![]() So in 2008 he started the Essential Tennis Podcast, which today is the second-ranked tennis podcast on iTunes. Westermann would spend his daily commutes to Congressional listening to podcasts on a range of topics and soon became convinced that there was an opportunity for a tennis podcast focused exclusively on instructional tips and techniques. which counts former presidents as founding members, has a six figure initiation fee and is an annual stop on the PGA tour. ![]() After college he landed a job as a teaching pro on the staff of the famed Congressional Country Club just outside Washington, D.C. Ian Westermann started Essential Tennis with a top-ranked series of weekly podcasts.Ī student-athlete on the tennis team at Ferris State University, Ian Westermann graduated with a degree in business marketing. With an automated email system I can reach out to each one of them in a way that wouldn't be practical otherwise." He finds a bit of a personal touch in a virtual relationship goes a long way. "I've taught long enough to know what the issues and frustrations are for players as they go through this. Drawing on his decades of experience teaching these exact techniques in person, once a student signs up for a course, Abel employs an automated email system to provide timely messages of encouragement and advice to guide students throughout the many stages of the learning process. This is compounded by the fact that the learning curve is full of ups and downs, rather than a straight line. But," he adds, "if you're set on copying Andy Roddick's Western Forehand and rallying from the baseline, I'm not really your guy so I don't want to waste your time."Ībel finds that his biggest challenge as an online instructor is the same as when he was giving on-court lessons: motivating students to go out on the court and put in the hours needed to make a technique or strategy adjustment second nature. It's the same concept I use in my own matches, so I know it works. It's called the 'All-Court Forcing Game'. ![]() "I'm very clear on my site about the style of tennis I teach. But most instructors don't have a system and so they try to teach recreational players to play like the pros, which isn't really possible." Abel feels that having a structured approach not only lets potential students know in advance what he teaches, but just as importantly, what he does not teach. "You may get a lot of clichés or generic advice like, 'Take the racket back'. Over the years he's observed that there are a lot of people teaching tennis professionally without a formal system or methodology. Yet running the site offered quality of life benefits such as more flexible working hours which allowed him to spend more time on court working on his own game, not an insignificant benefit for such an avid competitor.įor students, Abel sees a big advantage in online instruction. When he resigned that position to run full-time, it took him two years to attain a comparable income level. In addition to a 40 year teaching career at clubs in California, Florida and France, he's long been a top competitor in amateur tournaments, winning the National 60s Hardcourt Singles Championship in 2009.įor the first several years, Abel was running his site while holding down his day job as the Head Pro and Tennis Director at San Francisco's California Tennis Club. "There were some other sites running," he says, "but my niche was that I was an actual teaching pro, not a business guy." Indeed Abel's teaching and playing credentials continue to serve him well in attracting online students. He wasn't the first to launch a tennis instruction site. Abel recalls spending many late nights and weekends after work teaching himself enough HTML to be able to use Microsoft editor Front Page. In the late nineties, launching a commercial web site was far from the seamless endeavor it is today. And back in 1998, approaching his 50th birthday, Brent Abel who'd been teaching tennis non-stop since high school, decided there must be a better - and less taxing - approach to tennis instruction. Ask any current or former club pro and they'll tell you that standing on your feet for six to eight hours a day, five days a week, hitting thousands of balls to students is a physical grind.
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