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A few minutes with Manny

Posted on Feb 11, 2010 by Paul Schempp

On any list of great tennis coaches, one would find the name Manuel Diaz. Currently the head coach of the University of Georgia men’s tennis team, Manny is the only active college coach to have won multiple national championships—4. He has been named NCAA Coach of the Year three times and last year the U.S. Open recognized him as their National Coach of the Year. He has been at the University of Georgia for over 25 years, and until this week, he and I had never met.

We sat down over lunch with his assistant coach Will Glenn. It was Will’s talented wife Natalie who set this blog up on my website. Will and I have discussed coaching and player selection/development on several occasions, but this was the first time Manny was part of the conversation.

It wasn’t long before a conversation that started with recruiting players turned to player development. I shared some of the research I had uncovered in writing a speech I’ll deliver in Singapore in May, and Will and Manny shared their experiences with players. Two themes emerged.

First, it seems that parents of young players, particularly here in the USA, believe that it is important that children specialize in a single sport early. The research, however, shows that kids should play different sports and activities. Manny and Will agreed. There are a few sports, such as gymnastics, where performance peaks early, so specialization needs to occur earlier, but those are the exceptions and not the rule. Most of the highly successful professional athletes played several sports as kids. As a boy, Roger Federer played soccer, squash and table tennis. He also played tennis but he was far from the best as a youngster. The PGA Tour champion Richard S. Johnson was an avid skateboarder, but also loved to ski and play ice hockey. He didn’t play his first round of golf until his mid teens. The current American League MVP, Joe Mauer, played football, basketball and baseball in high school, and was named USA Player of the Year in two sports—football and baseball.

Yet, time and again, one finds parents pushing their children to specialize. If the child has the passion and the will to pursue a singular sport, that is one thing. Honor it. But also honor the child if or when they decide that the passion has waned and it is time for something else. Most children, however, need to be encouraged to lead full, rich, and diverse lives—both in sport and out. When they reach their early to mid teens, then it may be time to find a good coach, join the travelling team, and devote one’s entire sport focus to a single sport. On that, Manny, Will and I appeared to strongly agree. Early specialization more often leads to burn out than a successful professional athletic career.

A second point had to do with ‘predicting success’ for young players. I told Manny and Will that I often hear in golf a parent tell me that their 12 year old is going to be the next “Tiger” or “Annika”. Manny laughed and said he hears it all the time “My kid is going to be the next Roger Federer!” How do you know? It is one thing to have faith in your child. It is an entirely different thing to set unreasonable expectations and just as deadly to overdo the praise at an early age. It is a long way between winning a tournament at 14 and winning one 10 years later as a professional. A strong work ethic, good coaching, and a bit of luck has more do with achieving elite athletic status than does parental praise or a room full of trophies. Great athletes don’t ride their way to the top, they fight their way there.

Lunch ended all too soon. Manny and Will had a practice to run, and I had work waiting. As we left, they invited me to drop in on practice. I’ll take them up on it. There is a reason that Manny and Will win 8 out of every 10 tournaments where their players compete. I’d like to know that reason.

Tagged: athletic development, developing expertise, improving skills, coaching, expertise, expert performance, success