ABSTRACT
Tennis is a dynamic interceptive-skill sport that requires players to respond under restrictive time demands. These qualities make tennis a relatively difficult sport to learn for those in the co-ordination stage of learning (Newell, 1985). These constraints are magnified for children tackling the game for the first time. Often children are first introduced to the sport by their parents and as a result borrow their mum or dad’s racquet and step out on a full-sized court for their first experience. The child is then required to wield an overly long racquet and make contact with a ball that can easily bounce over their head, meanwhile the net seems as high as they are tall, the opposing court is full of confusing line markings, and not only do they have to contact the ball, but are required to cover the large amounts of distance of a full-size court to do it.
