Improve Play with Charting

Would you like to know how many first serves your players are getting in during matches? Would you like to see how many points they win when they miss the first serve and have to use a second serve? Does one of your players win more points when he returns deep and down the line, or short and crosscourt?

These and many other matchplay questions can be answered with a tool known as "charting," whereby statistics are kept during matchplay on players' performances.

While laptop computers costing several thousand dollars and a training course have been available for decades, simple paper-and-pen stat keeping is a very effective way to help spot your players' strengths and weaknesses, and bolster your coaching suggestions to your team members.

The article continues with information on how to teach team members to keep simple statistics on fellow teammates during matches, which can be used by the coach for strategy planning during the match and for skill work in later practices.