There is a version of a tennis practice that coaches run confidently. Controlled feeds, structured drills, good technique being reinforced under cooperative conditions. Players hitting the right shots, making decisions at a manageable pace, doing what they’ve been taught. It looks productive. It often is productive, for what it’s designed for. The problem is that it is not a match, and a match does not care what the practice looked like.
A systematic review published in the International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching examined 21 studies on the training and match-play demands of elite and highly trained junior tennis players. One finding runs through it like a current: training sessions, including structured drills and simulated match play, consistently fail to replicate the physiological and psychological demands of tournament competition.
The numbers are precise enough to be uncomfortable. During typical training sessions, junior players spend the majority of time (around 52%) at low intensity, below 70% of maximum heart rate. Another 37% at moderate intensity. High-intensity effort, above 85% of maximum heart rate, accounts for roughly 11% of training time. During tournament match play, those same players reported perceived exertion in the high-intensity zone 89% of the time, with essentially no time at low intensity at all. These are not two points on the same spectrum. They are different environments.
Stroke rates tell the same story. During tournament matches, players hit at roughly 14 strokes per minute. During drills, the rate drops to 7. During simulated match play, 10. Effective playing time (the actual work duration) is also significantly longer in real matches than in simulated ones. The serve, which carries enormous psychological and tactical weight in match play, is used at nearly double the rate compared to practice conditions.
What this means, practically, is that the athlete arriving at a tournament is exposed to demands that their practice has not prepared them for. Not because the coaching was poor, but because the coaching was calibrated to something other than what a match actually requires. Integrated sessions that blend technical and tactical work with conditioning are common, and often defended on grounds of efficiency. What they frequently produce is an athlete who is technically competent under cooperative conditions and physiologically underprepared for the real ones.
The research suggests some directions. Drills with higher stroke counts, defensive and open-pattern drills in particular, come closest to match-level demands in heart rate, perceived exertion, and metabolic load. Work-to-rest ratios of 1:3 to 1:5 are associated with better simulation of match conditions. But the more fundamental question is whether the sessions being run actually ask anything of the player that a match would ask of them. Whether there are decisions to make under pressure, mistakes with consequences, intensity that builds rather than stays comfortable.
Structure matters. Periodisation matters. But neither justifies practice that looks nothing like a match. If the sessions being run week after week bear little resemblance to what players will face on tournament day, the preparation is incomplete regardless of how well it is organised. Practice shapes what is possible in a match. Most junior players are being asked to close a gap their training never prepared them for.