game featuring Chuck Kriese

Hey coaches, learn here from the ITA with your latest podcast. But before we dive in with this month's guest, a quick reminder for all coaches about participating in College Tennis Weekend held from March 27th through the 29th. This is a new initiative from the ITA aimed to engage college tennis communities and uplift programs through fan attendance, donations, and community involvement. College Tennis programs who have home matches that weekend are encouraged together as many community members, fans, and alumni as possible to attend their match. If you do not have a home match that weekend, we are suggesting that you host a community event that brings individuals to your courts to help foster relationships for future fans and program donors. For more information, visit our website at wearecollegetennis.com and visit College Tennis Weekend for a listing of all college tennis matches or community events happening near you. And now onto our podcast. Today's guest is one of the true architects of College Tennis and Player Development in the United States. Coach Chuck Creasy, who spent 33 years at Clemson University before retiring in 2008. Chuck became the winningest coach in ACC history, piling up 685 victories, 10 conference titles, and a legacy that produced all Americans, national players of the year, and future ATP standouts. A former USA national coach and the author of four influential tennis books, Chuck has shaped how generations of coaches think about development, leadership, and building programs that last. In 2013, Chuck surprised many by returning to college coaching at the Citadel, driven by the same passion for teaching and growth that defined his career. In this conversation, Dave and Chuck dig into the philosophies that stood the test of time, the traits of players who truly maximize their potential, and what Chuck believes the college game must get right for the next generation. We hope you enjoy. Coach Creasy, welcome to the ITA College Tennis Coaches podcast. And thank you, first of all, for having me on and I appreciate all that you're doing. I haven't done much with the ITA in a while and I'm just, I'm grateful for the work you're doing and trying to get everybody involved. Well, thank you. It's very obvious to see that there is some lot of movement and a lot of coach caring out there. Coach is caring. Definitely. Yeah, lots, lots going on and I'm excited for you to share some of your insights, experience with them with our coaches. I've, how I first came about hearing your name was through my coach back in Ireland, Owen Casey who played for you at Clemson. And yeah, I guess I'm a product of much of your philosophy and mindset and coaching style that owned, delivered to me and I was a better tennis player because of it. So I guess thank you indirectly through Owen Casey. But I've lots of questions here for you and so let's get right into it. So firstly, you retired from Clemson in 2008 after 33 years, 685 victories, which is just phenomenal. But you decided to come back to college coaching in 2013 at the Citadel. Can you tell us why come back to college tennis and why the Citadel? Well, you know, I, uh, boys wanted to coach and first of all, just to shout out about Owen. He was only about five foot nothing, a hundred nothing, but his art was as big as the house. And, he had fired a tank and flame shooting out his ears all the time. So I mean, he, he was a competitor. He was a competitor first tennis player second. And I'm glad that, uh, you know, he had some impact on you and, and, uh, you know, so good. I hope you get to see this sometime. I'm a real kind of person. Good things to say. But I, look, I've, I've loved college coaching from the first day that I've ever done it. It's, uh, I'm, uh, this year 47 for me, 45 years of the head coach, two years as an assistant. I was assistant at Tennessee Tech, uh, back 72 73 74 in there and I had a assistant track coach for a semester or so too, um, back then. But I always wanted to coach. Uh, I knew it growing up in Indiana playing basketball. I wanted to coach high school basketball. That was my dream. I, I thought about coaching and basketball the whole time. And, uh, I was a tweener in basketball. You know, tweener tennis would be somebody at, uh, not quite enough good, good, enough ground strokes, not quite a good enough, uh, attacking game. So a tweener, the basketball is one of those guys. Not quite good enough. I did play a freshman year at Tennessee Tech. But, uh, through the competing so much, back then, basically, you go to the park every day to play. Tennis, we played 10 times more than we got instruction. No matter fact, I, I never had lessons in tennis. I just, I'm giving this background, but it all had to do with wanting to get into coaching. Uh, so I thought basketball, I was going to be able to do that and I was able to get a tennis scholarship to Tennessee Tech, which I'm grateful for ever because it's right in the middle of the Vietnam war and stuff. And with six kids, my dad said, "Get a job, join the army." Or if you want to stay at home, got to pay mom 20 bucks a week. Yeah. So basically get out of the house at 18 and I got to college. And, uh, because of tennis. And I did play freshman basketball. Back then, it was a great system. I don't want to get off on a tangent here on sports. But back then, if you played basketball or football, you had to, you could not play varsity to your sophomore year. And it was a really good rule because you had to get into school. You had to do your academics. You had to come up gradually. And I got to play freshman basketball. And then I played tennis, of course, for four years at Tennessee Tech. But I always wanted to coach after looking for basketball, jobs, and things I got to got my break getting to work for Harry Hopman for $70 a week in Amherst, Massachusetts at a camp. And that's a long story. I don't want to get into that one. But maybe, but before the end, I could tell you, but for $20, I would never been in coaching. So any other long to short about coaching here at Clemson. I went back working on my master's degree at Tennessee Tech. Did not get the job there. I was hoping to be able to get the job there and be able to work. And, uh, wasn't quite ready probably. And, and I got a call from Clemson out of the blue at age 25. And I'll tell you that story here in a second. But the long story short is I did do, I dove in there and just tried to coach players as hard as I could and as well as I could. And, and, uh, just tried to outwork people. And, so I loved it. And I didn't want to leave Clemson really in, uh, 2008 after 33 years. Absolutely loved being there. Loved it. I loved everything about it. The amount of probably my favorite thing is the amount of players that went on to coach themselves, you know, like Owen and we had several college coaches and we've had, we've got players still coaching. Yeah. But most of the players stayed in tennis and I'm very, very proud of that. But what happened was I never cut a player for my first, maybe excuse me, the first year I had to, I had open trials at 50 players come to try out open tryouts my first year. And we just went to the track every day and ran for at 5.45 in the morning until we were down to 10 players. And I basically got to the 10 players. The loan walk on was a fellow named Andy Johnston. He was, he had a question in here that you gave me about my favorite thing. It was Andy Johnston being the loan survivor of most of the 50 guys. And, uh, what ended up happening, he coach Wimans tennis at Clemson for 17 years had great successes. I think he won seven ACC titles. And then if you can, oh gosh, he coached Gigi Fernandez. He coached, he did some wonderful things. And I'm talking about him first because but for him, a sort of helping me through so many things, he was like a rock of stability emotionally. And he helped me so many, so many times. That I would not be in coaching today. But getting around your question here, you needed to know a little bit of the background. But Andy, Andy, if he can believe it, he went on and he was so good with organization, he went on and was a director of football operations for three head football coaches at Clemson. If for Tommy West, Tommy Bowden and for Davos Wini. And many, everybody knows Andy Johnson, just a fantastic man. But I would like to take my hat off to him. But for Andy being around, I would not have had some to success. Actually, it was my assistant junior Davis Cup coach in 1982 when I was US junior Davis Cup coach. And he also, and he, I could go on and on about him. But answer your question, getting back into it, I never wanted to leave. They made a start. I never cut a player for 20, no, for 20, first 20, 26 years, I think 26 years or so. And then they, they, they, I had as many as 26 players on the team. Had three teams. Had orange team, the white team, the work team. And we had a competitive environment within the structure itself where players always had to earn their way. And players worked at several situations. Ken Keneer started out low on the team. He was number eight. His freshman year, he did work up to eight. And only got to play three doubles. He played 36 grand slams, but started out number eight on the team. But I think he was 12 on the team to start out with. The boy named Richard Madachevsky was 14 on the team as a freshman coming in. Barely made national events. And he ended up being four time all-american. And it's singles and doubles twice. One in national indoors and doubles got up to 48 in the world, made around the 16 at Wimbledon. And he started out very low on the team. So we had to train players up at Clemson. It's an outpost. And I'd love Clemson, but it's 100 miles from anywhere they play tennis. So basically I had this wonderful structure of bringing players along and helping them develop. My favorite day ever was we were playing Virginia on the front court's middle courts. We were playing a match against Ohio University back when they had a men's team. And then, Crencipia College. And the back courts, we had 18 matches going at once. So basically players had the, you know, I had to create a chemistry between all of them to where the Cren would rise. And then basically that's what I had to do. Well, they have answered a question that you asked 10 minutes ago. Well, it's wide and I get back in. I didn't want to quit. They made it. We could only have 10 players because of the gender equity issues. And you had to have so many and they made us have it so twice I had to cut the number one rank player into state of South Carolina. Okay, because it'd be the night of 11 or 12th person. And this was horrible. And I said it. I told the AD at that time. You know, we have to, we're not going to be able to recruit championship teams. And you know, we're not Los Angeles. We are not Miami. We're not Chicago. We are not Atlanta. We are, we, we have to be able to train players. That plus in 1992, them restricting all of the hours of practice. Really, that was a very, very tough thing. And we still have to do it at 20 hours. We could ever came up with that. Are you telling me that a French horn player or a pianist or an artist or somebody in a chemistry department has said you could only practice 20 hours a week. And then I, and well, okay, you know, you'll love this. In a meeting we had about that time, the commissioner of our conference said, well, I, I asked him, I said, is this for academic reasons? And he said, well, absolutely. Okay, that sounds right. But I said, okay, why don't we instead of punishing people by not letting the practice enough? Why don't we reward high achievers and people who want to work hard? If you have over a 3.1 grade point average with your team, you practice all you want. Now if you have under that 20 hours a week and that, you know, of course, that didn't go anywhere. And I don't think that was the objective. And now we have 20 hours a week for everybody to place college sports. And like the coaches are brow beating them or something. And that's not true. I don't know what the reasons are, but 20 hours a week for a tennis player come on. I mean, you don't, no, great players practice twice a day. They practice twice a day and you have to hit the ball enough times to where it looks as big as a basketball. You have to hit the ball many, many times in competitive situations to learn how to do this because it's harder than playing a violin. It's harder to be a pro player than to play the violin for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. It's incredibly hard sports. Anyhow, in 2008, I said, I'm going to, you know, I've done my best. I'm getting 80% out of the players. And probably I'm giving 100% at 80% I got left. So that's only 640 out of 1000. That's a D. That ain't going to do that. So if you catch my math there. At the bottom line on the thing is we, I got to go to Thailand and I was technically back to for Southeast Asia. Tennis, I had a fantastic experience. I got to travel to seven different countries, Southeast Asian. We had several Thai kids doing well. I coached women's tennis a lot. But a young lady do a real well once you want to win over to them in '09 and some other tournaments. I don't want to lurch you while carn. But that in five bucks, I guess, I'll buy a Starbucks, you know, because people, but the experience, no, I mean, not her achievement was great. She ended up doing great. But what I mean is the experience of being able to do that is priceless and being able to travel and do all those things. So I did that and I had three young kids, children. So we came back and I worked at College Park Maryland for three and a half hours and by the shout out, I had a fantastic experience. Best experience I could have had working side by side with Vesa, Vesa Panka, who was director up there. And Frank Salazar, who was one of my former players. I had a fantastic experience learning, but I feel like it rounded me off as a coach and being able to work with a lot of young kids eight to ten years old. I'd work with college kids for so long. And that is a fantastic learning experience. And then we came back to Charleston and the Citadel is like tremendous place to work. And it's a challenge every day. But I don't have to worry about this typical college things or Saturday morning football game weekend guys might have gone out the night before and I'm going to say what they were doing or whatever. Well, I can say as every football game we used to have, I would, well, I'd run six A.M. practices or seven A.M. the next morning and we would do sprinting and things until the guys have forgotten in many ways about about last night. And so you know, those things drive you crazy as a coach, the uncontrollable things that they'll build a great things. And then, but that's college age kids. And but the Citadel fantastic. It's just, it really rains the kids in with all the stupid things and they learn the discipline that they learned for life and doing the right things at the right time. And the honor and respect that it gives them at this time in their life for the journey for the David, it's it's the journey, the process they teach process process process. And if you don't lie, cheater still, they will not let you fail. If you lie, cheater still, they won't have anything to do with you, but they would, they would love when young men come, the young men and women come through and do what they do. So I'm, I'm coaching for a whole different reason now than I did earlier. So any help. No, it's great. Thank you for providing that context and a little bit more of your history and yeah, grounding in college athletics and we'll get into more of it. But you're also an author. You've, you've over three or six books, four books on, on tennis, I believe. What are two or three concepts in those books that you believe have stood the test of time regardless of maybe how the game is played or the influence of, you know, new technologies, racket string, etc. Can you share some insights there? Sure. And I started out, I'd think about this question. But first of all, I think a person has to say, is it an art form? Is tennis the art form that we fall in love with? Passion like a person who plays piano or does artwork or any craft? Is it an art form? Is it a sport? A competitive sport or is it a game? Or all three? And yeah, it's changed dramatically. When I was a college park, they had had people come in all the time to work with the kids. Well, Vic Brayden came in one time before he passed away. I never will forget what he said. I talked to him. I talked him at length about the symmetry of the sport and how it's changed. We're launching missiles now, right? With the high tech rackets and the strings. But he said, and this was very, very telling. He said, when we played with the wood rackets, it took exactly, he was, you know, statistician and he's the science of tennis. He did so many things earlier than anybody else. But he said, it used to be 3.9 seconds for me to hit the ball to you and come back. Basically, two seconds. Basically, it's, I'll tell you what, 30, 35 miles an hour. Now it's 60 to 70 miles an hour, which means it's two, about two seconds, bam, bam. So everything now, the symmetry has been changed. Okay. I would say the art part of it, you better fall in love with this sport. you will not stay with his sport. It is too hard. You have to lose too much. Vessa used to tell all the kids they want to play pro up in college. Part of he had to have the stomach to lose and he got to have the stomach to travel. You're going to lose. You just got to learn to lose less. And I think a young player, Bobby Blair years ago, he was at one of our junior days, Cup Camps, and he was, you know, just tough as kid, ever down there in Florida, but he said he got to learn to lose less. And so Vessa, you know, was said, said those things in, but the bottom line, you have to fall in love with the feel of the ball. David, I had anybody out there. I played tennis at the park for the three drugs that I got. I got three drugs, and they were all free drugs. Dopamine, adrenaline, and endorphins. Okay? Basically the first four, five, four years, I played tennis 13 to 16, 17 years old. I didn't think I was going to get to play at college, but I got a buzz every time you would hit with those wooden rackets. I even, whoa, there did it. No, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah, there it is. That look up and it tees you. Everybody used to go to the backboard. Yeah, we used to go to the backboard with the rackets. You just loved the feel and when you got it, it was like the dopamine adrenaline and endorphins are also, those are the other two drugs. I don't want you to think I was, you know, but no drug you stuff. I got you covered. But dopamine adrenaline and endorphins, but the thing about the rackets were that you fell in love with the feel of it. The whole game is mesmerizing, it was addicting. The symmetry was there too. The movement between the ball and the movement, where we're messing up now is the symmetry's been destroyed. Old people don't play tennis anymore singles. Men don't because the ball striking has overcome the movement. It's like trying to dance a wall to disco music or something or rap. It's out of sync. Right. Where pickle ball in Padell or whatever, it's, it had the symmetry is right. So I'm going to throw this in there. Maybe somebody will pick up on it, but I've always said, they're not going to change racket technology, the manufacturers, marketing, you know, guys are already taking care of that. They're not going to change it, but they ought to come up with a old ball for old people called the gold standard or something. First of all, I'm not going to play the green dog ball. You're not, I even know I practice, I have my guys practice with it for work on tempo and things. But the bottom line on the thing is adults are not going to use a kiddie ball, but if you came up with the right ball, maybe the symmetry would come back. We've got this, the symmetry has been lost in a ball striking. So the technology right away, when they changed the rackets, people stopped going to the backboard. I noticed that immediately on my team. We had a player named Wasson Duncan, who has got up to 48 in the world, a fantastic competitor from Asheville, North Carolina. He learned not to play in Culloey, North Carolina on the backboard. And he was basically, nobody had ever heard of it. He came out and he used record. You'll love this. You know what, his college record was 70 and 14, his freshman year. And it's because he won a lot of tournaments, but we also used to play 40 matches. - Right. - And, and real quick, when anybody out there listening to this think that I'm trying to hurt our guys, I told my assistant athletic director, I said, can we let academics and injuries be the barometer for how, whether we're overplaying or underplaying. And the lady said, yeah, yeah, that'd be fine. Well, our guys don't get injured, not gone wood, because we train hard enough to not get injured. We were athletes first, competitor athletes first, and then tennis players. And then secondly, I said, academics, we lead an academics. Here we, I'm bragging on that, but if we won seven out, the last 10 academic titles here at the Citadel, everybody's doing great, they give us a lot of help. I'm not tutoring anybody, by the way. But the point is, high achievers are high achievers. You don't dump people down. High achievers are gonna be high achievers. So anyhow, the rackets, the rack of technology is a huge thing, and I could go on for that forever. Anybody out there doing the thing if we come up with slowing to get the symmetry back in tennis, it would come back with the older people. And then we've got to get back to, and this is for one of your later questions, but we've got to get back to how we're organizing things. We are over organizing, under stimulating. We're big in the methods. But tickle balls awesome, because people just get to go to the courts, and they meet somebody and play, that's how I grew up playing tennis. I'd used to play tennis that's the day, but you won't play, okay? Play. That's what kids used to do. Now we're organizing, organizing, and understanding. But the mental part of it has changed. The physical part has changed. I spend 70% of time on movement, 30% on technical work. Movement is everything. You've got to play tempo is everything. I timed eyes with stopwatch sometimes. I froze play 10 balls to have second bam, bam, bam, bam. 10 balls, 10 seconds. Our college guys are playing eight balls, 10 seconds. You've got to improve, you've got to be a stay-up stay-up. In order to do that, you've got to work like crazy on your movement. Your shot selection has to be good. You have to understand the open the court. You open court, you hit flat or harder earlier. Close court, you got to give yourself time. You take time away to open court, you got to give yourself time to close court. You've got to understand it's about time. It's not just about the ball striking that. Got to do that technically. Emotionally is where the biggest thing has stayed the same. Emotionally, I could go into this for a long time. But best players hate losing and in love winning. They hate losing and love winning. It's like two arrows like this. OK? As a kid, I hated losing so much. I had to practice for hours, but I didn't pat-- you don't pat yourself on the back. It's a ratchet effect. Championship athletes go like that. Can you see me? Yep. Ratchet athlete, that was me. Our kids now, this is what's important. Our kids don't hate losing enough. And they'd like winning so they're rollercoaster. Why? We tell our kids, hey, little Johnny, oh, it's just have fun. Just have fun today. Just have fun. Just have-- well, it's not fun losing. And when kids learn that hey, it's fun to lose, they're not going to learn how to hate to lose. And it's not that you're obsessed with it. It's the fact that the best players-- it's sort of like-- they learned-- it's OK to hurt, but not to get mad. When you lose, if you get mad, you're like a little child. If you hurt, you turn bad pain into good pain. That was a monsterly lender quote. That was the greatest quote I heard. He said, with "Pay, you turn bad pain into good pain." Then if you don't hate losing, you don't love winning. Well, you better take up bowling or something else. But you're done. You're done. So that has not changed. The last thing I'm going to say about that-- I wrote this down. I didn't want to-- but coaching has always been about getting players to the hunger of an inquisitive mind to search out your problems. I got that 1980 National Teachers Conference Clarence Maverick, Co-Chitrinity University, was one of my most respected eye of the guy, I allies, because he was the best coach. He was the wise Yoda. He was the Yoda. But I heard him speak. At the end of the conference, his presentation, somebody in the back of the room, David said, what is the most important thing characteristic of a championship tennis player? What's the most important stroke? Clarence scratches his head, and he goes, most definitely, the most important characteristic of a championship tennis player is the hunger of an inquisitive mind, a mind that is always searching for the answers. And that's 1980. And I never forgot that. So here's the thing. And this will finish this whole segment here. But compliance, you can get from a dog or a cat, an animal. You don't do anything by just getting compliance. Compliance. It sets-- you can force people into doing the action. We know that the next step would be-- we have your body with compliance. Commitment is a step better than that. We have your mind. Hey, I'm committed now. No, better than that is inspired enthusiasm. We've got to have your heart, heart. And then one more step. But I'll tell you, first of all, enthusiasm comes from the word "henthales," the spirit of God within. So if you tell a person they're enthusiastic about what they're doing, that's about the greatest compliment that you could ever give someone because their heart now is engaged. We've always trained a body, but to train the mind and then train the heart to care. This is my art form. This is not just winning a match, you know, but there's one more step. It's called your RAS, your Reticular Activating System. Coach Randy Blumindall, who he's coached at Indiana University and his Lee's MacGray, a fantastic man who he told me about this and he said he about RAS and it's true. It's the law of attraction where you start seeking answers. In other words, you have compliance, you have commitment, you have your heart, but when you start seeking the answers, you start seeing it. Now, I cannot, tennis players, coaching 10 players, David's like coaching 10 teams. Their backhand is one of their team members. Their forehand is their mental part, the emotional part, but when they start seeking the answers, you can tell someone 20 times, 20 times how to do something, but once they figured out on their own, they got it. And so that's Clarence Mayberry. So anyhow. Yeah, well, just, I mean, obviously every coach, they develop their coaching philosophy from their experiences of player, from mentors, from coaches, from parents, you know, you've shared some of your background, obviously played many different sports growing up, two sport athletes in college. You're obviously very well read, you're curious, you're learning constantly. But what are some of those things that you develop, maybe early in your career at Clemson, those coaching philosophies that started to take shape in your mind that you were like, oh, that that's really working. Like that's that's starting to make a difference here in the development of my players and ultimately the success of my team. Talk about not necessarily how you developed your coach in philosophy, but some of those things that started to click early in your career at Clemson. Well, I do that. I always, I went already for the job. I got the job at 25 and I was scared to death, writing up to my wife and I, we pulled off the end to exit right to get it. And I go, I'm 25. They're going to fire me within two years. Okay, I'll go back to university and work on my PhD. Yeah. Okay, what can I do? I just got to dive in and train these guys hard like basketball team, but there was a billboard. I've never really forget this most impacting thing. A billboard on I 85 right where you get off of Clemson. It said there is no heavier burden than a great opportunity. And it was some business and I never forgot I go, whoa, I'm scared to death because of the challenge here, but I've got to dive in here and I've got to get first thing teamwork, makes the dream work, whatever, you know, so the bottom line is uniting things. You had a question here, one of the most impacting things that turned our program was a guy named Steve Vaughn. He was an athlete, played basketball. He was on our first, my first team, but we were running. We were just right around the guys a lot, you know, I knew that I had to join them. I'd seen a movie, two-and-a-old military movie where the admiral got everybody to hate him in order to get them engaged, you know, the little embodies and the things. They were more afraid, they all unite and then you've got what you want, but it's very careful. So I worked the guys so so hard. Well, the guys two, three guys were starting to complain and I was like around a corner and I remember Steve Vaughn stepping up and grabbing this one guy and said, listen, you shut up. It's the first time I've been proud of myself in a while. You understand? We're athletes now. We're athletes. Okay. And I go, whoa. That's okay. Here we go. You know, and that's so powerful. The right leader on your team, I told my number one guy here one time, he's good, good leader, but I said, you know, any, any team that wins the NCAA's or success always has a great number one leader. Not the best player, but there's a leader there. We had a player, they pinned her Murphy that I believe turned our whole program around. He was only 15 in the state of the South. And he ended up getting a 102 in the world and 90, you know, and pro pro rags ATP. But he was only 15 in the South, but he was that kind of a leader. He united everyone because of his work ethic. When two or three people started doing the work, that's, that's what, that's what the key is. You know, you have to have that. And that is, it comes easily sometimes hard. But what happens? And I wanted to, I broke down this specifically. I want to make this point about college athletics. Now, no one understands why the, the, if the flux of the non consistent. Consistent results that are happening in college athletics, but it was Lou Holtz, I believe said this, the football coach, great football coach, and Notre Dame, remember? And, but I, I love the guy for what he stood for and everything. But I think it was him. He said, freshman don't really care about the team winning. They just want to play softmores don't really care about the team winning. They just want to start. You said it takes three years or a thousand days being with a group of people where you will suffer from them and they will suffer for you. And where you bond. Well, we have this transfer portal thing. People in and out in and out in and out. It doesn't matter about the talent. The talent is, it's, it's not it's nature nurture self. You got ability opportunity desire. You've got to have self self part, but it's got to be a cause. It's got to be a cause bigger than yourself to do well as a college coach. You know, and, and, but any of that was Steve Vaughan. He was important. I mean, understanding we had to outwork everybody. And if I was going to get fired, I was going to not have any regrets. I was going to put pedal to the metal and work as hard as I could. And one of the things up bring up is how they messed up because they took away our work ethic. They took away our work ethic when they put hours on us. You know, Einstein, not Einstein, but Thomas Edison never had a watch or a clock in his laboratory. Because learning is centrifugal for it is not a light switch like, okay guys, let's do back as well. Time up. Okay, guys, let's do. Wait a minute. Match play. What time up? That's not the way learning happens in your practices. You'll start out in June. It's like it, you know, and it goes and when it slows down, you try to push it a little more and he. There were many days where I just, you know, after four hours, I'd say guys, back hands don't look right. Go get some pizza manager. We're going to be here for a while. You know, we messed that up. We just, we, our educators don't understand the very base thing of what causes motivation and internal internal caring as much as it needs to, you know, so. So anyhow, this had our work everybody. That's all we tried to do. Yeah. So, so coach what again, you've coached so many players through the years, all levels of the game, but I guess specifically for the college athletes that you've coached. What are some of the, I guess, themes amongst the players that have improved the most, not necessarily those that were most successful, one the most matches, but those that actually touch their potential. And, you know, what are maybe three or four things that you saw, you see in all of these players that improve the most. And, and were you able to identify that during the recruiting process as you started to see, you know, some themes arise during the years. I had a few things down because I don't want to leave it out. This is a great question. Everybody knows association breeds assimilation. In other words, you, you don't want to catch fleas. You don't hang around dogs. Right. But at the same time, it's about a work ethic. It's about an attitude. And it's about a quest being together and all that. That's my love college coaching and I love coaching is because the symmetry you can do so much more with a group of people than you can individually. Now, as far as stuff you see. Okay, there's nature nurture self ability opportunity desire. I had over, I'm not bragging. I'm just proud that I've had over 16,000 kids come through my tennis camps in a period of 42 years. Okay, I had so many parents come up and say coach coached is my son, my daughter, have it. Want to take to play college. And I said finally I came up with quantitative or a way of analyzing. I said, what's nature nurture self? It's God given ability on a scale of one to 10. How much how much ability does your daughter have? And they would say, "Oh, I think she's got seven." Okay, I go, "Okay, good, good, good." "How much opportunity has she had on a scale of one to ten?" "Okay, well, we live in Atlanta now, and it's one of the best places I've ever been." "But you didn't travel all the time, you live in Atlanta." "How about an eight?" "Okay, yeah, eight." So seven plus eight is fifteen. Okay, now drive, internal, caring, love, the sport. It's an opportunity, opportunity desire, opportunity, excuse me, ability, opportunity, desire. In her heart of hearts, how much effort is she given? Well, that's why she's up here, coach. She's really only a six, I guess. So I would say, "Okay, seven plus eight is fifteen plus six, that's twenty-one." Say, "Sir, I've got to tell you that I've done this so much. Twenty-three can go to small college. Twenty-four, you're in there. Twenty-five and above, you can go to the moon." There's a guy, Mitchell Frank, who won the NCAA, you know, Mitchell Frank. Mitchell, I talked to him quite often, but he told me, we did this with him. He said, "On a scale of one to ten, I said, Mitchell, how much God given ability?" He said, "Coach, I've got to be truthful of five." And so, well, you'd be unhonest. It didn't mean, really, it's true, the guy. On a scale of one to ten, opportunity, how much your parents give you? Coach, they give me a ten. That's all you're in a bad climate up here in Maryland, tough in Virginia. He said, "They did everything they could do, and I got to go to college park, and I got to do it." How about, "Okay, nine?" Okay. Mitchell, okay, nine, say they gave you a ten, okay? They gave you ten. I know for a fact, without a fact, you did a ten. Now, he won't, he won't, undefeated, if you're right. He played at the Austria, he made the five in the world in the juniors. The Austrian opened, this is the kept stats. First round, junior, Australian opened. He won six, three, six, two. He made zero unforced errors in the entire match. Most incredible mine for tennis, most incredible human being for work ethic. But, good Lord, you can't put in what the good Lord left out. So, as far as evaluating talent, Richard Matachevsky, I was asked, my favorite player to ever coach the best journey, was Richard Matachevsky. National Endors in Dallas, I went to go 25 years in a row of missed Thanksgiving going to National Endors is great. But, I saw this kid playing down six courts, okay? And I go, "Whoa, it wasn't how hard he hit. It was just like beautiful, beautiful balance and just ball striking." And I went over and checked him out. I said, "No, that's Richard Matachevsky." He's number 12 in the East. He lives Hopewell Junction, New York. And I think he might have been able to go down the IMG in the Voltaire for two weeks one time. Oh, really, really, really. He's one of his first national events, okay? And, really in ball striking though. But, you can't see yourself play. You only feel yourself play. So, kids don't know that, but there's also Polish immigrant father, hard work, mind, great mind for the thing. But, there was no holes there. And then, of course, his work ethic. So, he had, on a scale of one to ten, God given ability about a nine. Opportunities five. But, he had nine as far as he was 24. And so, that's sort of how I have done it. But, I used to go to Florida too. I used to be Paul Scarpa, the brilliant, brilliant Yoda of tennis college coaching, best human being ever. But, I used to go recruiting with him. And he used to help me my first two years. He was at Furman. And he took me, David, he took me down to Florida. He said, "Dog, let me tell you, let me tell you this, what you do. You never recruit this young man after they won. Ever, ever." He said, "It could be the CYO open, little sisters and poor open." He said, "And they think they're great. You wait till they lose." I was able to recruit Jay Berger at Kalamazoo, and he will hate me saying this. But, I watched him lose on a back court to a guy named Mike Rainey, I think it was from Jacksonville, who knew Jason Lee, one afraid of him. Jay was seated like 14 to 16s. Okay, now he won't like me saying this. But, when he went out, up around Kalamazoo, he went under this tree. And he was under, and if he wasn't weeping like he was crushed. And I was the only coach to go up and talk to him now. He's Paul Scarpa, that's a Paul Scarpa. He says, "Always wait. When they lose, you be the guy there that's first to be there and care about them." Not their hot shots. Yeah, that's great. Tip of the day. Well, so you go through recruiting process with players. Maybe you've watched them twice, maybe you've watched them 30 times. It's not always even with the recruiting process. But once they come on campus, what is your process then to figure out them as human beings, as athletes? How do you go about that process of how do I help this athlete reach their potential in this sport? Well, I have them. And then the second part of that question is then, how would you encourage coaches to develop their own philosophy on how best to do that? Data's games can change. Character doesn't usually change. I tell you guys, if you don't get it right by the time you're 24/25, it's done. Without a relationship with God or the right person one day that you marry, you're not changing after 25. Character doesn't change. And so I always would put players in the dorm with my players. The other thing is I kept players in the dorm. Big mistake I made about year 25 or something was I let them live off campus. I think the best thing they bought it in the dorm, they have great stories about pop corn at night and just being it's the brotherhood. And so the bottom line on the thing was I would put them with the other players and then I would try to watch the subtleties. Every kid right now is so well coached. And yes, sir, no, sir, oh gosh, you know, hey, I love that. There was so well coached, you know, under the hood, you have to wait and sort of watch what happens from the side. I was almost ready to recruit this one kid, his great player. And I never will forget. He was buttered, be up. And then I remember one round the corner where you were watching this match and I sort of snuck around over there. And he was over there and he sorted, you know, told his mother off, why you out here you get out of the wall. And mom, but today, you know, next year, it'd be me. He's going to talk like that to me. But the bottom line on the thing is what you don't realize. It's the subtlety. I got to work for Harry Hopman for a year. And but for $20, I'd never been in tennis. And I got to tell the story real quick. I worked at wasn't even getting tennis, but I got to work 70 dollars a week in the Amherst, Massachusetts. He used to always give one of the college kids or 36 of us to hit with his wife, Lucy. And he had me hit with her about week five ended today. Tough job. Everybody's tired. And you hit Lucy and you'd climb defense to put balls back on her rack and stuff. Afterwards, Mr. Hopman walks up. And, you know, the truth. So chuck, chuck, chuck, boy, chuckle boy here. Here. Here. We always give our pros. He called me a pro $20. $20. I'll get to that in a second. But I did my Midwest. All Mr. Hopman. No, sir. No, sir. I thank you, sir. I'm just so grateful. Have this opportunity on walk a winkle. Dummy, that's 80 beers. Red solo cup was a quarter of beer. Wait a minute. What, you dummy? What? Well, he did it. He did it the second time the next week. The same thing. And I shut it down. I didn't know Mr. Hopman. Well, that night I had a note on my door. Go see Hop. Oh, no, I got fired. She didn't like her last. No, I'm getting fired. I went in there and he asked me to come work at Port Washington, tennis Academy and a little John McEnroe was, you know, kid in their Peter Fleming. And I got to learn and the greatest person, the greatest coach ever in history and his, his integrity and his understanding of the character of an inside person. And I, we all, all we were all the instructors were there and one of the coaches had his 14 year old kid there. And we're out there having a beard 11 o'clock at night or something. Hopman comes into door and I go, he walks up and he grabs the kid by his shirt and he says. that he damped fools. don't care about you being good and tend to say just want to see you drink the first beer. Come on. And he's drugging back and I go, whoa. But that was Mr. Hopman, you know, and I call him Mr. Hopman and never used it by his first name. But in recruiting, it's the same thing. It's the same thing that you don't retrain character unless it cares. Our sport is so so hard. No one understands how hard our sport is. It's harder than being a, you know, a major league football quarterback. It's harder than being a pitcher and baseball. It's the hardest sport there is. And if you don't respect it, first of all, honor the game. It will honor you. You honor the work that you've done. You respect everything about it and that's what you have to do to be a tennis player. Not just someone who plays tennis. We need people to play tennis now, but we're not teaching them. It's like classical music. Our sport now is like classical music. I'd say, you know, the pickleball on that is more like pop music or something, but our sport is the classical. It'll be around because of the its greatness there. So. Okay. So you're a former USA national coach and we're kind of moving on to some broader topics here, but what would you deem to be a successful player development system in the USA? I know you have a lot of thoughts about this. You know, what are the metrics there? Is it the number of top 100 players, Grand Slam champions, Americans playing college tennis? Yeah. How would you view that? Okay. The system here in America is working the way you hope it would. And I hope it does work, but I'm very concerned. Sometimes, you know, we might have thrown out the baby with the bathwater as they say, we changed because we could not because we should. First of all, I say this 100 times, Tim Wilkerson said this, it's exactly true. Kids don't play for points. They play for rivalries and tournaments of heritage. And we've destroyed both of them. We had a tremendous system where we had you had to be the best at your park. And we had limited, we had six kids, my family. I never had a paid tennis lesson in my life. I couldn't have played tennis nowadays. I played three other sports, other kids. Now we have the state champion and tennis might be a football player too. It'll never be grand higher than 20 of the state because of points. But rivalries are critical, tournaments of heritage are critical. If you grew up in Ireland, of course, would you rather be number one in the world or winning win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win. Would you rather be number one in the United States or win Kalamazoo, win Kalamazoo? Would you rather be ranked number one in the country, ITA ranking or win NCAA championship winnance? Are we've taken that away? Now you played Blue Group, level four at the YMCA and what's this? And we've destroyed these tournaments. It was Belt and in South Carolina and it might be the in Georgia. It was the orange, you know, the peach, peach state in Georgia. But tournaments of heritage and rivalries, Tim Wilkesson, I'll give him, I heard him say that, it's exactly true. Okay, when I was junior Davis Cup coach, we had great success. On my first year of coaching, this I'm bragging but nobody knows and I'm sorry about Mr. Kids. We went the entire summer in 1981. We won every national tournament. We only had one loss all summer to someone who wasn't on our team. We won every team and we won the USO, boy name Mike Falberg won the US Open. And Samadjah Mobile was on that team and we had, while we did, we went to, we had normal, they gave you rankings once a year or twice a year maybe. They invited top 36 players in the country. I went to Stanford. I had a playoff for about, took about eight or nine, ten days and we selected eight players from that training. The other players knew they had a shot at it. I'm not going to go into how we played off every position. We traveled with those and then four kids had been at Wimbledon the things they joined us. Samadjah Mobile and I had to forget who that Scott Davis and Howard Sands and maybe Tommy Gwarnick. And no, no, Warnick he went to the camp. But anyhow, the players did and then we traveled together, we played about ten weeks together and we bonded and we traveled together, we ate together and we did training. I had everybody on the team, Samadjah Mobile, you might have me, I had everybody on the team, minimum five days a week that would get up before breakfast and run two miles. Okay, now I got that from Harry Hopman of course and Wade Labor and Rose Walgies to talk about that. Well, the guys at first thought it was, what the heck, but then as things built they understand they understood and they became a team and they group. That's a big thing that we, with tennis it's such a lonely life that we need to do what a Scott McCain did and people with June, you know, traveling groups. We need to travel in groups. It's too lonely, it's too hard otherwise. We need to have groups you travel with. But the other part of it is we knew that you had to be best in your park, then the best in your neighborhood, then you had to be best in your city, then you had to be best in your state. And you'd be beating your chest and know that each one of those you climbed to that, then you'd be best in your region. And then hey, I'm representing the Southwest at Calamazoo. I'm the representative from the state of hey, I had how many points you got, how many, the kids are playing. Be like you, David, I know you don't work for big bucks. It's not like we're doing this for money, we're doing it for a cause and people will die for a cause. They will not die for money or fame. That's not, I'm not asking anybody to die. But if you think about what people will die for, you will die to protect your family, your country. You will die for, you know, if the good Lord wanted you to, but we will not, no one will die for money or fame. And we put this same thing up here to our kids like, why are we doing kids? Hey, I get 10 points out of this thing and we got to dump the point system. So I could go on forever about that, but I'm so upset about that. But it's kids become achievers by, hey, I'm not, I'm a hard trial. But not hey, let's, they've destroyed the class systems have destroyed in all of our high school sports. Now we have seven state champions in every sport. Oh, we have 13 valedictorians. When you champion the week, you weaken the real champions. Okay. In other words, we diluted, polluted. And I'd say diluted, polluted and prostituted a lot. But that's pretty, pretty close while we've done. Yeah. Well, then coming back then to the college game coach, like what, what are some changes that you would like to see happen for the college game is if it's to continue to help develop players, aspiring juniors to go on and, and reach their full potential and that means something different for everybody, I guess. Yeah, you've got a big journey ahead of you and we do to try it. I'd say fix. But again, there's a lot of things that we need to look at that we did well in, in retained those, not just, you know, for the sake of change, you know, by one change, change or some things need to be sacred enough, okay? And I don't want to go off on this, but the scoring system to me is sacred. It's been done for over 150 years. And it's always about entertainment versus education. I believe first in education, the entertainment that we provide by, hey, we got this fancy new scoring system. We're going to get you on TV, sort of like a, being at a magic show at the fair, you know, you see it the first time that second and I go, all right, move on. You know, it's sort of like, it's, you know, Coach Randy Blutdall said that's, but it's true. We're trying to make things more exciting. You don't, it's the drama. The drama is what makes tennis great. It's, now, I've got 21 reasons why no ad scoring is a detriment to our sports. But what are the biggest things I would put out is this, a live air by think scoring system should relate directly to the technical and tactical skills that happen on the tennis court. It records those things. It should not be more powerful. powerful than learning how to hit a slice backhand or being into great shape or any of the skills. It should not. Everyone knows though that it fluctuates so quickly. You know, the first of all, no one understands just bear with me, David. Don't shut me down. No one understands that game point is an eight point swing. It's an eight point swing. Everybody sees it for two. See, they're going to be five, two or four, three. But first four four, it's very obvious. If you get a net cord or somebody cheats on the four four point, you need four. I need 12. Okay. The first game, first game of the match. If you get a net cord, I need eight points to overcome the one point I would have had one, one game I would have had a need eight to go up on one point I would. It's double jeopardy in tennis. I always say in basketball, any other sport, if I shoot and miss, the other team doesn't get points. But in tennis, if I miss my shot, the other team gets a point. That's a two point swing on game point. So it loads the deck. And I said, no, this is out there, but a person I'd tell a person, hey, how would it be in basketball if on a miss shot by your opponent? You got 16 points. They go, what? No, no, no, no. It's an eight point swing in tennis in basketball. It'd be 16 points. Oh, what'd that be interesting? Six would that load the deck? Right. Not just that in conversions, three points in a row or critical in tennis to be good in tennis. Okay. If you don't win the first point of the game, you have to win three in a row or four out of five. If you don't learn how to we play sets in practice all the time, conversion sets, you got to win three in a row to advance. Anybody can win one in a row. Underdog can win two in a row. They throw a party to third in a row. You've got to learn how to win three in a row. Right. And I always go, gosh, why do we not play a sudden death tiebreaker? Why do we play it? Got to win by two tie breaker. And then we, every game is sudden death, but it fluctuates. And why we went to it. I was sitting in the room in 1977 when 36 coaches, I was ITCA. We're there and Dan McGill, he's fantastic coach, but he presented and we were supposed to try it for one year. And in the 80s, the very controversial, but they still let us play as much as we wanted to in 80s. We could play any format we wanted to, but the long story short is it was pushed through. And it was always controversial. And I always say, well, after this last 10 years, why aren't people just doing back flips and we got the best thing in the world? And then we, we've added the six game set for doubles, holy cow, no warm up. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute. It's a hand-eye coordination skill. It's like a piano player saying you can't have, you got to just go out there to go. Well, you have to, but it's like tennis in a six game set, no ad scoring. And I'm not going to go in to why it's being done and what damage it's done to players and all that thing. But I'd like to see that change. Of course, baseball David play 66 games Vanderbilt, one NCAA, a few years ago, played 71 games. We played 25. Well, what really football is going to be playing 17 games a year if they pass this. Why are you kidding me? Football is going to be five months in a row or six months in a row, 17 games, two athletes. I don't think so. Once last time we've heard a quarterback, oh, he's in eligible because of grades. One to one's last time. Really are we student athletes or athlete students are semi-pro's? What are we? Okay. But the bottom line on the thing is the season you're at the right, you're trying to write thing to do. Relevance of what we're doing. But I think you've got a monster right now that you've got a feed and you've got to figure out how to, we need to figure out how to for it not to devour us. You've got a big hand, a big thing there. I personally do not believe and I don't think we should. I the rules of UTR and the empty it, whatever the thing is. UTR. I don't know any of my guys, UTRs and I don't know any of my recruits UTRs because it would stunt my, it would mess up my thinking about them. I tell this guy is what a 9.3. I was never going to make it. Oh, your IQ is too low to take that math course, son. Sorry, son, you could be a hard trial you want, but I don't know your IQ. That's what we're telling kids. And the UTR is, you know, it's horrible. It's okay if you look at yourself and say, I want to go after this goal, but to have kids rated and then to have tournaments, what we've done, we've, you went all the fish to grow the same size, put them all in separate fish balls. Everybody knows that. But we've put everybody, every kid we've put, oh, this is a level six tournament. You can't play in this, this is a level five from this level four. No, my first junior tournament, I went there and I got my butt cleaned and I went down and watched the number one seed and I go, could I ever be this good? I don't know. He looks like a pro. I don't know. I can't wait. Maybe I could be as good as this guy or really maybe now the kids go and play, yeah, I'm playing level six. I know I'm terrible. I play level six. And then everybody, I want to play up. I want to play. You want to, you want to be bad in tennis, only play up. Only play. Yeah. You need to train with good players and then learn how to win too. Third, third, third. Okay. So more and more, sorry to worry. No, no, all good stuff. We'll move into kind of a rapid fire section. But so if a college coach could only read one of your books, just one, what would it be? And why a very grateful for an opportunity I've had to write those books. I hand wrote the first one, a total tennis training. It took, it was 10 years of work, basically. And a very fortunate ever have had that opportunity. So that's, that's my labor. But I still got the handwritten stuff and I've still got the, everything I had them type. I took all the pictures. I drew all the charts. But coaching tennis was the remake of total tennis training 10 years later. And it's a better version of it. I have more on momentum control. I've studied momentum control for 40, 40 years about how to control momentum. And everybody sort of blows it off a little bit. It's the most important. It's powerful. But you can learn send in living room watching St. Louis, the St. Louis Cardinals baseball game with Kent, Kent, Demars when he was at SIU Edwardsville many years ago. And the announcer goes to come any man. He said the announcer goes momentum is changed. Well, man, I mischanged Kent. Demars looked at me and said if you could ever figure out how to control momentum. Okay. And keep it when you have it is shut down. The other guys, you got to keep all sports. And I tennis we have the ultimate momentum sport. And so I'm saying that coaching tennis is the better book. It's got a better chapter on that. There's some things that I've learned a lot since then, but I've studied momentum for 40 years. And then, but it's better. It's more laid out and it has ideas from some other coaches in there. I interviewed some coaches. Okay. The winning tennis was supposed to be a textbook and the youth tennis was done by spawning for. It was a for kids book and it's okay. And then one of total tennis trainers was translated into Japanese in 1991. So it's it's a complete. It's very raw, but I wrote it hard first. And then I'm lucky. I had a really good. My reading skills are terrible, but I had a great high school teacher that we had to write themes every week. So I learned how to write. It's hard, it's tedious, but you know, and then the Clemson books. I fortunate be a good, I named Sammy Blackman and Bob Bradley and write about Clemson sports. You know, over the years, I was able to write the colorful stories in between. Yeah. I did one much on the statistics. You know, okay. Well, well, so then what book has had the greatest influence on you as a good, not one of your own, but. Right. I wrote it out. Okay. They call me coach Johnny Wooden. Johnny Wood basketball. I grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana. Martin Johnny Wooden was from Martin, Zill, Indiana. And then went to Purdue where my father went on the GI bill and things like that. They call me coach actually a book that helped me a whole lot was. It's never been a print again, but winning images. My friend told me 90% of the people will never see your operation, your place where you were. When you're out, you better project a good image of what you want. Nothing fake. But at that time, I don't want to get into long story, but there are two or three programs. Georgia was winning all the time. North Carolina was winning all the time. And I said, I can't copy them. What do I do? Well, the book said you've got to be who you are and make sure that when you go out on the road, and you know you introduce things. things you're comfortable projecting that image, not to be fake. If it's fake, it's the worst thing you could ever, ever, ever, ever do. It must be who you are and try to project that image. So back then, we got started primarily. So I just, I've done kinesiology and exercise, physiognomy, exercise science and things in my master's program. So I said, we're going to be the hardest working program ever. So I got that. But the other book, the best book, I think, for any coach, would be called a talent code by Steven Coil. I think it's David Coil or Steven C.O. Wyoming. Yeah, Daniel Daniel. I know I had one of those. Yeah, no, great. But 10,000 reps, 10,000 reps. I believe in that. Our sport, our sport is so unique. You must go through every step of it. You can run up the steps if you're, but you never skip steps. Our tragedy, one of the things that we do is we skip steps in the USA. We try to crown people, give them the crown before they run their right for it. And we're always after the phenom. But this sport, I heard Arthur Ash, one of them, I was at working for a hot moment. He says it takes five years to learn to gain 10 years if you do everything right to be championed 10 years. He says you have to understand this is a highly skilled sport. And there's no what you should not ever skip a step. Oh, so, but yeah, Steven Coil, that's that's a great talent code. I'd recommend those books. Okay, they call me coach. I'll be a lot with coaching. Yeah, that's that's that's come up a few times on this podcast for sure. So we talked about warmups, talk about no ad. Is there one other rule change you'd like to see that could be beneficial for player development in college? We, I'd like to see the pecking order for recruiting be high school kids again, junior college second. Okay, transfers last. The tragedy of the portal has been that transfers are first. Yeah, junior colleges are second. High school kids are third. So we're basically destroying the growth. The where the players start to grow was the seedlings, the small the small saplings. We're destroying those those opportunities for the kids. And parents, especially with the way it is now, if you're not rich, parents are saying, I'm not going to put my kid in tennis. Are you kidding me? I spent, you know, I you can figure out the money. I figured it out this way. I said this guy said I was four nights in a hotel to discuss this is $1200 for the weekend. And my son got to play 43 games because they played abbreviated scoring short sets. And let's see, I figured out it cost him $23 a point to play. You know, I mean, and it's so I had never been in tennis. I've never been I would have never been in tennis. Most people would never been in T. You can't afford it. So what do, while we need to do is we need to the point system needs to be dumped. You know, we can keep it for ratings or something like don't, don't do it. Just get back to our sectional play in regional play. But the other thing with, well, what I like to see happened, got you lost my trend of thought here, about about the game itself is I just really, really believe that we've got to be teachers first, you know, coaches second and tennis people third. And we've got to be smarter about our, our young people play, they're not playing with we oversophisticate oversophisticate. We underestimate. Our kids have to know that just be able to play locally and then regionally and then, but we, I think we're doing it backwards. Yeah, we've got to grow geometrically. One thing about this is one thing about tournament tennis. So to tournament tennis, you grow exponentially. You can in one weekend make a huge, huge jump. Okay. But when you fall, you'd have a bad tournament. You fall mathematically in in team tennis. You only grow mathematically. I'm playing the number five guy and I go one at a time and I guess what, I was real good number five guy here. I was 15 and three at number five. But you fall a lot of times people are playing to clinch matches now because they don't want their player to be the last one on the court and cause the team to lose and then you lose them. So you fall quickly. Team tennis is great because of all the reasons we've talked about, David. Turn them at tennis, you grow exponentially. We must have tournament tennis. I'd like to see Grand Slam of College tennis and Fred to be called that. Now Clay Court tournament indoors, outdoors NCAA. Call that to whenever you play that, call the Grand Slam of College tennis and then let's build satellites off of there that include dual matches and tournaments. Excellent. Favorite college tennis coaching memory. You've probably too many to share. No, no, I think with Steve Vaughn was a big one. Yeah. Coach Andy Johnston. Coach Andy Johnston, he quit the team and then came back and I ended up making him an assistant coach. So he was working at a 7-11 and I said how about a scholarship to be my assistant coach back then we could do that. He was a senior in college. I said Johnston, you ready to play again? He kept going on and on and I said let's be my assistant coach and he was and he's the large reason we were successful early. That was a great, great memory. You'd think it's hey, we won that tournament. We won that tournament. No, no, a great, great memory was player, people like Kent Keneer staying in tennis. Kent was going to go into the business world and I in a hill tell you I said this I've sitting with we were at a FCA meeting in Indianapolis I think. I said Kent, you've played 90% of your life. You are in the 97th percentile already of everybody in the world that played tennis. This is your craft and people need what you have. You got to go out there and spread that with people. No, Jay Berger has been a great, great, great, great competitor. Lawson Duncan learning off of the backboard but tender Murphy I have to say of all things tender Murphy probably was you always had that one guy that made your program and nobody will remember probably who he is. Everybody in North Carolina, South Carolina remember him because what an ambassador for work, work ethic. He won 29 matches in row in 1980 and John Dess Dunes was right by way John played work for the USDA too. He still does but John won 27 matches in a row. That was a great thing to see them go through that. So anyhow, just you remember the people they were more than raw raw raw stuff. The other stuff blows way faster than I'm not going to see vapor in a hurricane. How's that? Yeah. Last question then. What do you hope the next generation of college tennis coaches get right? Okay, go back to art versus sport versus game. I would like for people to be able to honor the game again. We've been looking at hey what's going to elevate our program. How can we be remembered? Come on, we're one of 20 sports. You know, we come somewhere after some others on a football, basketball, baseball, run everything. You know, that's the thing. But somewhere I would love it if people we need to honor the sport and it will honor us. Again, it's education versus entertainment. And I mean this, I mean, I compete. I hate losing. Losing still hurts. I've coached over 1400 matches. I have figured but everyone I lose hurt for a day and a half until I figure out what I did wrong. I'm not blame anybody else. But it still hurts. But I hope we could get it right to where we will honor the sport. This sport changes lives. I had no chance probably. Not terrible. No, my dad was schoolteacher. I had six kids but kind of couldn't go to college. Maybe you wouldn't be where you are without tennis. Absolutely. Everybody. It's the greatest thing in the world. I've been in 24 countries. I've I've been able to do things I'd never been out of the state Indiana. I've got to play tennis, but it's an art form and we have to approach it with great, great respect to honor the sport. The 150 years of scoring system, honor it. We shouldn't just change it because we want entertainment. Honor are great players. One big thing this is the last. Golf is surviving because they honor the events. We bring too much honor on our stars. And when the stars leave, we lose a big segment. We promote the players. Golf promotes the events. I think we need to promote our events, our heritage, our great tournaments and the great thing. What you're walking to do, USDA Center down there and I don't care if they hear me saying this, it should be 100 yards or 50 yards of memorabilia. When you walk in there, you need to go, whoa, 1926, Elder's Vindwell or 19 here, this is, wait a minute, this one Jimmy Connish, whoa, whoa, when you walk in, they need to have that in honor of the sport, then you need to have the apparatus of machinery and things that you have to have to make things go. But we need to honor the sport and we'll honor us. Quite crazy, that's a great place to end this conversation. Thank you. It's been a pleasure and really great to get your thoughts on a number of different topics there. Thank you. For letting me share my opinion and listen. Thank you for the work you're doing. God bless you and everybody's doing that work and there's a feeling that the boat's turning and I think you got a lot of people on board. So thank you very much.